Sermon 5-13-12 Lk 6:27-36 – relationships, life together with enemies-
27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,(AH) 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.(AI) 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.(AJ) 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.(AK)
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?(AL) Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?(AM) Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them,(AN) and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons(AO) of the Most High,(AP) because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful,(AQ) just as your Father(AR) is merciful.
Relationship series –life together - -With your enemies
Mothers day
Lessons from our mothers
this is one of the main things that our mothers taught us………..
Do unto others
If you cant say anything nice
Paul added -Don’t return evil for evil but overcome evil with good [Romans 12]
Mothers prepare us for life
Something special happens at the kitchen table
I didn’t know who they were
They didn’t know who I was
I didn’t know who I was
Later in life you learn the value of your parents
Sitting at lunch with my dad
For the difficult moment s of life
Mothers prepare us for life
So do fathers
So does God
Lets look at the passage. You have all heard this.
is it here simply so that we will feel bad for the ways that we don’t measure up?
Is that why jesus said these words?
Or is there another reason.
There is. He believed in us.
I am not asking the impossible- I believe you can do this
I believe you can do this
Carl Jackson part 1 – that’s the one that you are going to have to win. End there.
Our mother, our father, our father in heaven invites us to greatness
This is not easy
Jesus doesn’t say, get this, get this overnight, and like it
Life has its challenges
You can work on them over time
Deep hurts take time.
But you choose how you will respond to a hurt
Baseball- missed fly in left
After you fail, get back up and get after it
When my daughter was young, she was very timid.
What do you do when you get knocked down?
Love Teaches you to get back up
Keep loving your enemies.
Mom models what they want you to do
One of the greatest things that you can do for your children is model forgiveness
My mom never told me about her problems
I learned about them from others
They were pretty painful
Today, someone would have gone to jail
She dealt with it in her own way and lived her life
Jesus models loving his enemies
Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing
How do we do this?
1. See them as people
Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that the first step is to look deeply at ourselves and to acknowledge that in each person we dislike there is still some good qualities that we can admire and love them in spite of it ("within the worst of us, there is some good").
See them as someone that God loves
Poet Yegveny Yevtushenko's autobiography tells how, in Moscow in 1941, the streets were lined with people, mostly women, waiting for a great parade of German prisoners. The atmosphere of hatred was palpable. Nearly every woman had lost husband, father, brother or son, and now was their chance to desecrate the symbols of those who had killed their menfolk. The Germans came into view ... thin, unshaven, wearing dirty bloodstained bandages, hobbling on crutches or leaning on the shoulders of their comrades ... the streets became dead silent. An old woman pushed through the crowd, past the police cordon and, taking something from her coat, pushed it into the pocket of an exhausted soldier - a crust of black bread. And now suddenly from every side women were running towards the soldiers, pushing into their hands bread, cigarettes, whatever they had. The soldiers were no longer enemies. They were people.
2. Secondly, you can pray for them.
You cannot hate someone when you are truly praying for them. Your heart cannot be filled with resentment and love at the same time.
Pray for them. It will change you.
If you are like me, you want to run from your enemies, from your pain
This gets us know where
You step into it. you come out on the other side over time
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil (Psalm 23:5 KJV).
Carl Jackson part two
At the end o f the game, you did all you could
Do all that you can and then get on with your life
No human will leave this world without a scar or two. Just don’t pick them and don’t let them fester
recap
so many suffer with this
what can I do?
stay the course
once spent 1.5 years trying to fix a relationship
sometimes you cant
the least we can do is this
Just don’t hurt them back. An eye for an eye…………
Gandhi, said, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind".
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. "
- Martin Luther King
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Frederick Buechner, in one of the most memorable passages from a memorable book, The Magnificent Defeat (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985):
The love for equals is a human thing ... of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.
The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing ... the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.
The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing ... to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is bewildered by its saints.
And then there is the love for the enemy ... love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer.
This is God's love. It conquers the World.
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