Epiphany 7c 2025; 23 Feb.
Luke 6:39-45; Jack Hardaway
MIXED IDIOM
Contradictions have a way of catching our attention, bringing us to a stop, causing us to reconsider: like bright sunlight during a downpour, like cats and dogs being friendly, or beef BBQ.
Paradoxes. Oxymorons. Contradictions. Mixed idioms. Malaphors. The unlikely pairings that make up most humor, that make us laugh in surprise.
Sharp contrast.
All the different kinds of unlikely pairings. All those things.
Jesus is all that, especially today when he gets to the point, when he reveals the heart of his teaching and the heart of God.
A contradiction that brings us to a stop.
Love your enemies.
Give without return.
Forgive. Don’t judge.
And again also, love your enemies. He says it twice.
A contradiction.
A malaphor.
A contrast that causes consternation and laughter.
Love and enemy used in the same sentence, right there next to each other, with that word your sticking them together.
Now that is funny.
It is a dark humor that is so bright that it opens our squinting eyes.
Being children of the Most High means that other people are not to be useful to us anymore. Relationships aren’t about being of use to me anymore.
Relationships rather than being based on use, or need, or reciprocity or reacting are rather about responding to who God is, it is a way of offering our lives to God.
We respond and say, “I love you too.”
It is about becoming Christ like, it is about becoming love.
We use each other.
We use God.
It’s all about a means to an end.
We use each other for own vain purpose.
We use God for own vain purpose.
We take the Lord’s name in vain.
We take one another’s names in vain.
But then we are called up short with this picture of another world, another way of being, another way of doing. Love your enemy. Bless them. Pray for them. Respond with care.
God is so funny. The Most High should go on the road and put on a show.
Jesus is that sharp contrast of God, the mixed idiom of heaven and earth, Creator and creature, divine and human.
The crucified one prays that we be forgiven for we know not what we do.
The divine punch line.
Mercy becomes like sunlight and rain, they simply fall on everyone, and love is for the enemy.
Suddenly the enemy is no longer about solving a problem, the enemy is about encountering God in this life, about becoming a contradiction.
About becoming love, about knowing Jesus and his cross more deeply.
I know very little about enemies.
Those who are brutal, violent, and abusive, the ones who devour everything and everyone. I have never been truly wronged.
I have known lots of disagreements and nasty sniping, stupid careless and callous behavior, but I know nothing about the horrible things that so many suffer at the hands of others.
I am truly privileged. And in Luke’s gospel privilege is not an entitlement that is deserved or clung to. Privilege is a responsibility to be shared before it is too late, and eternity flips fortune back on itself.
I know very little about loving those who have done true harm.
It is a shallow thing for me to repeat Jesus words to love your enemies, to be indiscriminate with mercy, to give the full measure generously without hesitation.
I am not the one to say it.
The contrast is inappropriate.
Study those who have overcome. Who have faced evil and learned to love.
Study the saints. The true artists of contrast.
Our capacity to cope with this contradiction shapes our eternity: the eternity of a prison or the eternity of love.
The way I measure other people is how I will be measured.
It is the karma of Luke’s Gospel this reversal of things, eternity flips fortune over on itself.
I do wonder about this eternity thing, and the flipping of fortune and how we respond in our ordinary daily ways.
Is it a reward or punishment thing?
Do this or else?
Or is it about what my soul has been shaped to live with?
Will I be open to love, to mercy, to forgiveness? If I have never lived that way how would I recognize it to receive it?
In C.S. Lewis’s writings on eternity: people choose hell because heaven is not up to their standards.
Jesus calls us up short and causes us to pause.
Love your enemy.
Become that contrast that catches the world off guard, to laugh in surprise.
The good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
Be the contradiction.