Epiphany 7

Year A
Sunday 20 February 2011
St. John’s Church in the Village
New York City
The Rev’d Lloyd Prator

Our lives are stories of aging and maturation. And at each stage, we are faced with the question of how we use our freedom. We ask ourselves, who are we, what am I supposed to do now.

As infants, we explore our bodies, much to the chagrin of our elders, until we get to know ourselves. Then we reach out into our environment, and test it, seeing how far we can go before we get a little slap and what we have to do to get picked up, or hugged, or, even better, fed.

As adolescents we discover manhood and womanhood, and we begin the often trial and error process of becoming aware of what remains for us in that vast sweep of time we call life. At retirement, we seek another identity, putting aside, perhaps, something we have done for a long time, in favor of something new.

The people of God move in the same way. God called Abraham into a venture of faith, calling this rag tag tribe his own people. Slavery and Egypt and the experience of deliverance at the Exodus bound them together so they could answer the identity question: We are Gods own people.

The people of god still ask what we are to do. And for Jews, the answer is the law, these are the sacred rules by which we live our life, and we can sum them up in loving God and loving the neighbor.

When asked what this entails, in the gospel, Jesus’ answer is not good news. He says a number of things which are not even good common sense. If assaulted, do not resist or hit back. If robbed, hand over your Master Card as well as your American Express. Give more than the thief wanted. You see, for Jesus, the motive of loving, which is the main law, is so overwhelming that it overcomes all other motives, even perfectly good ones like self defense, protection and common prudence.

Most of us are not preparecd to follow Jesus that far. So, how can we call ourselves Christians and still make some sense out of these puzzling sstatements.

First, consider what love is. Love is giving oneself to another. That is true with human love, romantic love, even sexual love, it is about the quest to be with and to bond with another. Jesus is the model here: he gavehimself to be with us and stuck with us even when it led to death on a cross.

Jesus is speaking hyperbolically, of course. Hyperbole is exaggeration to make a point, an overstatement for the purpose of extreme emphasis. The hyperbolic statement is this: You are called to love even at the disregard of self. And yet, in the face of him who begs for money, I must be moved to give, If I am hearing the gospel. But here and now in the world in which we live, giving a handout to a beggar may not be the best and highest form of love. What if that handout goes for alcohol or drugs? It may not be loving at all to give in that case.

Love has, as its goal the rescue of fallen and sinful men and women, not the continued maintenance of them in their destructive life.

Now, you might think that I have just given you a way to weasel out of the hard aspects of love, but that is not my intent. Part of the meaning of hyperbole t5hat Jesus uses is is to raise our eyes to the great symbol of love, the cross. There the self was put fully aside for the other, the entire mile was gone, the cloak handed over, the cheek turned. Much of life we are not, I think, urged to behave specifically as Jesus did because he talked in the hyperbole of love.

Sometimes you will be called that way. Are you willing to say what yo believe when asked, even if it makes you feel uncomfortable because you don’t have all the answers?

There are many risks out there in life, some closer than others. They can be met the best way with Christian vision. Jesus calls us to hear the law of love, and because he speaks of love in hyperbolic terms, he calls us to stretch ourselves a bit, to reach a little higher and to give a little more. The value of hyperbole is that it stretches us, and it stretches us to reach to the cross, which is the final, deepest statement of love.

May your life in Christ be a living hyperbole, calling you to reach in every way to the goal of the gospel of Christ.