8th Sunday after the Epiphany
Texts: Matthew 6:24-34;
1 Cor. 4:1-5
HOW TO NOT BE
ANXIOUS BY LOVING OUR ENEMIES
"Love your enemies." Some
of you are thinking that was last week's Gospel. But there is
something I didn't mention last Sunday that I want to begin with today
- the uniqueness of that
message. "Love your enemies." That message cannot be found in any of
the world's major
religions until Jesus came along. Since then, some have picked it up.
But as far as those who
study the history of religion can tell, Jesus was not only the first to
teach it, but he was also the
first to live it in such a dramatic way - going so far as to die on the
cross even for his enemies.
This morning's Gospel, "Don't be anxious," is not unique. Many of the
great religions also ring
out this same theme. Some, like Buddhism, are even centered on it.
Buddhism not only teaches
you not to be anxious, but it also provides many tools of meditation
and spirituality about how
not to be anxious. Christians through the ages have been wise to pick
up some of those practices
from our friends who follow the Buddha.
Here's my main point this morning: These two Gospel messages -- "Love
our enemies" and
"Don't be anxious" -- are intimately connected. The Gospel of Jesus is
unique because "Love
your enemies" is unique, but now put that together with "Don't be
anxious." Jesus is teaching us
that we will not be anxious when we learn to love our enemies.
Let's look at Buddhism for a moment. One of its core messages is to not
be anxious, but it tells
us that human desire itself is the enemy. Buddhism understands human
desire to be fatally
flawed, so one of its main objectives is to purge oneself of all
ordinary human desire. One
succeeds in not being anxious by purging all desire, thus finding more
complete well-being on
the way to Nirvana.
The Jewish-Christian message also understands there is a grave problem
with human desire - just
look at the Commandments: we desire our neighbor's spouse, our
neighbor's belongings, their
lands and their resources. The Bible's word is "covet." This gets us
into all kinds of trouble -
because we are willing to steal and sometimes even kill for our
neighbor's stuff. Beginning with
the serpent in the garden convincing the first woman that the forbidden
fruit was desirable, and
the woman then convincing her husband - the rest, as they say, is
history. Catching desires from
each other has led us down the path of broken relationships and
conflict from which we've never
been able to extract ourselves.
It's easy to see, then, why Buddhism identifies human desire itself as
sinful, thus needing to
purge all desire in order to find peace. But this is where the
Jewish-Christian faith still suggests a
difference that we might consider. Perhaps it's not desire itself that
is sinful, but the way we
sometimes desire that is the problem. What if instead of catching our
desires from each other
there was a desire completely devoid of envy and rivalry; and a way to
catch our desire so that we
wouldn't fall into conflict? Does this exist? Yes - God's love. The
desire of our God who created
us all in love does not fall into rivalry because it is the
fatherly/motherly love for the wellbeing of
every single creature. It is a love that knows no enemies, for it is a
perfect love like a parent
should have: completely unconditional; no strings attached. Only mercy
and a yearning for each
of us to finally experience complete well-being.
We might ask: How can we ever hope to catch God's desire? The
Christian Gospel has an
answer for that, too. When God's desire of perfect love took on human
flesh, we found the
person that we need to help us love even our enemies. The love of the
Creator of all has no
enemies, only beloved children. That person, my friends, is of course
Jesus Christ. Jesus loves
with the perfect love of his heavenly Father so that we, too, might
catch our love from him and
begin to love in that perfect way. Remember the seemingly impossible
ending to last week's
Gospel? "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." We are called
to the grace of loving
others as God loves them.
Brothers and sisters, that's the Good News! We can begin to live the
light of God's perfect love
because Jesus Christ lived that perfect love, and you and I have been
promised in our baptisms
that we can love like God through the Holy Spirit. God's Spirit of
perfect love is always with us
so that we might open ourselves to it and live each day in that love.
When we do that, then it is
no longer we who live but Christ living in us, as St. Paul said. This
is how heaven comes to
earth. It already came to earth in Jesus, whose Spirit of God's love
has now been unleashed in
this world so that you and I may also begin to live in that kind of
love. Isn't that incredible?!
Now, there is also the Bad News of how much of humanity remains trapped
in a way of desiring
which leads to rivalry, and so also leads to anxiety. Do you see the
connection to being anxious?
Being trapped in rivalries means we are competing against someone for
what appears as scarce
resources. And so we become anxious, afraid that our opponent will get
the goods instead of us.
Brothers and sisters, our whole modern lifestyle as ramped-up consumers
is nothing but one
humongous competition. The 'American Dream' is based on personal
achievement over against
the other guy. Some will achieve and some won't. We are constantly
anxious and afraid that the
other guy, our opponent -- whoever that may be at any given moment --
will achieve more than
us. Anxiety is at epidemic proportions in our society; so much so that
we might not even be
anxious about specific things, like having enough food or clothes. But
rather we live in such a
climate of anxiety that we now suffer from something called generalized
anxiety. We are anxious
about absolutely everything at the same time. Our pharmaceutical
companies newest booming
industry is medicine for generalized anxiety disorder. Now, please here
me: I'm not saying we
shouldn't take these medicines. I believe that our hyper-anxious
lifestyle is changing us,
changing our bodies. Some people feel it as an anxiety disorder. Others
feel it in various other
parts of their bodies. Even something like cancer, that ultimate
nameless invader of our bodies,
can become more prominent because we are anxious about those nameless
opponents out there
who might get our stuff. Yes, we need many of our new medicines. But
I'm also saying that there
is a more ultimate medicine which can provide a true cure of our
anxiety.
First, we need to take a moment to also recognize the most age-old
'medicine.' The standard
treatment through the ages to reduce anxiety about our opponents is for
the majority to agree on
who the enemy is. Did you know that the Greek word for 'scapegoat' is pharmakos,
from which
we get our word pharmaceutical, "medicine"? In an anxious
Germany of the 1930's, for example,
Hitler found a scapegoat to help reduce their anxiety. The majority of
Germans could know a
relative peace by banding together to hate Jews. Our being over against
someone else is both the
cause for our anxiety and our solution. The way we desire by catching
desire from each other
produces opponents, which produces anxiety over losing. But we also
lessen our anxiety by
banding together with others in our group against that opponent. It's
like medicine. A little does
of being against those folks over there can help me feel less anxious
with the folks I most hang
with. We can have less anxiety with our friends by finding a common
opponent to hate. Hasn't
that worked for centuries?
But our world can no longer bear this kind of solution, this kind of
medicine, that depends on
having an enemy. Look at our own nation. We are split down the middle.
Our politics have
become all about an over against-ness. Republicans and Democrats
completely define themselves
by being against one another. We'll never get anywhere that way. And
even when our two
political parties can agree on an enemy -- al-Qaida, perhaps, or maybe
the latest immigrants will
bring us together one more time -- even so, that brings only temporary
relief. In a world where
we now have weapons of mass destruction -- another good reason to be
anxious! -- there is only
one ultimate solution: catch the love of Jesus Christ, which loves even
enemies. The only true
medicine for our anxiety, for our anxious world, is to catch the love
of Jesus that reaches out
even to opponents. When we are no longer over-against someone else,
there will no longer be a
reason for us to be anxious.
And having such love is not impossible for this world. Or
perhaps that's why the version of
Christian faith focused on going to heaven has become so commonplace in
the church. Perhaps
it's because we've concluded that God's love is impossible
for us and our world. We've given up
on this world and so hope for the next world to come. Or have lost all
hope. Anxiety can be a
crippling problem when one loses hope.
But this has been the whole point for our Epiphany theme of 'Heaven on
Earth.' We have been
entertaining the
notion that there is a more faithful way to read Scripture which sees
the point of
the Gospel as being that God sent Jesus precisely to save this
world. This world is the only
Creation which God has lovingly made and desires to save. And so God
did something about it.
God sent Jesus into the world with the divine power of love, which is
now available to everyone
who in faith opens themselves to the Spirit and thus catches their love
from Jesus. And, in
sending Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we have the assurance that God has not
given up on this
world.
The question is: Have we?
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Delivered at Prince of Peace Lutheran,
Portage, MI, February 27, 2011