February 23, 2025

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, Pastor Lois Pallmeyer, February 23, 2025

Dear Friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you. Amen.

Before I went to seminary, I worked briefly at a therapeutic preschool for children who had experienced trauma, malnourishment, or violence. I felt completely in over my head. These little kids were absolutely adorable, and also absolutely wild: often non-verbal, impulsive, combative, and crazed. I knew it was because they had been exposed to things they shouldn’t have had to see, and so were fearful, reactive and defensive, but it still looked like a complete mess to me.

The kids never listened. They didn’t close their mouths when they were chewing. They didn’t take turns. They didn’t respond to simple directions. Instead, they bit, hit, yelled, cried, fought, ran. They threw paint and markers and food and toys. It was a constant circus, and though they were very little people, they outnumbered us. I couldn’t see how we were going to keep up.

But the experienced staff there were amazing – like miracle workers. Every one of them exemplified a non-anxious, loving presence. They spoke calmly. They redirected. They reminded us all to “use our words.” They sang, smiled, created art, played, and they loved those babies into goodness. I was dumbfounded by how well it worked. The tantrums and fisticuffs would melt away. The children’s tears would break into laughter, and within a few weeks of attending that school, they would start becoming the sweetest, gentlest little people you could meet.

It was one of those examples of love turning the world upside down.

I think I need to revisit that preschool, because the last few weeks have left me spinning and flailing like a frightened, unregulated toddler. I’ve seen too many things I shouldn’t have had to witness, and I think I probably need a non-anxious, patient presence to invite me to sing, or sit in the quiet corner for a while.

Jesus is still teaching the crowds on the level place[i]. They’ve come out to hear his non-anxious message of love, and they’re trying to make sense of it all. Last week he claimed that individuals who had been abused or reviled were blessed, which must have been confusing enough. Today he takes it further and invites the entire crowd to live in so much love that we even love our enemies.

Oof. Not today, Jesus. I’m pretty sure I would have been the Hermione Granger in the class waving my hand to explain that we have some really, very nasty enemies right now who are destroying the foundations that hold us together, and Jesus couldn’t possibly mean them. Because some enemies are just taking things too far. Love can’t be the answer when they’re canceling programs that feed the hungry and insulting our closest allies, bullying those who were invaded and denying passports, ignoring human rights, and firing the only people who know what they’re doing. We can’t love that, can we?

I’m also pretty sure Jesus would have either ignored my question, or more likely have looked at me lovingly and said, Yes, those enemies too.

Here’s something that strikes me while reading this text – Jesus more or less expects us to have enemies. That’s surprising, isn’t it? He’s not talking about people with whom we may disagree, ones who have offended us, or even ones we may find morally questionable. No, because Jesus calls those people friends, neighbors, brothers and sisters, even.

Rather Jesus uses the term “enemies” to refer to people who have more power than we do, “and use that power to harm, oppress, or persecute[ii].” Those who use wealth, power and position to oppress those less powerful, vulnerable communities, are the real enemies. And Jesus expects us to have to deal with them.

Jesus reminds us that we know how to behave toward respectable neighbors and friends. If someone does something kind to me, he knows I’ll want to be kind in return. If someone lends me money easily, he expects me to lend them too. That’s not unusual or exceptional. It’s transactional[iii], tit-for-tat. And the world is full of transactional relationships.

But in a world that runs on an “If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” mentality then if you treat me with scorn or hate, I can hate you back. And this is where Jesus turns our expectations on their head. No, he says, “But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return[iv].”

The problem with living in a transactional response to enemies is that the hate they offer becomes the hate we accept. You hate me, so I turn into a hateful person. We start acting as our enemies act, and their hate starts destroying us from the inside out. Jesus knows we weren’t created for that kind of pain.

Now I know this might sound too passive in extraordinary times. If we all just ignore this destruction happening around us and “turn the other cheek,” as Jesus implies, aren’t we allowing the abuse to be left unchecked?

But Jesus didn’t say to let the actions of the enemy be unaddressed or unopposed. His entire ministry was about standing up to oppression and exclusion of the least. He went to the cross trying to confront authoritarianism that ruled through hatred and fear. Yet even there, he refused to live anywhere but in the everlasting love of God. It was in God’s love that he found his only purpose.

Love doesn’t excuse or ignore oppression. It still calls out evil and mistreatment of the vulnerable. It organizes, marches, advocates and resists. But it doesn’t let hatred define us. It stands in the conviction of God’s love alone as the foundation of our identity,[v] and lets that love shape our response. The secret to resisting the world’s transactional, greedy, fear-based grab for control, is not in fearing or hating the controller, but rather in loving self and neighbor, and even the enemy.

It’s counter-intuitive. It’s risky. And it is the only way we will find life.

My favorite moment of every church year is at the Easter vigil, when in the celebration of baptism, we move from death to life, and proclaim once again, that Christ is Risen. The assembly is showered with reminders of our baptism as the presider cries out, “Death has no more dominion over you!” The organ swells, and the bells begin to toll, and the congregation rises to sing a song of victory. Once again, hate does not win.   Love wins.

I didn’t work at that preschool long enough to learn how the kids fared later in life. But I hope that the interactions they had with that miracle staff prepared them to better address and confront the situations life offered them. I hope that we helped them see that this is a good world in which they deserve to be loved and to love in return.

Meanwhile, even if they weren’t changed by those interactions, I was. I saw that love can change the world.

I think that’s why we come here. We gather to be reminded that though things seem polluted by the hatred of tyrants, we dwell in a world created by love and for love. We gather because it’s sometimes too hard for us to remember when we are alone. We gather because we need friends to remind us to use our words, and share our resources, and to be fed. We need chances to sit with each other, to hold each other’s hands, and together discover a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over pouring down into our own laps[vi], and singing the truth that hatred has no power over us.

Though we may expect nothing in return, we may in fact discover that our reward is great, because we are once again claimed as children of the Most High[vii]. Thanks be to God.

 

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[i] Gospel for this Sunday is Luke 6:27-38.

[ii] McNinch, Timothy, “Love in a World Filled with Enemies,” Politics of Scripture, February 17, 2025. https://politicaltheology.com/love-in-a-world-filled-with-enemies/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIkRFpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHTgDtnwIJdL3r50vGr5jPE1ZBE1g90dgbcGtEcLhYvBmx_X6om6XCT20Gg_aem_mjTlZlCTJ-bKITzhvymhew

[iii] Shore, Mary Hinkle. Commentary on Luke 6:27-38, Working Preacher, February 23, 2025. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-627-38-3

[iv] Luke 6:35

[v] McNinch.

[vi] The phrase refers to generous grain merchants, who would measure the grain, shake the measuring cup to make sure they filled up the empty spots, then push down with their hand to pack every possible grain in. Still, there would be grain flowing over and needing to be pulled up by the hem of one’s garment, as Ruth did when gleaning grain in Boaz’s fields.  See https://www.gotquestions.org/pressed-down-shaken-together-running-over.html

[vii] Luke 6:35-36

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