More than enough

7 Epiphany A 2014
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi7_RCL.html


“And it would have been enough…”

Our text from Leviticus proclaims a vision of generous justice to a people used to raiding and abusing and plundering one another’s goods. “I am the Lord” God thunders, loud enough to get them to take their hands off the hilts of their knives and off of one another’s throats. Don’t cheat, don’t abuse, don’t lie, don’t swindle. When you harvest, don’t pick the field clean. Leave what’s left behind and what’s left on the edges for the poor and the homeless. Don’t hate, don’t do blood-feuds, don’t do pay-back. What’s more—love your neighbor as yourself. It is the word of a God who chose to love a rough and ragged people, who called them to be more that desert bandits. It was radical justice and forbearance in a brutal age.

“And it would have been enough…”

Some say that proclaiming justice in a greedy age is foolish. Well, we’re about to become even bigger fools. Because Jesus takes this vision of God’s justice, a radical vision in its time to a new and frightening level, a level beyond justice.

What’s beyond justice? Costly love.

Do not resist the bad guy—give him another cheek to punch. Got your wallet snatched? Hand over your watch as well. Asked again for a dollar? Hand it over, and maybe add another. That’s what Jesus’ teaching looks like in today’s language.

And there’s more—“love your enemy.” And, “be perfect.” That word “perfection”—many of us were taught this saying as a source of shame, like our lives never measured up. But the word “perfection” here is related to “whole.” “Be whole, be complete.”

Complete what?

Complete fools, says anyone with sense. If justice is foolish, this kind of over-abundant love and mercy is lunacy.

But Paul says that we have only one foundation on which to build—the One and Complete Fool himself, God’s Fool, Jesus Christ.

A traditional Jewish chant on Passover goes something like this…

“If he had led us through the desert
and not led us to Mount Sinai—
it would have been enough

“If he had led us to Mount Sinai
and not given us the Torah--
it would have been enough

“If he had given us the Torah
and not led us to the Promised Land--
it would have been enough”

With the God of the Gospel, the generous and foolish God, it is never enough.

It is never enough to simply be tolerant. God goes beyond tolerance. It is not enough to simply be just. God goes beyond justice.

God goes to self-giving, self-sacrificing love. God makes God’s own self vulnerable and foolish. The Gospel really is a joke in most people’s eyes I think. Who can love that much, forgive that much, check out of the culture of greed and self-interest and payback that much?

So now, go do likewise.

As a church, there was a day when it would have been enough to be a nice church, kind, forbearing, courteous to the stranger. That is a good thing. But as we saw at Annual Meeting, we are called to be more.

We are called to be love. We are called to the grand foolishness of Jesus. We are called to be one, humble with one another, grateful, to make no peace with inequality or separation, to be one. To take a new road.

Perhaps it will be enough if we leave behind all our former assurance, our old securities, our long-held opinions, and walk out on the road with new companions in humility and vulnerability and peace. One congregation, two languages, a small and foolish gathering in a large and cynical and divided world, a racist world, a world that measures people by power and wealth and skin color and gender and preference and so many other things that are nonsense in God’s eyes.

We will see if it is enough. And perhaps we’ll find ourselves joined on the road by someone whom we did not expect. Perhaps we’ll find Jesus there, not the Jesus of gilded images or gold crowns. The foolish, vulnerable Jesus. The Jesus of the Gospel.

And this road, and this Jesus, will be enough.