Oh . . . THAT sermon . . .

Right. I left the printout of my All Saints sermon on the printer in the VC office. Which means I didn't have it over the weekend to post either here or on the parish website. Oops. I seem to remember saying I'd get it posted as soon as I brought the sermon home. Would you believe .... Anyway, here's the All Saints sermon.
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All Saints, Year C
Luke 6:20-36

Today we celebrate All Saints. This is the day when we celebrate the inter-communion of the living and the dead in the Body of Christ, and when we commemorate those whose profession of the faith led directly to their earthly death.

The traditional gospel for today is from either Matthew or Luke. It is one of the few places where I get to choose the gospel reading, and I chose this passage not because I like Luke's version better than Matthew's, but because I wanted you to hear the additional verses that Luke adds. Those are the verses that start with, "Love your enemies . . . "

Last week, if you remember, I preached on John 14 (I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me) and the necessity to have an honest relationship, as exemplified by the two men in prayer at the temple. These additional verses from today's gospel follow up on that theme of relationship.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. These are hard sayings, something about a camel and a needle come to mind. Hard sayings, but there they are. And like other non-fuzzy passages, we have to deal with them.

One of the difficulties of this passage is that it talks about non-reciprocal relationships. It's easy to love those who love you, or to pray for those who protect you; even sinners do that. But that is in a mutually agreeable relationship. We are asked to go deeper. We are asked to go beyond what comes naturally and try to build relationships that are difficult.

In saying, "Love your enemies, etc etc etc," Jesus is telling us that the behaviors and actions of others -- especially of those who seem to be against us -- Jesus is telling us that those actions are not to determine our responsive behavior. It's easy to love those who love us. It's just as easy to hate those who hate us, and it is that reciprocity that Jesus is asking us to go beyond. He is asking us to love others not because they love us, but because they are human, created in God's image and God loves them just as he loves us.

A past issue of the ATR focused on reconciliation. One article was written by Miroslav Volf, a survivor of communist-era Yugoslavian secret service interrogation. He was threatened, interrogated, abused and tortured as an enemy of the state; much like our government has treated recent prisoners who have been given the same label.

Volf says at one point, "To triumph fully, evil needs two victories. The first victory is when evil is perpetrated; the second victory is when evil is returned."

This is what Jesus knew and Volfe found out: that evil feeds on itself. One evil act doesn't condemn all of humanity; but an evil act followed by evil act followed by evil act does. The way to break the cycle of violence is to not commit violence in return.

There was an old Star Trek episode that dealt with this very thing. Actually, there were several, but the one I'm thinking of in particular was an episode called "Day of the Dove." In this episode, an alien life form stows onto the Enterprise. A bunch of Klingons happen to be on the ship (I forget why), and this alien arranges for the humans and Klingons to fight a never-ending battle.

As it turns out, the life form feeds on anger and violence. A slight provokes an angry response. Violence begets violence. Eventually the alien is discovered and the two sides drive it out of the ship by laying down their weapons and making peace. A violent response begets more violence. In order to break the cycle, we need to prevent that second response.

Love your enemies. Pray for those who abuse you. Do good to those who hate you.

Notice that those statements are addressed to the victim. We may still be abused or hated or cursed, but it is incumbent upon us to not let our response be dictated by that first hateful encounter. It is through a peaceful response, or at least a non-violent response, that we can begin to break the cycle of violence. This sort of response not only works to break that cycle, but it also works to heal us. How much better would we be individually if we chose not to carry burdens of hatred and anger around with us?

The history of the Church is awash in the blood of the martyrs; saints who proclaimed the kingdom of God to their peril. Men and women were burned, mauled and crucified for their faith and their proclamation of peace. The saints of the Church are those people who refused to respond in kind, but responded with love, prayer and blessings.

On this celebration of All Saints, let us remember those who have gone and died before. Let us pledge to not beget violence with violence but with peace, as did those saints. Let us work for peaceful relationships amongst those who wish us harm. Let us proclaim the peace of the Lord. And let us not be afraid, because it is through death that we live.