Last Sunday the Gospel passage from the Sermon on the Plain had a repeated message, "Love your enemies." This was a particularly relevant theme to reflect on in my sermon, noting that Russia appears poised to invade Ukraine and that protestors continue to camp on our Parliament's grounds, promoting a series of objectionable messages, including calls for executions of politicians and journalists. Thus (slightly adapted for publication on a blog):
Sermon for 8 am
and 10 am Transitional Cathedral 20 February 2022
Readings: for “big picture”
theme, Love your enemies.
“Gen
45:3-11,15 [8 am] – Joseph is reconciled to his brothers who hated him.
Ps 37:1-11,39-40: verse 8: refrain
from anger andforsake wrath.
1 Cor 15:35-38,42-50: the spiritual
body of the resurrection … our hope of glory!
Luke 6:27-38 [8 am]: love your
enemies.
How would you move the protestors on from the lawn and surrounds
of Parliament? From Cranmer Square?
For our sister cathedral in Wellington, St Paul’s Cathedral, this
is a sharp question because the protest is disrupting life in and around the
cathedral.
Perhaps your answer to the question would be the current answer of
the police: to do as little as possible which inflames the situation, which,
effectively, is to tolerate the situation.
Or maybe you feel a bit more militant, like a number of people,
otherwise occupying both the left and the right on our political spectrum, who
want to see police action, even military action to bring the protests to an
end.
Or, since we Anglicans are often teased about taking the middle
way, our answer may lie somewhere in between.
Actually, no one seems to have the answer right now, and perhaps
that’s because each answer has strengths and weaknesses, possibilities for
success and risks of painful failure.
Why not just let the protests go on for as long as the protestors
want to camp? Winter will come eventually!
One answer is that when protestors are calling for our politicians
and media to be hanged, when they threaten young and old alike for wearing
masks as they walk to school and to work, there is a level of hate which is
intolerable (and may be illegal) in a civil, democratic and compassionate
society.
It is, you see, actually quite a challenge to love people when
they hate us, to love people when they promote hate through word and
threatening actions.
Yet our gospel reading this morning has some quite direct and
clear messaging from Jesus to us, his disciples:
Love your enemies, do good to those
who hate you.
No ifs, buts or maybes.
Indeed Jesus goes on:
Bless those who curse you, pray for
those who abuse you.
Then a bit later on Jesus challenges us about loving those who
love us in return and then says, again,
Love your enemies.
The final point he makes is that when we do this we love people
like God love people.
AND the lectionary today places a story of Joesph in juxtaposition
with this message of Jesus:
Joseph, whose brothers hated him and nearly killed him, is
reconciled to those same brothers.
Yet, we do have questions:
What is a Christian response to the protestors?
What is a Christian response to someone, anyone who hates us and
makes our lives difficult if not impossible?
We must love them. We must do good to them. We must bless them and
pray for them.
We do so confident that God see what we are doing and will reward
us – our Corinthian reading reminds us that God blesses us both in this life
and in the next life. Our confidence to love an enemy is the confidence from
knowing that we share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself.
Now, let’s be careful about one thing: we can love someone without
returning to their abuse of us, without giving them further opportunity to give
expression to their hate. We should not be doormats to abusive people.
As Dean Lawrence writes this week, we may need to not be present
to a hater, but we can, nevertheless, pray for them and thus do good for them
in that way.
Some of us agree passionately with the protestors. Some of us
disagree passionately with the protestors. Some of us may have mixed feelings
about everything Covid.
But we have no choice if we are willing to listen to Jesus, we
must love those who make us uncomfortable, those whom we disagree with, those
who go beyond disagrement with us and hate us as our enemies.
That’s something for deep reflection on our part as Christians who
belong to our civil, democratic and compassionate society: how do we love our
enemies today?
It would be good to pray also for our brothers and sisters in
Christ in Ukraine at this time also: their Jesus is the same Jesus as our
Jesus. But they are facing a much, much more difficult situation than we are.
Finally, all times of upheaval are also occasions for speaking
God’s truth into people’s lives. Chris Trotter, a well known left wing NZ
columnist wrote something interesing on his blog:
Chris Trotter https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2022/02/17/reality-and-the-left-a-bitter-divorce/:
It was the Italian
socialist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who grasped the extraordinary fluidity
of reality in periods of acute social stress and political disintegration.
Moments in history when the hegemonic explanations of the ruling-class have
lost, or are beginning to lose, their power to allay the fears and misgivings
of subordinate classes. In such times – and we are living through them now –
people are desperate for new and more persuasive narratives about the nature of
reality.
The most persuasive narrative about the nature of reality I
know is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.
The best evidence we can provide for the truth of that narrative is the lives we lead as loving people.
5 comments:
I wonder if the group that is most consistently practicing ‘love of enemies’ right now is the Wellington Police.
They have met hate with non-retaliatory ‘holding the peace’; they serve the law, but also know when not to strictly enforce it – for the sake of a larger good; they are not so clouded by anger and outrage that they see the protesters as all bad/violent/despicable.
I also wonder about the leadership of Andrew Coster, the Police Commissioner, in all of this, and wonder what part his Christianity plays in Police taking this approach.
Personally, my most constant enemies are my two younger children, in regards to which the temptation to act from anger/outrage/worn-out-patience and enforce ‘the law’ with cathartic severity is often near.
Mark
Offhand-- and speaking broadly about several times and places-- it seems easier to identify Jesus's audience on the plain with protesters than with police.
As Jews were not Roman soldiers, so protesters are not guardians of public order. And like those Jews, protesters often believe that they have enemies or antagonists. So they are the ones to whom Jesus's words are challenging.
After all, neither the occupying legions nor modern peace officers have needed to view drunk or disorderly people as their enemies. It's commonplace in most roles to enforce good rules on people we like who hate them. Why would an officer who writes a parking ticket hate the driver of the misparked car?
So preaching the sermon on the plain to a congregation of protesters is straightforward: say what Howard Thurman and his protégée Martin Luther King Jr said about the non-violent resistance to evil that invites oppressors into the Beloved Community that God has promised us. If the protesters are Christians, that should at least make them think.
It's not impossible, but much harder to preach the sermon on the plain to any congregation that identifies itself with the established order of things. It can be hard for them to accept that their virtuous order is nevertheless not yet that Blessed Community, and that only God can make it so.
What if those in church are neither protesters nor powers that be?
One could default to private moralizing about luv luv luv. It fills the time alloted for preaching.
But one would be closer to Jesus and the text if one instead helped the local Body to understand its call to reconcile interpersonal and social antagonists. Doing that, we are as close to being the Blessed Community as humanity can come in this aeon.
BW
Prayers, Dear Bishop, for your Commissioning of Fr. Chris Orczy at the Cathedral today. He is already missed at SMAA.
Here is an encouragement to us All in today's message from Pope Francis:
"WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2022
“Nowadays it is common, it is an everyday occurrence, to criticise the Church, to point out its inconsistencies — there are many — to point out its sins, which in reality are our inconsistencies, our sins, because the Church has always been a people of sinners who encounter God’s mercy. Let us ask ourselves if, deep in our hearts, we love the Church as she is, the People of God on a journey, with many limitations, but with a great desire to serve and to love God.”
Pope Francis
Bear with me, Bishop Peter, just one more comment from the Bishop of Rome for today"
"THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2022
“Only love makes us capable of speaking the truth fully, in a non-partisan way; of saying what is wrong, but also of recognising all the goodness and holiness that are present in the Church, starting precisely with Jesus and Mary. Loving the Church, safeguarding the Church and walking with the Church. But the Church is not that little group that is close to the priest and commands everyone, no. The Church is everyone, everyone. On a journey. Safeguarding one another, looking out for each other.”
Pope Francis
~General Audience February 16, 2022"
I can't help loving this man of God! Would he were the Archbishop of Canterbury!!
Rowan Williams on The Failure of Mass Democracy (2017)--
https://youtu.be/eNS8E-EqwOk
BW
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