SUNDAY. DATE 19 February 2017 (Year A) The Ven Mandy Herriman

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "SUNDAY. DATE 19 February 2017 (Year A) The Ven Mandy Herriman"

Tobias Harvey
5 years ago
Views:

SUNDAY 7 th Sunday after Epiphany DATE 19 February 2017 (Year A) PREACHER The Ven Mandy Herriman Leviticus 19: 1 2, 9-18 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the people

1 SUNDAY 7 th Sunday after Epiphany DATE 19 February 2017 (Year A) PREACHER The Ven Mandy Herriman Leviticus 19: 1 2, 9-18 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the LORD your God. You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the LORD. You shall not defraud your neighbour; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a labourer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the LORD. You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour: I am the LORD. You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the LORD. 1 Corinthians 3: According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God s temple and that God s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God s temple, God will destroy that person. For God s temple is holy, and you are that temple. Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

2 You could be forgiven for thinking that we are already in Lent and we have leapfrogged straight from post-christmas and Epiphany straight into Lent with our sermons over the last two weeks. But it is an important time to prepare well for our Lent season to enter into this self-reflective period in an informed and intentional way without having to work it out as we journey. Gill two weeks ago talked about giving up and taking up giving up that which diminishes us and others and taking up that which affirms others as God views them. And then Mark last week referred to Intention being more important than slavish adherence to the law. He preached on spiritual discipline and living a moral life and talked about how our life might look if we viewed our relationships with others in the light of reconfiguring the 10 commandments in an everyday sense. This week just 10 days out from Ash Wednesday, we have the continuing discourse of the Sermon on the Mount and the text now talks about how Jesus would have us respond to situations of oppression, victimization and violence and exhorts us to love our enemies for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. This passage has often been interpreted as a basis for pacifism and people seek to apply it to global international affairs, but Jesus points towards a more personal living out of this love. So what does it look like to love your enemy? I am sure many of you know that there are 4 definitions for the English word love in Greek. There is eros the romantic love of one for another, storgi that love of family for each other as in a parent and child, philia that love for the closest, nearest and dearest friends, and the word that is used here agape. This word is described as unconquerable benevolence and invincible goodwill for another person. Barclay says that the eros type of love for another comes unbidden and is often not an act of will but rather a spontaneous response to another. Agape though, is as much an act of will as it is a feeling of the heart. It is a determination we make to not allow our natural tendency to anger or resentment or bitterness to settle in our heart towards our enemies or those who desire ill for us. It is the will to love another whom we do not like and who does not like us. It is a love that we cannot manufacture in our own strength. Agape is used to describe the love that is of, and from, God, whose very nature is love itself. For God loves all that is created in his image man and woman, black and white, Jew and

3 Gentile, young and old, lovely and unlovely, righteous and sinful. God s love for each of us is that which is undeserved but is given freely and unconditionally. It is the love of God for us that desires only that which is good. A Jewish midrash text on the story of the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea in pursuit of the escaping Hebrews out of Egypt speaks into the agape heart of God. As the angels began their paean of praise at the rescue of the Hebrews, God responded with profound sorrow: The work of my hands are sunk in the sea and you would sing before me! The love of God is this universal benevolence even towards those who break his law and break his heart. And Jesus says, if we are to be called the children of the one God, then we must love others in this way not just the loveable and those we have an affinity with, but those who are prickly and vindictive, those who wish us harm or inflict hurt or pain or suffering, those who disregard others and dismiss overtures of friendship. An impossible task? A difficult one at the least for we are only human with a human heart and a worldly perspective. And we are fragile yearning for affirmation and to be loved by others. But Jesus tells us there is a way. Jesus tells us that to truly be called children of God, we too must become more Christlike and practice this agape love in all our relationships to choose to exclude bitterness and hatred from our hearts and to will ourselves to demonstrate to others unconquerable benevolence and invincible goodwill. This may seem impossible and the only way to fulfil this imperative is with the grace of God and the power of the Spirit. Jesus gives us a clue, a hint of how this becomes possible pray for those who persecute you. It is impossible to hate or harbour bitterness for someone if you pray for them in the purest sense of wanting only what is good for them. When you stand in the posture of prayer before our Lord with the name of your enemy on your heart, in the face of such love, you can no longer hate. There is a remarkable true story that I want to share with you today. It is a challenging story and one that shakes us to the core of our being for it disturbs our sense of justice and our need for pursuing what we perceive to be righteousness. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a devout practising Muslim Palestinian doctor whose life was turned upside down in He lost his wife to leukaemia in the space of two weeks and the story of his efforts to be with her in the hospital in Israel is harrowing. And then in the January of 2009, three of his daughters and a niece were killed in a shell attack from an Israeli tank on their house. He and his other five children present in the house also, survived the shelling three of his children with serious injuries. They were treated in a Tel Aviv hospital and in the aftermath of this dreadful event was asked repeatedly are you not full of hatred and

4 wanting revenge or at the least satisfaction for the deaths of your family? His response which is recorded in his book I Shall Not Hate written in 2010 was in part this: The Quran taught me that we must endure suffering patiently and forgive those who create the man-made injustices that cause human suffering. This does not mean that we do not act to correct those injustices. At the borders of consciousness there is a feeling that every stranger, anyone unknown to us, is an enemy who poses a threat to us, and this impression is present in the crypts of our souls like a localized inflammation. I learned from the Quran that the whole world is one human family. We must join together to fight our mutual enemy, which is our ignorance of each other. Instead of building walls, let us build bridges of peace. Abuelaish chooses to not hate. It is an act of will I shall not hate. A state of the mind and self-determined will as much as it is a state of the heart. This devout Muslim demonstrates the love of God for all people in a most profound and exacting way. This devout Muslim understands the command to love your enemy and pray for your persecutors. He has looked into the heart of hatred and has chosen the better way. He will not be drawn into the maelstrom and vicious cycle of revenge and bitterness. He chooses to excise the localized inflammation that positions the stranger and the alien as an enemy. To this day he works actively towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine so that: if I could know that my daughters were the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis, then I would accept their loss. This is a big story about international conflict, but Abuelaish recognizes also that it begins with the people that surround you the same ones Jesus brings before our consciousness neighbours, the ones we cross paths with, the ones we have daily dealings with, the ones we work with and even our family members. They are the ones we begin to love with an agape love that comes from the very heart of God. But as if this weren t hard enough, Jesus adds his throwaway line: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. That s it you might say. An even more impossible command for we are but human and frail and prone to falling and failing. How can we attain the unattainable? And again, we turn to the original Greek word used in this text for perfect and we find that the Greek perception of perfect is that which fully realizes the purpose for which it was planned, and designed, and made. Teleios the Greek word for perfection, derived from the noun telos which means an ultimate goal, aim or purpose. To be teleios then, is to attain perfection by becoming the person you were created to be and fulfilling the purpose for which you were made and sent

5 into the world. A screwdriver that screws together a piece of furniture is the perfect tool for the job and fulfills its purpose. We are not perfect and can never hope to be, in the sense that the world defines perfection as that without blemish or sin, yet as a child of God, we are perfect in his sight if we are striving to become who we are intended to be, if we strive to fulfil that purpose to which God is calling us, if we turn and face the Christ who died for us, if we choose with heart and mind to love our neighbour and our enemy with that same agape love that flows from the heart of God for all humanity. And in the strength of Christ who is our foundation, on whom our hope is built and in whom we trust, we are given the grace and the courage to journey with each other, worthy to be called the temple of God and worthy of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. As we approach Lent, may we consider how we might prepare ourselves to be perfect in God s sight: What are those attitudes or feelings that diminish ourselves and the other that we might give up how might we take up the will of the mind and the willingness of the heart to embrace the stranger and the alien with unconquerable benevolence and invincible goodwill Will we take up the intention to hold our enemy before the Lord and pray for them and how we might see our ignorance of the other as the enemy that prevents us from seeking reconciliation And in our self-reflective contemplation during Lent, what is the purpose for which we have been made and to which we have been called as a beloved child of God. May we in this Lent to come, journey a little closer to the realization of our perfect self one who delights the heart of the Lord and reflects the deep and profound love of God to all humanity.

SUNDAY February 19th th Sunday After Epiphany

SUNDAY February 19th th Sunday After Epiphany SUNDAY February 19th 2017 7 th Sunday After Epiphany 8:30 Holy Eucharist Book of Alternative Services p. 230 235 Rubidge Street, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 3N9 Church Office: (705) 876-1501 Fax: (705)742-8962