This sermon was preached on the 23rd of February 2025, The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany.
Texts:
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes in Christianity you hear slogans, slogans which are carried around, maybe even bandied about. And one that I have a particular difficulty with is this: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
You’ve probably heard that phrase – you may have said those words, and you may yourself have been hurt by them as well.
These catchy little phrases are tricky things, things that we ought to scrutinise, and wrestle with. And this phrase in particular runs the risk of taking us down the wrong path, away from the costly grace of God, away from the discipleship that Jesus calls us to.
We hear from Jesus today as he stands upon the plain, just having announced a series of blessings and woes. Blessings, blessings for the poor, for those who have been pushed to the margins, for the hungry, for those who weep, for those who are hated, or excluded. And woes, woes to the rich, those who are full when others are empty, those who laugh, perhaps in derision at the teaching of our Lord.
And so Jesus announces a kind of flipping of the world, an upturning of the world, like a pancake. There will be justice, there will be a very real transformation of everything – of each of us, and of our society.
As I was preparing this sermon I found myself picturing myself on that plain, standing and listening to our Lord. And I imagined that I would anticipate joy as I heard of these blessings, that I would be looking forward to telling people: ‘hey, everything is going to get better, there will be justice, there will be renewal, there will be a profound healing of the world.’
And then I wondered – what would I have felt when those woes were announced?
The Germans have a word, a word I only know thanks to The Simpsons; it’s schadenfreude, shameful joy. And I think I might well have felt that, standing on the plain. Because when the woes were announced I would have thought: I know who is going to cop some woe. I know the people who have wronged me, the people who have exploited me. And they’re going to cop it: they’re going to cop the wrath of God.
“Love your enemies”, Jesus says. “Do good even to those who hate you,” Jesus says.
This is our calling – this is a profound summary of our calling as disciples of Jesus, and it’s profoundly difficult. We are to love without compromise, without reservation, without judgement. We’re to love even when our love is met with hate.
I’ve said it’s profoundly difficult, but it is also totally wonderful.
Jesus came among us, the very Son of God. Human just as we are; blood flowing through his veins just as blood flows through ours. And so the very embodiment of God stood before us and taught with his words, and his deeds: with his very self. Through Jesus the very nature of God was disclosed to us.
And so we learned that God is a challenging God. God is the God who who will say things like “love your enemies, do good even to those who hate you.” Jesus made those words real and tangible. He lived them. We worship Jesus who forgave even as he was nailed to a Cross, to suffer a most degrading and horrific death. Jesus literally gave his body, he gave his life, that he might disclose this to us, that he might make it real, that he might show us who God is.
Sin is most fundamentally about our relationship with God – and when we sin, we distance ourselves from God, we turn our backs upon God. We turn away from the life that God calls us to, and the image of the of God that we bear in our hearts, in our souls, in our minds.
And so sin is a rejection of God: it can even get toward a hatred of God. And well, how does God respond to sin, to rejection, to hatred?
Jesus tells us! God always responds with love. Always with love. And this is what Jesus makes real for us through his life, through his death, and through his resurrection.
And so when we hear these very difficult words. “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you”, Jesus commissions us to make the nature of God known to the world. We are to make that real and tangible, just as Jesus Christ did.
None of us is Jesus. We’re all flawed. We’ll fail from time to time. We’ll err.
But the beautiful thing is that we are not alone in this commission, this ministry: God has called all of us through the door of this place today, God has called us all to follow Jesus Christ. And so, together, as one Body, as the Body of Christ, we take up this charge, this commission.
I began this sermon by quoting that little slogan, catchy as it is, difficult as I find it: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
And my problem with those words is simple: without even a pause for a breath, love has been replaced with hate: and not just with hate, but with hate undergirded by judgement.
And if we’re honest with ourselves there’s something very, very attractive about judgement, there’s something almost seductive about it. I think most of us will have anticipated with relish the comeuppance that someone deserves. We’ve all been hurt by people, we’ve all suffered at other people’s hands.
And so that little phrase lets us rush past the difficult commission, and get back to the easy work of judgement.
But the call of Jesus is that we should love! We are called to a different path, a holier path. We’re called to embrace who God is, and so play our part in transforming the world.
If we think about it there are cycles of violence and hatred and retribution that cascade and echo through the generations. Through generations of the people of nations, through families, through communities even like this one.
We’re called to interrupt that.
This does not mean that we blithely and silently tolerate injustice, or violence, or hatred. But it does tell how we respond to those things: we are to respond with love.
Sometimes that’s going to be a very hard thing to do. And when we can’t do it, when we can’t love, when we have been profoundly hurt, or when we have caused the hurt ourselves, then we pray. We offer that situation to God.
And so: scrutinise your heart. Let go of the temptation to judge, let of the temptation to seek vengeance, let go of the temptation to seek retribution.
Together, we can make the God’s love known to the world, a love that has echoed through the generations, finding its source in Jesus who walked with us, loving always.
Together we will build God’s Kingdom, by God’s Grace.