Sunday, February 23rd, 2025: "Gifts: The Gift of Love"
The First United Presbyterian Church
“Gifts: The Gift of Love”
Rev. Amy Morgan
February 23, 2025
Luke 6:27-38
“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as the Holy One is merciful.
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
I think it’s an undeniable truth that the greatest theological film ever made in the history of the world is Sister Act. Now, if you have, by some great misfortune, never seen Sister Act, maybe because you’re younger than 40, or if you’ve made the grave mistake of not rewatching it since it was released 30 years ago, I will catch you up. Whoopie Goldberg is a lounge singer in Reno who happens to witness a violent crime perpetrated by her mobster boyfriend. She’s placed in witness protection in a convent, where she has to try to pretend to fit in. There are many outstanding theological lessons throughout the film, any of which would make an excellent sermon illustration. But for today’s purposes, I’m going to skip ahead to the end of the movie, when Goldberg’s character is confronted with her (now ex) boyfriend as he’s being arrested. He shouts hateful things at her, to which she responds, “Vince, I got two words for you: Bless you.” And then she goes on to lead her choir of nuns in a rousing rendition of “I Will Follow Him,” and they get a standing ovation from the Pope.
Amazing, right? What better example can you think of when Jesus says, “Love your enemies and bless those who curse you”?
Sadly, Sister Act is a fictional story, a story that, 30 years later, feels more like fantasy. It’s challenging to imagine a scenario where love and blessing would be the response to hatred and cursing. If someone cuts us off in traffic, it’s an offense worthy of cursing. If someone dares challenge our political, social, or cultural sensibilities, the predictable response is name-calling and resentment.
The word “enemy” in Greek stems from the word for hatred. So Jesus is, more literally, saying, “Love the ones you hate and do good to those who hate you.”
Hate is strong word, and all of us like to believe we’re incapable of such a vile emotion. We might severely dislike someone; or hate the sin, love the sinner; or label certain relationships as toxic. But we wouldn’t say we hate anyone.
In fact, most of us would, I imagine, say we are loving people at the core. Sure, it’s difficult to love some people. But we do our level best.
The trouble is, we love people, even when it’s hard, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference. What difference does it make if we love our enemies and bless those who curse us? They won’t care. They won’t change. They won’t stop being horrible. Why would we forgive and forgive and let people take and take when we know it’s not going to change the world one bit? This feels so pointless.
Jesus describes this reciprocal spiritual mechanism, whereby if you don’t judge or condemn others, you won’t be judged or condemned, if you forgive and give to others, you will be forgiven and given to. This feels uncomfortably transactional. And it feels untrue. Just because we don’t judge someone, there’s no guarantee they won’t judge us. If we give something away, we don’t always get something back.
But these are not actually transactional statements. These are not methods of controlling the behavior of people around us. These are descriptions of God’s grace.
Jesus says that we can only love those who love us, do good to those who do good to us, lend to those who will pay us back. This is transactional relationship. We can choose to give people what they deserve. That’s what everyone else does. That’s the way the world works.
But that’s not the way the realm of God works. Jesus asks, if we do what everybody else does, what credit is that to us? The word translated as “credit” is the Greek word charis, which is more often translated as grace. Those who desire to be “children of the Most High,” citizens of God’s reign, are gracious, as God is gracious. And God is so full of grace that God is kind even to the ungracious and the wicked. There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love, kindness, forgiveness, or blessing. God doesn’t give people what they deserve. God is gracious, loving everyone, no matter what.
What Jesus is describing is not transactional relationship. It is transformational relationship. We can love our enemies, refrain from judging, be forgiving and generous, because we have been transformed by God’s grace. Jesus’s instruction is a reminder that God has overlooked our faults and failures, forgiven us, and generously provided for us. And because of that, we are transformed humans who have the amazing ability, I might, in this day and age, even call it a superpower, to be merciful, compassionate, gracious, and loving even toward those who hate us, curse us, take from us, and continue being horrible even after we love them.
The point of loving our enemies, of blessing and forgiving those who hurt us and abuse us, is not to condone their actions, to enable continued injustice, or to change anyone else. Our job is not to transform others. That’s God’s work. But we can live into the transformed life God has graced us with.
And that life is an abundant life.
Jesus says this kind of odd thing at the end of this passage: A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back. A measure, that’s all that’s asked of us. We’re not giving away the farm, pouring ourselves out until we’re empty. Just a portion is all it takes. And whatever it means to press it down and shake it together, there’s this image of overwhelming abundance. It runs over and lands right back in our lap. We’re not giving for nothing. We’re giving, we’re loving, blessing, forgiving, because, Jesus says, that’s what produces abundant life.
Friends, we have witnessed terrible things. Hopefully nothing on the order of what Whoopie Goldberg’s character in Sister Act had to witness. But it feels like we are assaulted on a daily basis with acts of hatred, inhumanity, and injustice. From vulgar bumper stickers to rants on social media, from protests to prejudice, from tragedy to tyranny, we cannot escape seeing the ugliest side of humanity.
And maybe we can convince ourselves that we don’t hate people. Maybe that’s too strong a word. But maybe we don’t really love them either.
When the apostle Paul defined love for the Corinthian Christians, he said there are 8 things love is, and 8 things love is not. Love is patient, kind, rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never ends. Love is not envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, insistent on its own way, irritable, resentful, or rejoicing in wrongdoing.
When we are confronted with those who unrepentantly have hurt us or other people, whose actions have caused suffering and pain, “Bless you” may not be the first two words that come to mind. Instead of practicing patience, we get irritated. Instead of showing kindness, we are rude. Instead of seeking truth, we twist facts to fit our narrative and make ourselves the victim or the hero, but never the villain. Instead of bearing with other’s faults, we resent them. Instead of believing there is some good in everyone, we arrogantly believe we’re the only ones getting it right. Instead of hoping for reconciliation, we celebrate when people get what’s coming to them. Instead of putting up with the way other people do things, we insist on our own way. Instead of staying in relationship, we walk away.
In other words, we are not loving our enemies. And that means we are missing out. Paul says we can do all the right things. We can be a preacher, a prophet, a mystic, a guru, an ascetic. We could literally be holier than thou. But without love, we are nothing. We gain nothing. We are missing out on the abundant life that Paul describes: wholeness, completeness, growing, seeing God, the very essence of love, face to face, and fully knowing ourselves as God knows us. All this abundant goodness could be overflowing into our laps, but we’d rather stick to loving those who love us and hating those who hate us.
What a pity.
All it takes is a measure. A portion. A word of blessing instead of a curse. We may not get a standing ovation from the Pope. But we could be living transformed lives. We could be living abundantly.
No one can force us to love, to show grace and mercy, to be forgiving and generous. No one can make us do it.
But no one can prevent us from loving, either. No matter how awful, hurtful, or oppressive someone else is, they can’t stop us if we decide to love them. It’s not a feeling. It’s a choice. It’s a decision we are faced with every time we encounter hatred and anger and injustice. If someone takes our coat, we can give them our shirt. Because they can’t take our ability to love. No one can take that away from us.
Because love is a gift from God, a gift that belongs to every human being created in the image of a loving God. We can reject that gift or ignore it or distort it. But no one can take it from us.
May we recognize and utilize the gift of love, so that we may be transformed, so that we may live abundantly, to the glory of God. Amen.
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