Renew, Release, Reconcile
Highland Avenue Church of the Brethren
Pastor Katie Shaw Thompson – April 3, 2022
Renew, Release, Reconcile – Luke 6: 27-38
The logic of Jesus is different from the logic of ordinary humans. You hit me. I hit you back. To do anything different would be to show weakness. It would be to give up. It would be to accept fate as a doormat. And there are times when we humans have decided allowing ourselves to be stepped on is a means of survival–miserable as it may be.
Jesus doesn’t accept those two extremes. His logic is on an entirely different plane. If a Roman soldier hits you with the back of their hand, the standard logic dictates that should be the end of the story. You should remember your place and give up. Some folks sick of being beat in such a way were ready to violently overthrow the next person who dared try and to stage a violent revolution over the entire situation.
Jesus counters with an entirely different option altogether. What if we turned the other cheek instead? What if we refused to be treated like less than human? What if we refused to see ourselves that way or anyone else either? What if we refused to be afraid of violent repercussions to living and loving out loud? What if we refused the logic that says might makes right, revenge equals power, or it’s either hit or be hit? Many of us in the peace churches have been interested in this other logic for living for a long time.
This very tradition we now call the Church of the Brethren began 300 years ago, shortly after the end of the religiously motivated Thirty Years War in Germany which killed one third of the human population, wiped out thousands of animals, and left miles upon miles of roads, bridges, and buildings in ruins. Our spiritual ancestors saw how the flawed logic of violence and revenge destroyed lives, communities, and countries. They read the Bible together in their own language and set out to find another way of living. To their ears, this different logic of Jesus held enormous promise.
Over the centuries, we have continued to expand our understanding of that promise. Sometimes we have read passages like today’s text and concluded that if we are to “love our enemies,” then we must have no enemies at all. We must never be angry. We must never allow ourselves to be hurt.
But the people Jesus was talking to in Luke had enemies. The Roman Empire was built on the backs of the people of Judea. The peasants sitting on the plain before Jesus were the very people whose bodies littered the streets and ports of that empire. They were the tenant farmers and the fishermen. They were the widows and the beggars. They knew what it was to have an enemy. Their people had written ancient, violent psalms brimming with anger and rage about the generational injustices faced by their people and sometimes committed by their people. These were no mere misunderstandings they had with their enemies. They were matters of life and death. Ask the people of Ukraine if those kinds of enemies exist today. Ask transgender women if those kinds of enemies exist today. Ask parents who have to give “the talk” about police to their young Black children if those kinds of enemies exist today. Ask anyone who has ever been terrorized or abused if those kinds of enemies exist today.
It’s not that we don’t have enemies. It’s not that the threat of physical and emotional violence isn’t real. It’s that Jesus offers us another way of living with the reality of enemies. We don’t have to kill or be killed. We can choose to love.
Now, the word for love here is the Greek agape. It’s not filial love - that’s the sibling I love you because you love me. It’s not eros love - that’s the romantic I love you let’s get together. It’s agape love - the I love you because we’re all a part of each other.
Practicing agape love doesn’t mean we can’t be very, very angry and hurt. Practicing agape love doesn’t mean we have to accept the way things are as the way they always have to be. No, practicing agape love for enemies means acknowledging the anger, hurt, and wrong by working to change the way things are while also acknowledging that we share a common bond.
The logic of agape is a whole different logic altogether. It’s a new creation taking shape. It’s another way of living in this life and the next in which we can find true salvation and security. When we practice that agape love, I believe we find the freedom to be “merciful just as our heavenly [parent] is merciful.”
Mercy doesn’t erase the pain. Mercy doesn’t erase the need for repentance or change on the part of the one doing the wrong. The verses just before the ones we read today after all pronounce woe upon wrongdoers. Real reconciliation will come only when the wrong has been named, repentance has been made, and forgiveness granted. Even then the rebuilding of a relationship takes time and work. I trust that God’s agape love and mercy has the power to eventually reconcile us all to each other and Godself, whether in this life and the next. And yet, I also believe that sometimes, in this life, when we practice mercy, we get to see its miraculous fruits.
It’s just a fictional story but let it stand in for all the personal, private stories I have heard and lived in real life.
In the Disney movie Encanto, the family Madrigal’s whole house comes crashing down. The foundation is rotten to the core because it is built on the belief that the family must be perfect to be worthy of the magic. This belief creates a terribly painful burden for the family that wrecks their relationships and causes real harm. One granddaughter, Mirabel, has the courage to name the harm their grandmother, the family’s matriarch, has caused due to her unreasonable expectations and related emotional abuse.
At first, the matriarch refuses to see the cracks in the foundation, but when the whole house has fallen in on itself, she finally sees the harm she has caused and agrees to change her ways. Mirabel, too, comes to a greater understanding of her grandmother’s story and good intentions that have gone awry. They go through all the steps of the Tutu’s four-fold path of forgiving. With magical musical numbers they tell the story, name the hurt, grant forgiveness, and finally, choose to renew their relationships. The whole family returns to the ruined house and with the help of the whole community, they rebuild their home brick-by-brick. That’s reconciliation. That’s the power of mercy, forgiveness, and agape love. It’s possible. I have seen it happen in real life. I have been present to those kinds of miracles.
But we don’t always get a Disney movie ending in this life. There are times when those who have wronged us refuse to see their wrong, let alone change their ways. There are times when we forgive but renewing the relationship is not yet an option.
Jesus has a teaching about this situation, too. It’s in Matthew 18: 17. In a teaching about those who refuse to hear how they have been in the wrong, he implores, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”
It’s not like being a Gentile or a tax collector makes you irredeemable. That’s the logic of the Pharisees who were irked at Jesus for always eating with such people. Rather, what Jesus means here is that Gentiles and tax collectors, while they may change their ways, operate by that same old standard logic. They’ve not yet been transformed by that reconciling agape love. At some point, it has to be their decision to step into that warm river of eternal grace. But just because they’re not there yet doesn’t mean they won’t be some day, and it doesn’t mean we can’t choose to release ourselves from the pain they have caused. I have seen and lived these relationships, too.
Maybe it’s like a farmer who finds a field where nothing will grow. The farmer doesn’t have to give up on that field entirely. The farmer may still prefer that something grow there someday. Maybe the farmer even comes by once in a while to see if anything is growing or to spread some nutrients or seed. But the farmer cancels the expectation that something must grow, because some things are simply out of our control. Some fields can only lie fallow before they are ready to yield any harvest. In some things, we can only forgive, let go, and trust that God, the healer of our every ill, may yet work a miracle well beyond our power in this life or in the life to come.
May it be so. Amen.
