Saturday, February 19, 2022

 Topsy Turvy

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

 

How many of you are familiar with the story in today’s gospel? Show of hands.

 

This is Luke’s Sermon on the Plain, similar to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. We’ve heard it our entire lives, and we know it by heart. It’s almost become a cliché. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Golden Rule again. “Do unto others as you would like others to do unto you.” How many of you sort of tuned out when you first heard it again today? No show of hands this time.

 

It was the same with Jesus’ audience that day, too. Everything Jesus was telling them wasn’t new to them. He was just re-stating what they had heard over and over again in the Jewish law and the prophets. But Jesus gave it the twist that you should do these things for those you don’t like or even to those who hate you. That’s the hard part, isn’t it? That’s the part that goes against all our sense of fairness and justice. That is the part that can get us hurt. It’s not so much the lending and giving without expecting something in return part that’s hard, it’s the opening of our hearts to people who don’t care or who won’t love us in return or who will even outright reject us and attack us.

 

This goes against all the conventional wisdom of the past 50 years. Since the 1960s and especially the past 20 years we have been ruled not by the Golden Rule but by two principles: the personal liberty principle, where we are free to do whatever we like as long as we don’t harm anyone else, and the tolerance principle, where we must tolerate whatever other people do as long as they aren’t harming anyone else, which is basically allowing others to live by their own personal liberty principle.

Both principles are really different sides to the same coin, and they are both really selfish.

 

Letting me do what I want to do is easy to understand. But I really believe that we tolerate other people’s behavior, good or bad, not because we care about them so much as we want them to leave us alone to do what we want to do. It’s sort of like the new Golden Rule is “Let people do whatever they want to do so they will let me do whatever I want to do.” Both are all about me. The big problem lately is who defines what is harmful and what isn’t. There are no more objective moral standards, just my feelings. You do you and I’ll do me. You live your truth and I’ll live mine, as if there is no such thing as objective truth. It doesn’t matter if you do anything wrong, if I think you’ve wronged me than that makes it wrong. And so chaos ensues.

 

We push so hard telling people that they have to love themselves first and foremost. Love your enemies has become “Don’t surround yourself with people who bring you down.” Find your authentic self and then live it. If it feels good do it. These pop culture philosophies are so self-centered. But the only life worth living is one lived for others.

 

Nothing Jesus says today is self-directed, but other directed. The challenging thing is that we are called by Jesus to open our hearts to everyone, not just to those who we can get something back in return. He said “Love one another as I have loved you” not “Love one another as I have loved myself”. The greatest love is the love we give to those who do not love us. Jesus died for those who killed him out of love for them.

 

We are not called to remove ourselves completely from hurtful people. We are called to love and to pray for them, not just for their good but for ours. And that can be the most painful kind of love. Unless we love them we can never let go of the hurt they have caused us. Jesus told his disciples, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven and whose sins you retain are retained.” We retain other people’s sins all the time, allowing them to fester in us and make us bitter. But as Luke says, “He himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” That’s what love is and that’s what love does.

 

What’s ironic, or perhaps genius, is that the only way to be true to yourself, to live the personal liberty principle, is to actually focus on others, not yourself. It’s the exact opposite of the common wisdom today. Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is not just going to make life better for them, but better for you too. This will actually make you happy. This will actually bring you peace. This will give your life meaning. It seems counterintuitive because we are called to do these things in the midst of our suffering. Loving those who are hurting us actually stops the hurting. The more you sacrifice the more you will receive. If you want more, give more. And always forgive, forgive, forgive.

 

Forgive and you will be forgiven may seem to be a throwaway line, but just like if you give more you will receive more, the opposite is true also. If you give less you will receive less. You will be forgiven to the extent that you forgive. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.  If you don’t forgive you won’t be forgiven. And you will be judged by the same measure you judge others. If you judge harshly you will be judged harshly.

 

But that’s not fair. We’ve been taught our entire lives that God will forgive us no matter what, right? Isn’t that what unconditional love is? And there is no judgment, really, because there are no standards to judge by anymore. A loving God is not a judge, we’re all going to heaven anyway. But that thinking removes our free will and personal responsibility, and that’s what’s really unfair.

 

A friend of mine posted a meme on Facebook this week that said, “Nope, not going to worry about being judged in the afterlife. God made me this way.” I know he was joking, but many, many people today believe that.

 

Judgment is real and is based upon fairness. My friend says he’s not responsible for his actions, but he is. We all are. We won’t be judged on how much we loved ourselves and found self-fulfillment in all the things here we think will make us happy. We will be judged on what we have done for the least of our brothers and sisters. Did we feed the hungry and clothe the naked? Did we help the poor and visit prisoners? How much did we do beyond ourselves?

 

This is a great gospel to help you prepare for lent in a couple weeks. Just as I have heard this gospel a hundred times and so can seem mundane, as I get older the idea of Lent becomes more and more routine. It gets harder to focus on penance and preparation with all the whirlwind going on in my life and I have run out of ideas of how to make it worthwhile. It has become just another thing I have to do. Maybe I can take today’s gospel and work on some of Jesus’ admonitions this lent.

 

Who can I give to without expecting repayment? Who can I pray for who has hurt me? Who disagrees with me that I can be gracious to? Who has unknowingly hurt me that I can forgive? Whose injury to me is causing bitterness in my heart, and how can I let go of it and be at peace? Who can I be kind to who has been ungrateful to me? What debts can I repay? What grudges can I let go of?

Who have I hurt, and can I have the courage to ask them for forgiveness?

 

It's all topsy turvy and backwards. But then, God sees things differently than we do, thankfully. Jesus taught us the way and then showed us how to live it.

 

Thank God for mercy and for giving me more than I could ever deserve.

 

Give, and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.

 

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