CMLC 2025-02-23 Sermon (Contemporary)

Well, howdy.

So, some of you know, most of you know,

that I have a thing for comic book characters,

and I appreciate a lot of them.

Well, I had the comics from when I was a kid,

and back in my 30s, and the fact that I can say back in my 30s

is a little bit disconcerting,

I was collecting a few new comics.

They had one that was on the Justice League,

and I was really excited, they had the new 52 that came out,

and I knew that I should be able to get Justice League number one

from this new run.

I was really excited, because if you go to a comic shop

and you get subscriptions, they set them aside for you,

and you know that you don't have to rush in

and get them before anybody else, they're waiting for you.

And I'm thinking to myself, I'm going over there,

and wow, I'm ready, I've got this comic coming in,

and like, oh, all these other comics,

they're all getting reprints and everything else,

but I should be okay.

I had my own subscription, and I walk in,

and they said, oh, hey, glad you made it.

By the way, we ran out of some of the number one,

so here's an eighth edition for you.

I was like, what in the world?

Exactly, I was like, what?

Not only the first edition would have been worth something,

the second and third, they would have been worth something too.

Fourth through seventh would have been interesting,

but I didn't even get one till the eighth edition of this comic,

and I'm over here like, I could have just gone over to a new stand,

picked it up, it's like, what was even the point of being special as a subscriber

if I'm going to get the exact same thing that everybody else gets,

and I'm over there, I'm looking at it, I'm just like, oh, grumbling to myself.

So now, my collection is tainted with this one eighth edition

that has ruined the whole run, my life is just over.

And hopefully one of these days, I'll realize that I'm a grown-up

and I can move on beyond these things.

But with that is to realize that whenever something's supposed to be different or special,

why does it look exactly what everybody else is doing?

And that's a question that Jesus is trying to pose with his disciples today

as we're looking at this Gospel reading.

This idea of why would it be such a big deal for you to love your friends

rather than having to go any further than that?

What is the point of just loving your friends, the people who are nice to you?

What's really the point of any of that?

It says, you know, loving your friends, doing good to people who do things that are good to you,

just blessing the other people who bless you, all these things.

Why would that be such a big deal for you to do?

And Jesus takes it further.

And he says that you are meant to love your enemies,

do good to the ones who hate you, bless the ones who curse you,

pray for the ones who abuse you,

offer the other cheek when they have struck you,

or even when they take your outer garment, let them have your undergarments.

The thing is, is doing things that are good for the ones who treat you well, so what?

Everybody does that. That's just practical.

That's just doing what makes sense and is normal.

Our human instincts would lead us to do good things to the ones who did good things to us.

So what would be even the point of having Jesus if all we're doing is what everybody would do automatically?

But be completely honest, this list of things for us to do,

it seems really strange.

It is a very odd thing for us to be looking at.

To love the people that are our enemies, let's look at the world today.

That is not how we are typically supposed to treat people today.

You're only supposed to love the ones that give you what you want.

But even more than that, trying to do good to the people who hate you,

this is just inviting trouble.

This is just asking for things to be difficult.

But also, how would you be able, like openly and honestly,

you know that someone has spoken poorly of you.

From your heart, how would you honestly be able to say anything good to this person?

Or try to do anything good for them when you know that behind your back, they've been trying to harm you.

And this is not something that's saying it is okay to be abused in life.

That's not what this is trying to get at.

Or even trying to turn the other cheek.

The idea of looking and saying that instead of either hitting them back or running away,

is to stand up and to say, I can let you keep doing more.

None of this seems to make sense. Or even the part about the undergarment.

There was a law that if someone could basically require a debt being paid from you,

you could take their outer garment, but you were not allowed to take what was underneath.

I mean, it's like the person's underwear more or less in some ways.

And it's like that's being really, really weird and really, really creepy.

But it's more than that is to be able to say, why is it that when someone takes from you,

why wouldn't you be able to give even more in return?

And this idea is something that we are going to struggle with,

is that even now we're trying to get our mind around what Jesus is trying to say here.

This doesn't make any sense.

But also asking if we were to follow what Jesus is saying,

how would that change us on the inside?

And it comes down to what we end up seeing Jesus saying about not to judge others,

so that you yourself would not be judged.

And to try to get that across the idea that when we judge someone,

it not only changes what we see about ourselves,

but also the way that we see the people around us

is to look at a classic story of the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Now, many of you hopefully have heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys.

I mean, basically these two families in the U.S. that were feuding with each other for decades.

They kept going back and forth, back and forth doing things to each other.

It's sort of like the Montague's and the Capulets, except it's not in Europe, it's in the U.S.

and there's not a really great Romeo and Juliet story in here.

But the idea is that it has gotten so ingrained in our minds

that when we say Hatfields and McCoys, we automatically think of long-running,

decades-long fighting between people that never stops

because it always builds on itself.

This is what we can actually tell actually did happen, by the way.

During the Civil War, both of the families, the Hatfields and the McCoys,

were both fighting for the Confederates, except there was one person,

Asa Harmon McCoy, who joined the Union.

And when they were all done and McCoy was coming back,

he ended up being killed by a group called the Logan Wildcats from the Confederates,

being led by Jim Vance, an uncle of Devil Ant's Hatfield.

So this event itself then ends up creating a lot of bad blood, and it goes further.

There was the Great Hog Dispute of 1878,

where Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield of stealing his hog.

And in court, it turned out that Floyd Hatfield was the one who won the dispute,

but yet the McCoys would never let them lead it down,

because there were markings on the ears that supposedly proved that the hog belonged to the McCoys.

Or later on, it turned out, Rosanna McCoy ran off to be with Johnson Hatfield,

as close as we're going to get to Romeo and Juliet.

So Johnson ended up being arrested by the McCoys, but rescued by the Hatfields.

Sadly though, apparently Johnson Hatfield has a type,

and he left Rosanna McCoy for her cousin Nancy McCoy.

So I don't think Rosanna was too thrilled after that.

But it even went further, Ellison Hatfield being killed by the McCoys,

and then the Hatfields kidnapped and executed three of them in return,

or the New Year's Day Massacre of 1888,

where a group of Hatfields led by Jim Vance attacked the McCoy family,

killed two of the children, and set the house on fire.

It even went to the Supreme Court,

who ended up sentencing seven of the Hatfields to imprisonment for life,

and one other being executed.

Well, turns out Mr. Johnson Hatfield, after having left Rosanna for Nancy,

ended up also being imprisoned for life for the same crime,

which may or may not have made Rosanna very happy.

But a quick note is that it turns out that it's believed that the McCoys

may have actually had a genetic disease that predisposed them to more anger than others.

But the feud became such a big part of American folklore

that it had to be settled the only way that a feud can truly be settled on the family feud.

In 1979, the Hatfields and McCoys did end up on the family feud,

and the Hatfields won more money, but the McCoys won three out of five of the days that they were on there,

so they ended up giving the McCoys enough money to suppress the Hatfields' winnings.

For a century and more, there was a feud between two families,

that every time something happened, something had to be done in return.

Where did it start in the first place?

Would we say that it started because the Union soldier was killed

A.S. Harman McCoy by the Hatfields?

Or would the Hatfields have said it started because A.S. Harman McCoy betrayed them to the Union?

But whichever place someone would want to say it started, how could it have ended any sooner?

And that's the thing about this, is to be able to ask this question of

how do we finally get to a point where we end the cycle of hatred and anger that keeps happening?

Because let's be honest, we as a society are currently in a cycle,

and it doesn't matter what one person does, there is always a response from another of,

oh yeah, well what about this?

Because everything has some reason for why they deserved what they had coming.

How do we end up stopping this cycle?

And when dealing with this, is that you have to go back to the one thing that always explains anything

to do with anger and hatred, dog poop.

Because if you have been, like I have at many dog parks,

and you see the signs that will always say, pick up after your dog,

and plenty of bags to go along and do that, but what ends up happening frequently?

You end up looking and you see what someone else's dog has left behind,

and you're like, oh, I can't believe someone is that bad, their dog left something behind,

and they did not bother to come and pick it up.

And how many times have we just walked past it?

Because that's not mine to deal with, I don't care, it doesn't matter, I'm not going to add any extra.

Except then, whenever we pause and have to finally ask the question,

are we sure that our dog has never been the one who did that behind our back?

Because that's one of the things about this, is that when we're spending so much time pointing and looking

at what everybody else has done, we're also not willing to pause and admit

what we may have been doing ourselves in the first place.

Because one of the things in dog park culture is to always pick up just a little bit more,

because you never know who is going to have to do that for you as well.

See, that's a piece with this, is to realize that when we are looking at our enemies,

is that they are oftentimes seeing the same when they look at us.

When we do not forgive, we are pretending that we are somehow more deserving of love than other people.

And we're somehow telling ourselves that we deserve to be forgiven,

to be given grace more than the people that we consider as our enemies.

Even though when they see us, they oftentimes see the same.

And more than that, is that when we are truly willing to repent,

is that we realize that all people have sinned, all people are capable of the very thing that we see in others.

When we look at Luke 6 as the Beatitudes, we can compare it to Matthew 5,

but when we see Matthew 5, it says that the soldier who forces you to walk a mile, walk another mile with him.

Or the idea is when someone demands something of you, be willing to give them any more.

Why is that?

And I have to admit, I really drove it home when I was watching the chosen version of this part.

I have to say that to Linda.

But realizing that whenever a person is demanded of something,

but they're willing to give even more, it takes the power away from the aggressor.

When someone is making you give them something, they have the power.

But when you willingly let it go and give even more, it actually takes it back.

Because no longer is it about what they are doing, but rather it becomes your own choice.

And it ends up asking this question of what is truly coming from you into the world around you.

Part of our gospel lesson said,

good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.

Because while it's not saying it, we can hear and see the imagery of what happens when you are creating wine.

Is that when you take the right measure, you are pressing it down, shaking it, and it becomes so abundant

that it can run over like the cup in Psalm 23.

What we realize is that what's even more important is what fruits were being put into it in the first place.

Because what we see in here is asking this question of what fruit is actually inside of you.

And what fruit is creating the life that you share with others.

There's a story.

Charletta Evans, back in 2019, was sharing this story.

Was that her son, Cassin, had been three years old when he was shot to death.

And the man who had pulled the trigger back in 1995 was Raymond Johnson, who had been in the middle of a drive-by shooting when he was a teenager.

Johnson, though he was a teen, he was sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

Later, there was the possibility of parole many years down the line.

But in so doing, was that it was important that he would need to reach out to Charletta and to talk about the murder.

And realizing that it had put a hole in his own heart because he realized what he had done.

Now, Charletta, she remembered that him asking that he needed her help.

And she knew that essentially, this man who had killed her child was asking that figuratively she would consider him like a son and would take him under her wings.

She sat there and said to herself, yes, I will forgive, yes, I will forgive.

But deep down inside, feeling in her chest like a heart attack saying, I don't want to do it.

As she did so, though, she ended up being able to see that as she reached for his hand and held him,

is she knew that in so forgiving, she would not only be able to let go of the pain,

but after having lost a son, she'd be able to find one in return.

I can truly say, I love the young man and love him enough to take him as a son and care for him.

It wasn't just her. Mary Johnson had gone through much of the same when her 20-year-old son in 1993 got into a scuffle with 16-year-old O'Shea Israel.

And while O'Shea had killed her son and spent 17 years in prison paying the price for what he had done as a teenager,

her anger, furious, saw him as an animal and deserving to be caged.

But many years later, she decided to visit him in prison.

I wanted to know if you were in the same mindset of what I remembered from court where I wanted to go over and hurt you.

But you weren't that same 16-year-old anymore.

You were a grown man and I shared with you about my son.

And so she hugged him and when he was eventually released from prison, she became a mentor to O'Shea herself.

Must I love my enemies? Really?

Now the thing is that there are many examples of those who have lost loved ones, who have been offered forgiveness.

But more than that, how many of us, as we heard those two stories in our own minds, how many of us were judging the women

for being so stupid as to forgive the young men who hurt them and killed their loved ones?

How many of us, not even just saying we don't know that we'd be able to do the same,

but can't even in our hearts be willing to understand what the women experienced?

See, that's the thing about this is that not just struggling with doing it, but even understanding why they would do that as well.

Because the fruit that was coming forth from them, pressed down and running over, is the measure that had been given to them.

See, whenever we see the judgments on others, we end up seeing many things that can end up destroying us.

Whenever we hate a person so much that we would never bless them, not only is it that we can become consumed with it,

and we can't let that go, but also we discover we end up saying the same thing about anybody that reminds us of them.

How often it is that we think of someone and what they've done to us, and now from now on,

we're going to make sure that no one else harms us the same way again.

And anytime we see anyone that reminds us of them, we have already decided what they are judged for and what they deserve.

But even third, is that it distracts us from realizing how much we have been an enemy to God ourselves.

We have been the ones who have been guilty. We have been the ones who deserved all the punishment.

But you see, we tell ourselves, isn't it just practical to deal with things more seriously than this?

Doesn't it make more sense to make sure that people get what they have coming to them?

But that will never change the world for the better.

Instead, we have to ask, how do we change the world by grace?

See, when we are so consumed by anger, we end up judging not just the guilty, but everybody else who comes across our path.

And right now, the world around us keeps adding hate to hate, anger to anger, and keeps trying to find one more way to somehow protect ourselves from everybody else

by assuming that we know how to judge everybody else.

But with all these things happening, a cycle that doesn't change, isn't it the Christians who are supposed to stop the cycle?

If anybody was going to pause and say, I don't need to get back what I had taken from me, wouldn't it be the Christians who know that everything has been given to us already?

See, whenever we push past, then we ignore how we added not just to the situation at hand, but also to the sin of this world.

Because we spend so long pointing at our enemies that deserve our hatred that we stop from asking, how did I create this situation myself?

And that's where we are this morning, because we are people who know of the grace of God, but how can it ever be real and tangible when we're not willing to share it with anyone else?

How is it that the grace of God, knowing that we deserved everything that we had coming to us, how do we ever truly get it or know the need to repent and change?

When we don't think that anyone else could ever possibly receive it.

That's the thing about what Jesus is trying to do.

He's trying to get us to change the world, but to do so by changing what fruit comes from us.

We are in a very delicate place in our world today.

Any single thing can set people off.

And immediately point to say, this is why you deserve what you have coming.

But this is exactly the very time when we should be the ones to share grace and compassion with others.

So shouldn't we as Christians be the one to lay down our freedoms to change the world?

The freedom to yell, the freedom to be angry, the freedom to get what we have coming to us by giving to others what they have coming to them.

But maybe instead, as we let Jesus be the one to lead and to guide, because even when it doesn't make sense,

that is the only thing that has any hope of changing the world that we are in today.

May God bless us now and always. Amen.