Sermon Tone Analysis

luke 6:27-38

luke 6:27-38

Love All. . .

Yes. . .

Even THAT One.

On the surface, these can be taken as nice, warm, fuzzy passages about love and getting along.

“Forgive your brothers when they hurt you.”

“Be kind to everyone.”

They are the sorts of passages we refer to when we have done something nice for another person and want pat ourselves on the back for having been such good Bible followers.

We think to ourselves “I held the door for that person in the wheelchair because if I were in a wheelchair I would want someone to hold the door for me.” and then we add a merit badge to our imaginary Christian Scout uniform.

As Christians, we don’t say we buy into the idea of Karma - the idea that what goes around comes around - but in practice, we are totally sold on the idea of Karma.

And it buffs up our egos nicely to think about how nice we are to the people around us and even if we miss the mark sometimes, we justify that by saying, “well that person is just so much harder to be nice to because they are so nasty all the time.”

But nobody gets any sort of bonus points for being nice to the obvious people.

And Joseph’s brothers were not the sort of brothers who were easy to love.

It’s not about what you’ll get in return for being nice.

Before you go out and start all willy nilly being super nice to all the most terrible people in your life because the Golden Rule says to, let me remind you that we need to be careful here to make sure we’re being kind, not just nice and that we are not doing it for the wrong reasons.

“Kill them with kindness” just means, annoy them by pretending to be nice.

“You catch more flies with honey” just suggests that you should use niceness to entrap others who make you mad or manipulate them into being nicer back.

The “Golden Rule” is often used more as a way to gain fans who will return your favors than it is a way to see our shared humanity reflected in the eyes of the people around us.

In fact, the “Golden Rule” did not originate in the Christian Gospels with the words of Jesus - it was around already and, as he does with many cultural ideas of his time, Jesus says, “Sure do that, but go a step further.

Change the perspective from which you do this.”

If you pull out the “Do unto others” line from this passage and keep it isolated from the rest of the passage, you can avoid the truly hard parts.

You can just be nice to people as much as you can muster and call it a day.

But when you add it in with everything else, you get a very different vibe and a much harder road to walk.

Remember too that niceness is different than kindness and love.

We want to make this passage easier by talking about being nice to our enemies and treating others nicely, but the word “nice” is not used in Luke.

Niceness suggests being sugary sweet and polite all the time and always saying “yes”.

Niceness is not always healthy.

But love speaks truth and sets boundaries with others.

Love comes from a place of shared humanity, not a system of purchasing better behaviour or responses from those around us.

Love is also not meant to be reserved only to the people we deem “worthy” of love.

That’s not our judgement to make.

We are called to show kindness and even love to those who aren’t nice to us!

It’s easier to be nice than to be loving.

We have less to lose in trying to be nice than we do in being truly loving to others.

It’s easier to be polite at all cost than to seek deep and meaningful relationship with the people around us.

It’s easier to assume that someone is just being mean because they are “the enemy” from this passage than to ask them about who they are.

When we take the “love our enemies” path, we are forced to see when we have been someone’s enemy.

It’s hard to suck it up and ask someone what we might have done to offend them or wind up on their bad side or rub them the wrong way.

It’s difficult to admit that we aren’t always the good guy and the other person isn’t always the bad guy.

In showing kindness and love to those we see as enemies, we, like Joseph in , tend to be confronted with our own shortcomings and that just plain sucks.

With love comes humility.

Niceness is different than kindness and love.

Niceness suggests being sugary sweet and polite all the time and always saying “yes”.

But love speaks truth and sets boundaries with others.

If you love those who don’t love you first, you are better able to grow into your full identity as children of God and brothers and sisters to all God’s children.

If you love those who don’t love you first, you will be known by all as God’s children!

The thing that makes Joseph’s story from Genesis so astounding is the magnitude of the betrayal his brothers committed against him.

In a nutshell, Joseph was the favored son in a family of many sons.

He was a knowitall tattletale who told their father when his brothers messed up.

He had dreams that said he would be a ruler one day and the first thing he does is run to his brothers and tell them, “You’re going to bow down to me one day.”

His brothers were all jealous of the way their father favored Joseph, so they sold him off as a slave and told their father he was dead.

He spent time working hard to rise through the ranks, and he eventually scored a job working directly for the Pharoah and ruling over all of Egypt.

When Egypt found themselves well prepared for a famine that struck, Joseph’s family back home was caught unprepared.

Not knowing who they would have to go begging for food from (assuming that Joseph was still someone’s slave or was actually dead by now), his brothers traveled to Egypt to seek some humanitarian help.

By the world’s “give them what they deserve” standards, Joseph should have sent them away empty handed.

The idea of Karma suggests that Joseph’s brothers got exactly what they deserved and he should just sit back and say, “That’s Karma for you.

Ha ha!”

And yet, when they were starving and came to Joseph for food, not even recognizing him at first, he fed them.

Then he told them who he was and forgave them.

This was no show of forgiveness to make himself look good either.

Joseph was so grateful to be reunited with his brothers that he wept.

Once upon a time, when he was still the arrogant kid his brothers were so jealous of and annoyed by, he might have put on a show of forgiveness, but all these years later. . .

Joseph has allowed God to change him.

He’s grown.

The climax of this story is when Joseph’s identity is revealed and made known to the people around him and God’s grand plan for everything is revealed.

Similarly, it is through the love and forgiveness that we show others that our identities as brothers and sisters of those around us are revealed and God’s plans for the world are seen by others.

When you show kindness to all and aren’t too quick to judge others and condemn others, you’ll find yourself lifted up and out of the drama.

When you show kindness to all and aren’t too quick to judge others and condemn others, you’ll find yourself lifted up and out of the drama.

Drama will still happen around you, but you are relieved of the burden of getting emotionally involved with it.

Joseph could have judged his brothers on the spot when they arrived in Egypt - both figuratively and literally.

He could have tried them right then and there for the crimes they committed against him.

He could have just written them off as being bad people.

But he does neither of those things.

Surrender is a painful, personal process in our relationships, our faith communities, and our country.

To surrender humbly to a higher good does lead to new life, love, and a deeper joy.

Moreover, joy is a sign of reconciliation!

Joseph doesn’t politely tell his brothers their past actions were ok because God used them, rather he says that God can use even their poor behavior and then he shows them love and kindness.

He’s not nice to them, in fact in the narrative leading up to this, he kind of messes with them a bit to make them sweat and really drive home the point of how terrible their actions have been.

He holds them accountable, but then he embraces them and treats them with kindness and love.

It’s all about building and rebuilding relationships with one another in order to celebrate our shared humanity.

I read a great story recently that sums this up nicely.

The guy who wrote it goes through a similar process to Joseph’s of losing his arrogance and learning humility and why loving even those we see as enemies matters.

“In one of my management classes I sit in the same seat in the front every day.

Every single day I sit there.

“In one of my management classes I sit in the same seat in the front every day.

Every single day I sit there.

Now, I also sit next to some foreign guy that barely speaks English. . .

This guy also has a habit of stacking every item he owns in the exact space I sit.

His bag, his food, his books, and his phone are ALWAYS right on my desk space.

Now, every single time I walk into class this guy says, ‘Ah, Tom.

You here.

Okay.’

And starts frantically clearing my desk of his belongings.

He then makes it a habit to say, ‘Ready for class, yeah?’

And gives me a high five.

Every day this guy gives me a high five.

I was ALWAYS annoyed with this guy.

I’m thinking, ‘Dude, you know I sit in this seat every day.

Why are you always stacking your sh*t here?