Homily for Sunday Ordinary 7 C

The Greek word for grace is CHARIS. When Jesus builds his rhetorical crescendo, criticizing reciprocal love (even sinners do that!), the word translated as “credit” is CHARIS. The phrase is better translated, “If you love those who love you, what grace [CHARIS] is that to you?”  

I am away this weekend.

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Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. 

Jesus said to his disciples, "To you who hear, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well. And from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you. And from the one who takes what is yours, do not demand it back. 

Do to others as you would have them do to you. 

For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them and lend expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 

Be merciful just as your father is merciful. 

Stop judging, and you will not be judged. Stop condemning, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and gifts will be given to you. A good measure, packed together, shaken down and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

I find it curious that the Gospel begins to you who hear, I say, love your enemies. This saying is hard, and Jesus goes further. Love your enemies and do good to them and lend expecting nothing back. This is hard to hear, much less take to heart. 

By participating in God's kingdom economy as opposed to the ironclad rules of quid pro quo, we allow for the possibility of something new to emerge. Reconciliation does not mean forgive and forget. Father Robert Shreiter wrote, "What happens in the healing that takes place in reconciliation is that we are taken to a new place, a place we had not expected or measured out for ourselves. The moment of reconciliation comes therefore as a surprise, providing us something we could not have imagined." We remember in a new way.

Remember the meeting between Jacob and Esau in Genesis chapter 33? Jacob had stolen Esau's inheritance, but finally he is determined to reconcile with his brother. The night before their meeting, Jacob wrestles with someone. In the dark, he couldn't see the face of his adversary. The text is not clear. Jacob wrestles with God, or an angel, or was it a man? In the morning, while he was still a long way off, his brother caught sight of him and ran to him and embraced him. Jacob said, "To see your face is like seeing the face of God." 

"God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." In Middle English, the words "kind" and "kin" were the same. To say that Christ is our "kinde" Lord is not to say that Christ is tender and gentle, although that may be implied, but to say that he is "kin," our kind. This is exactly the love Jesus calls us to live out, not as gods or angels, but as "children of the Most High," human beings created in God's image. "Be merciful just as your Father is merciful."When we love this way, we embody the Amago Dei. This is the love we're made for. 

The Greek word for "grace" is "CHARIS." When Jesus builds his rhetorical crescendo criticizing reciprocal love, even sinners do that. The word translated as "credit" is "CHARIS." The phrase is better translated, "If you love those who love you, what grace [CHARIS] is that to you?" Or, "What grace is there in that?" Like a drumbeat, Jesus repeats the word three times. "What grace is there in that?" "What grace is there in that?" "What grace is there in that?" We are made to be gracious, to love gracefully, to practice CHARIS in the image of God's CHARIS." 

I wonder if, in calling us to love those we judge unlovable, Jesus isn't leading us to a hidden grace. A few years ago, Anderson Cooper had a conversation with Stephen Colbert about death and loss. Cooper lost his father when he was 10 and his brother, who died by suicide when Anderson was 21. The late show host, Stephen Colbert, opened up about the importance of "learning to love the thing you most wish had never happened." Colbert, who is the youngest of 11 siblings, lost his father and two teenage brothers, Peter and Paul, in a plane crash near Charlotte, North Carolina, on September 11, 1974. He was just 10 years old at the time. Colbert said, "That is such a cliff that I fell off emotionally and physically and spiritually at that age."

 Colbert told Cooper that the loss of his father and brothers shattered his and his mother's lives, but it did not destroy them. "It's a gift to exist," Colbert told Cooper, "and with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that. But if you are grateful for your life, then you have to be grateful for all of it." 

Parker Palmer reminds us, "There's no way to be human without having one's heart broken." "But there are at least two ways for the heart to break," Parker writes. "The heart can be broken into a thousand shards, sharp-edged fragments that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Every day untold numbers of people try, without success, to pick up the pieces, some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart's explosion has injured their enemies. Here, the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it as a hidden wound, sometimes trying to resolve it by inflicting the same wound on others. 

But there's another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart broken open into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one's own and the world's pain and joy. This too happens every day. 

Here's a piece of wisdom from the Hasadim. A disciple asks the Rebbe, "Why does Torah tell us to place these words upon your hearts? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?" The Rebbe answers, "It is because, as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts, and there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in."