November 3 – Luke
ALL SAINTS SUNDAY
LUKE 6:20-31
Today is the day on the church calendar that we gather to remember the saints in our lives. Most often, we think of saints as those people of the past who have passed on. People who were blessed by God and in turn were a blessing to those around them. Yet, today is also the day we celebrate those saints still living, those whose hearts continue to beat out the warmth of sunshine that scatters around us and guides our lives for the better.
We are saints because we are sinners, sinners who have been forgiven because of what Christ did for each one of us on the cross. God loves us so much that not only did He give his only son to die on the cross so that we might be forgiven of our sins, God loves us enough to transform us from sinners into saints.
It is because of this great love that we can heed Jesus’s words. “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
It is possible that about now you are thinking, “Really Jesus? You really want me to love a person who has done a dreadful thing to me personally, to love someone who never has a kind word to say about me, to love someone who tries to sabotage things that I do?” The answer is a resounding, yes! This really brings home to us that Jesus turned things upside down during His time here on earth, and that he has called us as His disciples to absolutely radical behavior. Behavior that distinguishes us as Christians from the non-Christians in this world. When Jesus told us to love our enemies, He was creating a new standard for relationships. In fact, He set a very high bar for our personal behavior in regards to this matter.
The Greek word for love, agape, is something of the understanding of creative, redemptive, good will for all men. It is the means the type of love that expects nothing in return. Regardless the meaning, loving our enemies is a tall order, yet it can be a life changing experience!
Of course, as humans, there are several different types of love that we can experience. For example, we talk about “falling in love” with our spouse which is a matter of the heart, as is the love we feel for our family members. Loving our pets is also a form of love that comes from our hearts.
Love from the heart can take many forms. Who here is a fan of the Peanuts cartoons? I have to admit that I watch all of the holiday peanuts cartoons such as, “The Big Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Who couldn’t love the Charlie Brown character who is so open in what he thinks? In fact, my guess is that there is a little of Charlie Brown in each of us, and so we can identify with some of his life problems. If you listen carefully, there is always a message about what love is in each cartoon episode. Here are some examples:
“Love is walking in the rain together.” “Love is sharing your popcorn.” “Love is not nagging, and love is getting someone a glass of water in the middle of the night.”
These are all wonderful outward signs of love. However, this is not the kind of love that Jesus is saying we have to have for our enemies. Love for our enemies does not come from our heart, but from willing ourselves to choose to love someone we don’t even like. Loving our enemies is a deliberate choice that we make. It requires us to look for the elements of good in the person who is our enemy in life. Loving our enemies is deliberately choosing against being bitter and choosing benevolence. For surely there is one teeny, tiny thing that we can find about the person that we can hold up as something that we like about them. It gives us something to help us make the decision to say, “I don’t like this person’s behavior, especially towards me, but he or she is not all bad. Therefore, I can work on letting God’s love shine through me to begin to wish them good-will as one of God’s children; for we need to always remember that God created each of us to love and to love Him back.”
One of the challenges of learning to love others, whether from the heart or from will, is examining ourselves first to make sure that we actually love ourselves. We live in a culture right now where seemingly there is inferiority, lower self-esteem, and seemingly a low respect for human life itself more so than ever before. By self-love I am not talking about the kind of love that a big ego gives, but instead, accepting yourself with all your warts and flaws, for as humans we all have them. One thing for sure, we need to be able to love ourselves in a healthy sense of self love, before we can love others, including loving and trusting our God. Mark 12:31 tells us that Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” So healthy self-love is something that Jesus wants us to have. In fact, expects of each of us.
Yesterday, a group of us gathered in the Parish House for breakfast and to discuss the book, Forgiven by Terri Roberts, who is the mother of the shooter at the Nickle Mines Amish School. When her son, Charlie, was being buried, over thirty Amish, both men and women showed up and shielded the family at the grave from the news media. The parents of two of the little girls who had lost their lives in the shooting, stepped forward and expressed to the family that they were sorry for their loss. Terri Roberts said it was a sudden, healing clarity for her. “Forgiveness is a choice.” It is not a feeling, and the grief-stricken parents of the little girls had chosen to forgive instead of hating, and they reached out in compassion instead of with anger. A perfect example of what Jesus was talking about in today’s scripture lesson.
As we leave here this morning, let us seek to keep the golden rule that most of us were taught as children. “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.” This statement speaks to Christ’s instructions for living like a true saint. Loving our neighbors is not something that gets us sainthood in the end, but it comes from our current sainthood as a disciple of Christ. It comes from the great love and mercy that we are being shown by our creator, a love and mercy that we want to have for each of our fellowman because we have received so much from Christ. Let us resolve to seek God with all our heart. I leave you with these words from 1 John 4:7. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.”
Amen