7 Epiphany

February 20, 2011

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18; Matthew 5:38-48

+ This past week I was giving a preview of this morning’s sermon to a friend of mine. I was talking specifically about Jesus’ command to love our enemies and how in Leviticus we are commanded to “not take vengeance or bear a grudge.”

As I was sharing this, my friend looked at me with absolute disbelief but, very politely, said nothing. I was curious about this whole look of disbelief, so I asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t know,” my friend said. “I just can’t imagine you preaching about love and how one should not seek vengeance.”

“Why?” I asked. “I preach about love all the time. And I’m not a vengeful person.”

“Well, I know the kind of movies you love,” my friend said. “You love movies about revenge. Movies like Kill Bill. In fact, when that came out, you talked about that movie like it was God-inspired scripture.”

Now, I will admit, yes I love movies about revenge. Let’s face it, they’re entertaining. But they also speak to us at a very base level. We have all been wronged in some way or the other in our lives. There is some kind of pleasure we receive when someone who has wronged us is brought to justice and we have been vindicated—if in no one else’s eyes but our own. Secretly—or maybe not so secretly—we have all fantasized about getting revenge on people.

In that movie, Kill Bill, one of my favorite scenes is when, at the end of Kill Bill 2, we find Beatrix Kiddo (played by Uma Thurman), after she has killed Bill and the others who tried to kill her years earlier at her wedding, lying on a bed in a motel in Mexico while the daughter she thougth had died watches cartoons in th enext room, crying in great joy.

When I first saw that scene, I wanted to cry in joy with her. It is one of those scenes most of can relate to. When we think for a moment about all of our enemies being eliminated—about every person who has ever wronged us being brought to our own sense of justice—it is a wonderful fantasy.

The problem, for me is actually quite simple. As much as I love movies about revenge, I also am of the belief that revenge has no place in a Christian’s life. We, as Christians, simply do not have the option for revenge. There is no such thing as a Christian Beatrix Kiddo.

The love we find Jesus talking about today is not the kind of love that allows things like revenge or grudges. At the same time, the love he is talking about is not sweet. It is not lovely. It is certainly not romantic. The love Jesus is talking about is messy love. It is knock-down, drag-it-out-in-the-mud kind of love., It is love that is painful. It is not the kind of love we find ourselves craving. It is not the kind of love we find ourselves trying to express in poems and songs. It is not the love we celebrated last Monday on Valentine’s Day. Rather it is the kind of love that gnaws at us. It is the kind of love we fight against and rebel against. It is the kind of love we dig in our heels against. It is the kind of love that makes us do things we don’t want to do.

When anyone asks me “What do I have to do to be a Christian?” (and you have heard me say this a million times, I know), I always say, it is this, “Jesus said to be a Christian one must love God and love each other as ourselves.” That is not the answer most people want to hear, surprisingly enough. As much as people might vent and complain about rules and regulations and dogmas, deep down I think that is exactly what people expect out of the church. Deep down, whether we admit or not, sometimes we want to Church to tell us what to do or say about this issue or that issue. We sometimes do want specifics. We sometimes do want black and white. And Jesus’ command to love definitely does not fall into that category.

Yes, at first it seems to be amazingly simple. Love your neighbor. Love God. Love yourself. Simple. But it isn’t. And at first we think it’s so fluffy and “feel good” But when we really think about it, it isn’t. It’s actually hard and messy and difficult. And it is mind-blowingly radical.

Essentially this message of Jesus is this: even when everything is falling apart, even when your enemies outnumber your friends, even when people have purposely singled you out and are attacking you personally, love them. Love them all. Love them even when you feel the hatred boiling up within you. Love them even when hatred feels good and getting revenge feels like the only right thing to do. Love them until the hatred goes away and the bile dies. Because it is not our place as followers of Jesus to hate. No where have we ever been given permission to hate. The only time hate enters into our Christian vocabulary is as something we are commanded not to do .

Which does make me wonder where people like Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptists get their license to do and say what they do. Now, I am very happy that they’re not coming to Fargo. But they provide us with us a perfect opportunity to do what we are truly called to do as Christians. First, they teach us beautifully on what not to do as Christians. In a sense, any Christian who hates, who actually uses the word “hate” in their literature and on their signs, have essentially forfeited their right even be called Christians. But more importantly they give us that uncomfortable, frustrating opportunity to practice what we preach—to practice radical love. As much as they might hate us, we must love in return. And I’m not talking about outwardly loving them only. I’m not talking about standing up and saying it in public—which is hard enough. I am saying that we must believe it. We must feel it. We must say it before God in the quiet of our hearts.

It’s all right that we might not want to do it. It’s all right that even saying it causes bile to rise up in our mouths. It’s all right that saying it causes our skin to crawl and our blood to boil. Jesus no where, in today’s Gospel, tells us we must love with a smile on our face. All he says to us in today’s Gospel about this is. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven…”

We must love them and we must let this love win out over their hatred. Because it will. Again and again, love will win out over hatred. But the only way it wins out is when we eliminate hatred entirely from our lives. The only way love can prevail is when love has full reign. Love does not have full reign in our lives when we carry around grudges and when we drudge up past hurts that have been done to us.

In our reading from Leviticus we find it stated as clearly as possible, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”

Now, I’ll be the first to admit: I am one of the worst people in the world for carrying around past hurts and grudges. But I have discovered that grudges and anger over what people have done to me in the past really does hamper love from having full reign in my life. Those grudges and memories of things people have done to me prevent me again and again from that truly radical love Jesus commands us to strive toward. I have learned that Jesus isn’t telling us to ignore the past and to forget the wrongs that have been done to us. That is naïve and foolhardy and when we do so we find ourselves falling into unhealthy patterns of relationship with others. But I have taken a good long hard look at those situations in which I have been wronged and I have worked on them until I can come to a point when I can tell myself that, yes, I do love those people who have wronged me. I can say that I love them with all honesty. And I can even say that I love them even if I don’t particularly like them. And by loving them—honestly and for the sake of being a follower of Jesus—I realize I can’t carry those negative grudges with me anymore.

Those grudges only bring me down and make me into a bitter, angry person. And those grudges only lead to thoughts of revenge oftentimes. Grudges and revenge and all those dark negative things only fly in the face of what Jesus is talking about today. It is not easy to love our enemies. It is so much easier to hate them and bear grudges against them and seek revenge on them. As we find in movies like Kill Bill, it feels good to do those things.

Because when we do those things what we are really doing is regaining some sense of control over an uncontrollable situation. Hatred and revenge and grudges help us to believe that some sense of fairness has been brought about. But love is the only thing that makes it all, somehow, right. Love, even in the face of all that has been done to us, somehow always wins out, even when we ourselves might not ever see the results of that love. This is not sweet Pollyannaism fluffiness we’re talking about this morning. It is actually a very difficult, very challenging kind of love. It is a kind of love that changes everything—that transforms things, that challenges even our most rational way of thinking and processing. It is a dangerous love. It is dangerous because it forces us to step outside our insulated, self-protective cocoon and put us in an even more vulnerable place—a place in which we can be hurt again.

“Love your enemies,” Jesus tells us, “and pray for those who persecute you…”

So let us heed his command to us. Let us love our enemies. Let us love the Fred Phelps and all the others who peach hatred. Let us meet their hate, again and again, with love. Let us pray for those who hate us. Let us pray that our love may actually do some good in their lives and in the lives of all who witness our love. For when we do these things, as Jesus tells us, we are the children of our God. When we do so, we become more whole, more completely, more holy. And in doing, we are living out that that command of God from Leviticus, “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.” Let love prevail in all we do and say and believe. And when it does, we and the world around becomes truly and completely transformed by that love.