Fill My Cup with Grace

Luke 6:27-38, CEB

27 “But I say to you who are willing to hear: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. 28 Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on the cheek, offer the other one as well. If someone takes your coat, don’t withhold your shirt either. 30 Give to everyone who asks and don’t demand your things back from those who take them. 31 Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you.

32 “If you love those who love you, why should you be commended? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, why should you be commended? Even sinners do that. 34 If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, why should you be commended? Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be paid back in full. 35 Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return. If you do, you will have a great reward. You will be acting the way children of the Most High act, for he is kind to ungrateful and wicked people. 36 Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.

37 “Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you. A good portion—packed down, firmly shaken, and overflowing—will fall into your lap. The portion you give will determine the portion you receive in return.”

Intro

This week, we conclude our worship series Six Stone Jars:  The Economy of Jesus. Five weeks ago, we began at the wedding at Cana. As we asked God to fill our houses with hoping, we named our need to hope in and share God’s abundant, extravagant love with others. Four weeks ago, we found Jesus in the temple reading from the scroll of Isaiah. As we asked God to fill our plans with purpose, we acknowledged our call to live into God’s purposes where there is no less than or more than, where all of God’s children are welcomed and embraced. Three weeks ago, we asked God to fill our wounds with healing as we let go of what was, the ways we’ve been hurt, and embraced God’s plans for our future. Two weeks ago, we asked God to fill our days with meaning as we find our meaning in God’s plans for our lives. By this, we find hope, purpose, and healing, too. Last week, we asked God to fill our future with vision. We acknowledged that God’s vision for the world is greater than ours and that God will give us the provision to lead us into God’s future when we surrender our all to God. This week, we conclude as we ask God to fill our cups with grace. 

Our text this morning starts as a continuation of last week. “But I say to you who are willing to hear:” Jesus is saying if you stayed to listened to the sermon on the plain, the blessings, and woes, and actually want to live out the gospel’s imperative, then get ready for what comes next. The call to love is a difficult thing to swallow. Much like children respond to the thought of eating spinach or any kind of vegetable, even after you tell them those carrots make your eyes strong and give you superpowers... they still don’t want to dig in. I imagine that we are much the same way. We want three easy steps to love, a method to a better life, and four steps to loving yourself and maybe others. But the truth is no one wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I would really like to be challenged to love my enemies better.”

Yet that is the place we find ourselves this morning. Jesus directly challenges us to be better than the ways of the world. We are challenged to “Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on the cheek, offer the other one as well. If someone takes your coat, don’t withhold your shirt either. Give to everyone who asks, and don’t demand your things back from those who take them.” As people who live in a fallen world, these instructions fly in the face of everything we are taught. At worst, we are taught to enact revenge against those who hurt, steal, or mistreat us. We live in a country that enacts that by having the highest rate of incarceration of any country in the world. At best, we are taught to ignore someone who mistreats us and “let it go.” Yet Jesus tells us our standard is higher. 

Jesus tells us that it is easy to love people who love us, to do good to those who do good to us, or to lend, expecting to be paid back. Anybody can do that. Even sinners do those things. Our call is to love and do good to those who hurt, mistreat, and even persecute us. Our call is to lend, not expecting to be paid back. Yet, if we are honest, this is hard for us to hear. It is difficult to do good to those who intend to harm us. It is difficult to lend money knowing we likely won’t be repaid.

Even the church during Jesus's time struggled to hear this text. Jesus spoke to individuals who understood the law and its expectations, yet they still found it difficult to embody the essence of the law. Under Roman rule, interest rates could be as high as 48%, yet Old Testament law prohibited usury. Further, in Jewish culture, every seven years is marked as a Jubilee year. It was a time when land received rest, slaves were liberated, and debts were forgiven. It became common for people to cease lending money in the late fifth year and into the sixth year, knowing they wouldn’t receive much repayment. This caused hardship within the community, as people couldn’t obtain the capital needed to run their businesses. Some Jewish teachers encouraged lending to the poor as long as the debt was repaid, but Jesus here instructs us to lend without conditions. Lend simply because it is the right thing to do, even if you are never repaid. 

Jesus sums this up, instructing us to “Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you” (Luke 6:31, CEB). Other translations say, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (NRSVue). This is the Christian iteration of the Golden Rule. Here, Jesus sums up that we are to treat all as we would want to be treated. To love others, to show mercy and grace, no matter who they are. This is a difficult task in its own right. 

So many see this call in Christianity, look to Christians, and believe we are all hypocrites. Perhaps you’ve heard this before:

A man was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow just in front of him. He did the right thing and stopped at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman was furious and honked her horn, screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection, dropping her cell phone and makeup. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station, where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk, where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, 'I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Choose Life' License plate holder, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper Sticker, And the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk, Naturally...I assumed you had stolen the car.”

We laugh at this joke, but there is a lot of truth behind it. So many people believe that Christians are hypocrites. They think we are judgmental. It’s because church people have hurt them. They’ve been judged by people who try to act like they are without sin. They have been cussed out by people who portray themselves as model Christians. People understand that we aren’t perfect. Yet when we judge others while acting like we are above judgment or are perfect, we fail to follow Jesus’ instruction in our text today.

Perhaps part of the reason it is so difficult to love others is that we find it hard to love ourselves. We can’t treat others how we want to be treated because we do not love ourselves. Or, perhaps, we find it difficult to offer ourselves grace. Sometimes, it can even be easier to offer grace to our friends or close family than it is to offer grace to ourselves. If we can’t offer ourselves grace, if we can’t love ourselves, then we certainly cannot offer grace to or love those we do not know or who treat us wrongly. You may be familiar with the phrase “practice makes perfect,” but practice alone will not help us here.

You see, in order to offer ourselves grace and find the strength to care for those who wrong us, we must rely on God’s grace. We must rely on God’s love. For God’s grace is “greater than all our sin.” Amen? God’s perfect, freely flowing grace strengthens us and empowers us for the work that God calls us to. In fact, God’s grace is what drives the whole economy of Jesus that we have been talking about over these six weeks. We can’t hope, we can’t find God’s purpose, we can’t heal our wounds, we can’t find meaning, we can’t find God’s vision without God’s grace. God loved us when we didn’t deserve it. God offered grace to us when we failed God time and time again. When we were the ones attacking God’s will and God’s way, God still loved us. God still offers grace to us. 

Then, we must also allow that grace to work in our church. For we, alongside the church, must be at the forefront of love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. We have to lay aside the judgment. We have to lay aside the calling out. We have to lay aside the condemnation. So often in pastoral ministry, I’ve been asked why I don’t preach about specific sins. I don’t create a sermon series, pick several sins out of the Bible, and discuss the wrongs of those sins. The reason why is that’s not how Jesus operates. Jesus doesn’t walk up to people he doesn’t know and lay into them about their sins. It doesn’t mean that Jesus doesn’t address sin, but in Jesus’ economy, relationships are more important. 

I think about the story of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was a crooked tax collector. He took advantage of people and took more money than was necessary so that he could line his pockets. Jesus knows Zacchaeus’s sins. But notice, not once does Jesus mention this. Instead, Jesus calls him down from the tree and says I’m coming to your house today. I’m going to eat with you. It is through Jesus’ gracious action that Zacchaeus comes to terms with his sin and repents. 

I also think about the woman at the well. Jesus knows how many husbands she has. Jesus knows the man she is living with is not her husband. But Jesus doesn’t lead in with that. Jesus first asks the woman for something to drink. Then Jesus talks to her about who he is and about living water. Then, her sin comes into play. Jesus begins to form a relationship with her. Even still, he offers her mercy and grace. 

Friends, so often, we focus on sin. We worry about others' sins. We want to talk about their sin. Yet sin is that which separates us from God, and our constant “calling out” of sin causes people to feel unworthy of God’s love. What separates us from God is constantly looking for the sin in the other and trying to make ourselves out to be better than the other. We can’t possibly know what separates our brothers and sisters from God. Instead, our call is to offer grace to ourselves and to others. To encourage each other. We need to lay our burdens at the feet of Christ as we allow God’s grace to work in us. As God’s grace works within us we are empowered to give ourselves for others. We are empowered to offer grace towards others no matter who they are. 

The reality is this call is hard to live out. We have failed and will continue to fail to offer grace until we take seriously the call to participate in the means of grace. Often, when ministry becomes a chore, I find myself less graceful toward others… it's in those spaces where my accountability partners tell me to pull back, spend some time renewing, focus on something else, take part in the means of grace…refill the soul. They tell me things like spend time in prayer, go out on the range, spend a day at Duke (while there, pray, walk, dig into some study materials that you do not have access to in Danville), don’t answer the phone, and spend some time with the family. Take time to enjoy the little slices of heaven and the grace-filled joys of life so that you find a renewal of grace for yourself and others and continue to do the work of ministry well. 

That’s our challenge as a church, too. If you are struggling to offer grace, then take some time to walk with the savior. Take a moment to enjoy life’s blessings, but also grow in love with the church through the ministries we don’t spend enough time on. Take a younger person out for a coffee, visit our shut-in, gather together and pray with and for one another, have someone who is willing to hold you accountable that you too might be able to take part in the ministries of Christ well….a ministry whereby grace is embodied, lived out, and offered to all. For when we receive grace, we are strengthened to show grace to others. When we show grace to others, we are empowered to live out the economy of Jesus in our lives and in the world where all are welcomed, hope abounds, wounds are healed, days have meaning, and God’s plans give us purpose and vision for the future. 

For in the economy of Jesus, love, mercy, and grace abound. In the economy of Jesus, strangers are welcomed, and enemies become friends because of God’s grace. When we experience that grace in our lives, when we truly surrender, when we are truly filled with grace, like the Psalmist says, “our cup runneth over.” And then we have to share it, to pass it on so that the world will know who Jesus is. Not because we clobbered them with their sins. Not because we told them what they did wrong. We will get to that. When you are in right relationship with Jesus Christ, you know when you stray. But if we offer others love, mercy, and grace, they will want what we have. The world will know, the economy of Jesus will be realized when our cups are full of grace.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.