"OUR WILL AND GOD'S GRACE"

Written by a woman named Kate Eysaman, the name of this free-verse poem is "State Hospital" : "

Hannah and Myra.
Both survived
The Jewish camps.
Both used bony fingers to
Pick away the lice
On other thin companions.
Tattooed numbers on upper arms remind.
Hannah visits Myra
In this place of endless
Mumbling, wasted souls.
Hannah, so strong, resigned.
Forgiving; forgiven of the torture,
Never (no, never) forgetting.
While Myra, eyes turned inside,
Smoking cigarettes and humming childish tunes,
Forgets in her rancor
How to move among souls
Who mean you no harm.
But Hannah knows the saving craft
Of walking next to hatred
Without ever being stolen."

Two people who both endured the anguish of the Nazi concentration camps and survived. One "lives" - biologically, at least - in a state hospital in a perpetual hell created by hatred turned inward. The other was able to acknowledge the horrors perpetrated upon her without being spiritually entombed. Why? The secret seems to lie, somehow, in an act of the human will combined with the grace of forgiveness and mercy that could only come from God.

That's what Jesus was trying to explain in those verses from the Gospel of Luke we heard this morning. In this portion of Jesus' "sermon" - really, probably, a compilation of his teachings from various occasions - we are given a series of lessons on how we are to choose, through our will, to allow God's grace working through us to help us behave in a way that is different from what the world would expect. To act out, purposefully, the ways of God's love in a world that advocates a "retaliation reality": not loving mercy but getting even, and then some.

To start with, what Jesus proposes seems unrealistic in the extreme. He says, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." Then he gives a series of examples - metaphors really - of how this would look: turning the other cheek, giving away more than is asked for, allowing people to rob us if need be. It just doesn't make any sense.

Well, first of all, we have to remember how to read and understand Scripture. Jesus was using an ancient Semitic technique of extreme exaggeration in order to make a serious point. And he was speaking to people about how they were to respond to acts of religious and spiritual persecution. In 21st century, individual terms, Jesus is not advocating that we refrain from defending ourselves if under assault, any more than he would want us to refrain from coming to the defense of another person under attack, physical or otherwise. He does not want us to strip naked in public on demand from someone who wants our clothes or to become destitute as a result of giving away money to the destitute. Jesus is making a point which is restated in verse 31; it's what has come to be known as "the Golden Rule" - "Do to others as you would have them do to you."

That is something that certainly can be applied to us personally, even in the 21st century. The world, of course, tries to teach us a subtle variation on that principle - something we might think of as "the Fool's Golden Rule": "Do unto others as they have done unto you." Getting even - "justice," we call it. Only we rarely settle for getting even; we want to get even and then some. We don't just want our property replaced; we also want to be paid for mental anguish and suffering. Someone hurts us or disappoints us and we want to make sure they experience all the pain we have experienced...and maybe just a little bit more! "An eye for an eye"...along with a couple of swift kicks for good measure! But Jesus tries to teach us that to love as God loves means letting go of seeking reciprocity and retaliation in our relationships with others. For any of us, this is no easy thing to do.

Dr. Robert Schuller, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral, is known for always saying during the course of his worship services, "God loves you and so do I." But he once told of a personal incident that reflects how really difficult it is to love others as God loves us. He and a man in another car met suddenly and unexpectedly when their two vehicles collided. The other man got out of his car and unleashed a barrage of curses and accusations that bruised Schuller's soul and was really beginning to kindle his anger. Dr. Schuller claims to have looked the man straight in the face and exclaimed, "Mister, God loves you...and I'm trying."

It's not easy to love the way that God loves. And Jesus makes that pretty clear. In our Scripture reading we heard, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?" In the original language, the word that we heard translated as "credit" can also be translated as "grace." "If you love those who love you, what grace is that to you?" In other words, it's no great feat to love those who love us. We don't need any particular provision from God to be good to people who are good to us or to give to those whom we are sure will pay us back. It takes no connection with God whatsoever to do those things. But it takes an act of will on our part and the grace of God within us to enable us to love those who don't necessarily love us back.

When Jesus tells us, in these verses, to "love" others -- even our "enemies" -- we need to understand what he's saying. In Greek, the language in which the New Testament was originally written, there are three words that are all translated into English as "love." One of these words is "eros," from which we get the English word "erotic." It stands for "in-love" love, romantic love, love of the sexual kind. This is a wonderful love, but it's not the love of which Jesus speaks when he commands us to love one another, even our enemies. That kind of love is based on feelings that we have for another. If certain feelings are there, we say we're "in love," and if they're not, we aren't.

The same is true of the kind of love we have for friends. That kind of love is the Greek word "philia" - like "Philadelphia," the "city of brotherly love." Like romantic love, friendship love involves our feelings. Both of those kinds of love are reciprocal, mutual, involving give-and-take.

But a third Greek word that we translate as "love"...the word which the Gospel of Luke uses in quoting Jesus' teaching for today...is "agape." Actually, there is no English equivalent or derivative for this word, but it is the word Jesus uses to describe what he's commanding of his followers. It is God's kind of love. While God is in love with each of us and wants to be friends with each of us, still this love that is like God's love is not based on feelings but on actions and attitude. God loves us whether we love God back or not. And we are asked to do the same thing. To act with love regardless of the reaction of someone else.

This kind of "agape" - this God-like love - is really interchangeable, Jesus says, with forgiveness and generosity. The willingness, on our part, to forgive others and to be generous, both materially and emotionally, opens us up to the grace of God to be able to act in love even when love feels like the last thing we would want to do.

There is a parable told about a holy man who was engaged in his morning meditation under a tree whose roots stretched out over the riverbank. During his meditation he noticed that the river was rising, and a scorpion caught in the roots was about to drown. The man crawled out on the roots and reached down to free the scorpion, but every time he did so, the scorpion struck back at him. A fellow walking by observed all this and said to the holy man, "Don't you know that's a scorpion, and it's in the nature of a scorpion to want to sting?" The holy man responded, "That may well be, but it is my nature to save, and must I change my nature because the scorpion does not change its nature?"

God's nature is love. And we, as followers of Jesus Christ, as asked...no, we are commanded...to be willing to allow, through the gift of grace, God's loving nature to be enacted in us. We are not given this commandment to make our lives hard...but to give us a kind of life beyond anything the world has to offer. Jesus said, in essence, "Love. Don't judge others, don't condemn others. Be merciful, be forgiving. Keep on giving God's kind of love and it will be given to you." He talks about "a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap." Picture someone shopping in an ancient market place and the vendor scoops up a cup of grain, taps the bottom of the cup to pack it all in tight, tops off the measure with even more grain then pours all that, plus an extra handful, into the gathered apron of the shopper...who's getting so much more than they expected to receive.

That's how God's love is given to us. It reminds me of that commercial for the Casino Queen where the guy puts one quarter in a gumball machine and one gumball comes out, then another, and another, until gumballs are pouring out and he's laughing, filling his pockets and his shirt to the brim! If we give like that to others, we will receive like that ourselves.

It takes our will and God's grace to make that kind of love and spiritual abundance possible. To remember this, just think of what's on T.V. Thursday night's at 8 p.m. Just think of "Will and Grace." That's what it takes to love the way God loves...the way Jesus has asked us to love. Amen.

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