All of the Rhythm, but None of the Blues

Sermon

The scripture today is the most powerful and pertinent in our Bible, and maybe it’s even the most important articulated anywhere: Love your enemy. And, in practice, it has been summarily dismissed by most of Christendom and the world. In our culture of violence this commandment to love the enemy strikes us as impossible, weak, a bad idea. Better just skip over that part. Jesus must have been exaggerating.

These verses, 35 and 36, and God “is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” I haven’t preached any sermons on this, nor do I remember hearing much from others. This is one of those places in scripture that we scratch our head and ask: “Really, God?”

In many of the world religions there is a variant of the Golden Rule: to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The teaching of Jesus, though, gives us a compelling and powerful claim. Love your enemies. Because at the heart of the commandment is this truth: We all share an innate humanity. Each person deserves to be treated with respect and love. Living and acting from this truth is the most powerful force for change in Jesus’ time and in our time.

As we have been watching Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intimidation of Ukraine with troops, weapons, and disinformation, I have wondered: how can we love Vladimir? And, in our own polarized United States, when it sometimes seems that we might be on the verge of an outright civil war, I’ve wondered, how can we love those who are sowing hatred?

Love your enemies. Pray for those who harm you.

Perhaps our biggest challenge is to love the enemy who is also someone closest to us: our ex-partners, estranged friends, the family member whose political rants pushes buttons and creates rifts. Especially after the long isolation periods of COVID-19, we are feeling the challenges of loving one another.

Dr. David Spiegel, who runs the Stanford School of Medicine’s Center on Stress and Health, has a clarifying way of describing the problem. People are coping with what he calls “social disengagement,” a lack of contact with other people that in normal times provides pleasure, support, and comfort. Instead, Spiegel said, “There’s the feeling that the rules are suspended and all bets are off.” “Doing to others as we want them to do to us” is harder than usual.

Today’s sermon is a follow up to the insightful and difficult one Beth preached last week on the beatitudes. I’d like to add this, from Alice Walker’s The Gospel According to Shug: “Helped are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgetfulness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.”

Friends, here is some good news. The power to envision the new earth is with us. In Jesus, we have the guide and inspiration to live it. The Gospel of Luke is one big, long campaign of Jesus to bring about peace in a violent world, where the most vulnerable are oppressed by the Roman empire. The

peacemaking comes about not through vengeance, judgment, or violence, but by persistent love. The masses of people whom Jesus healed were poor and marginalized. In “turning the other cheek,” Jesus was teaching: Stand up for the truth. In teaching the poor (who had only two cloaks) if they take your outer cloak, give them the inner cloak, too. Claim your power. If they force you to march a mile, willingly march the second mile. Assert your dignity. Resist evil through active nonviolence.

Do this, not to hurt your brother and sister, but to transform them. Don’t act from vengeance, but from love, knowing that we are all connected. We are all loved by a merciful God.

A wise person told me that he routinely prays for his coworkers. When he was being trained, the man training him (we’ll call him “Frank”) was expressing overt racism. (This wise person is Black.) No one liked Frank. My friend decided to focus his prayers on Frank. Over time, Frank’s attitude changed to the point where others actually asked, “What happened to Frank?” Love your enemies. Pray for those who harm you.

Though nonviolence has rarely been highlighted in the story of American history, it has been influential. Nonviolent action was attempted in relations between settlers and Native Americans. Nonviolence guided the women’s suffrage movement and the Montgomery bus boycotts.

I know that we are facing some serious issues of violence. Not just fears of war in Europe, but shootings and deaths in Portland. For some time, Portland has also been ground zero for protests. Some of those protests are coopted by those bent on destruction. Even peaceful protests on their own do not necessarily have the power to reform the powerful structures of oppression. Nonviolent methods free both the oppressed and the oppressor. We need a mindset of nonviolence. To reform society, we need to learn these nonviolent methods that come straight from our scripture today.

If we take this to heart, and practice this way of living, this worldview, we will be at the center of the change needed in our world.

I learned an important bit of history this month of Black history. James Morris Lawson Jr. was an American activist and university professor. He was a leading tactician of nonviolence within the civil rights movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and he later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years. Lawson believed, as did King, and Gandhi, that it is not enough to teach the ideas of nonviolence; they must be internalized. Conversion from a violent to a nonviolent worldview is not something that can be imposed. It must be discovered on a deep, personal and spiritual level.

In the scripture we read today, Lawson saw Jesus’ teaching as a perfect illustration of nonviolence—accepting the suffering of your oppressor and reacting in a loving way that would force them to reevaluate their actions in the hope that they recognize your humanity as you have recognized theirs. Lawson discovered what Jesus taught: to seek a human connection with your opponent; to act in love, not hatred.

It begins with our prayer and remembering God’s love for each one.

Here’s a challenge for each of us. What if we each time we encountered someone bringing harm or hurt, our first response was to hold that person in prayer? What if we imagine God’s healing light surrounding them and filling them with all they need? What if we practiced this with all our might? With more dedication than getting to the gym, or reading, or getting work done? What if this practice became our first priority?

Westminster has prioritized digging to the roots of our attitudes and interactions on racial justice. Knowing that we were coming up today on Jazz Sunday, an interview caught my attention, hence the sermon title. Social media commentator Wanna Thompson said: “Black culture is influential. People think they can participate because a lot of people, mainly celebrities, have made it welcoming for all to participate. While people want to participate in the ‘culture,’ they never want the responsibility and suffering that comes with being black. They want our rhythm, but not our blues.”

It made me think about following Jesus. It’s much easier to focus on his healing and compassion than it is this radical notion to love our enemies. But, friends, it’s a charge for our time, if ever there was a time.

We will sing both the rhythm and the blues, because at the very center of it all is our common humanity. Healing the insanity—of white supremacy, of anti-Semitism, of anti-Asian or anti-Arab feeling, of bashing anyone on the basis of gender, identity, or age—is to know at our core that we are all beloved of God. That we are in this together.

I’ll close with words by the inimitable Maya Angelou:

“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody… You must forgive, it’s for your own sake.”