If You Only Love Those Who Love You, Why Should You Get Credit For That? - Jesus Is The Question

Hello everyone and welcome to Trinity Sermons.

Thank you so much for joining us for our weekly sermon here at Trinity Church, Streetsville.

We are a church located in the village of Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.

And we are so glad that you are with us here today.

Now today we are continuing our sermon series, Jesus is the Question.

We have special guest, Sandra Seaborn with us.

And she will be reflecting on a question that Jesus asks a large group of people about loving others.

Now before we begin, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast to stay up to date with all of our upcoming messages.

Thanks for listening today and God bless.

Now for our reader, it's something brand new and we are actually very excited.

We have a reading from our online congregant all the way in Brazil.

Right? So now Diego is going to do our reading.

Reading from Luke 6.32 to 36.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

Even sinners love those who love them.

And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you?

Even sinners do that. And if you learn to do from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?

Even sinners learn to sin expecting to be repaid in full.

But love your enemies, do good to them and learn to them without expecting to get anything back.

Then your reward will be great and you will be sons of the most high because he's kind to them, ungrateful and wicked.

Be merciful just as your father is merciful.

This is the word of the Lord.

Well, good morning.

It is a pleasure. It's a privilege to be with you this morning.

And I know that I have not met most of you here, but my connection to this church actually started back during Harold Percy's time as a rector.

One of my cousins actually volunteered here as a youth group leader for a while.

And she invited me a couple of times to help out or maybe more just hang out.

And that was a few years ago. Now she's married and she was married here.

So that's probably the first time that I was actually up here because she had me do the prayers for her service way back when she now lives in Waterloo with her family.

Fast forward a couple of decades.

Rob, your current incumbent and I served at the same parish together when he was in Toronto about five years ago.

And I caught up with him at a recent clergy conference and he invited me to be with you this morning.

Not long after Rob came to St. Paul's, my own call shifted.

I moved at that time away from serving a parish.

I'm an ordained Anglican minister to working in a nonprofit because I'm also trained in social work.

So for the last four years, I've been with Young Street Mission.

It's a faith based community organization that walks alongside people experiencing poverty in downtown Toronto.

And I'm not here to pitch YSM, but I do love talking about the way that the people of God can connect with what is going on through the mission.

So if any of that is exciting to you, please do come and talk to me after the service.

Sermon wise, this summer, this church has done something unusual as a parish.

And that is flipping the Sunday school script of Jesus is the answer.

Right. You're looking at Jesus is the question.

And because there's 300 questions, you're looking at just a few of the questions that Jesus asks us.

And the way he asks questions tends to be geared to who he is talking to.

And he talked to such a wide variety of people that we find different questions depending if he's talking to people who are curious

or people who are committed or questioning or even critical of who he was.

So if we look back over the last three weeks, Rob set the stage with what are you looking for?

That question was to people who were curious.

They were potential followers investigating possible new directions.

Then you move to a dinner party setting.

And at that dinner party setting, the question was for committed religious leaders.

They might have been committed religious leaders, but they were critical of Jesus's leadership style.

And his question to those people was, do you see this woman?

And then last week, Peter took you onto a boat and on that boat, it was filled with Jesus's closest friends.

They were traveling with him. And Jesus asked them, people close to him, but still a little unsure of his true identity.

Where is your faith?

Today, today we find Jesus talking to a larger crowd.

He's speaking to a mixture of people, people who are interested enough to show up, interested maybe in the healing, the signs, the miracles,

but they are not yet leaning in.

It's sort of the equivalent of our society of you subscribe to the social media channel, but you don't have the notifications on.

You don't want to know exactly when the new content is.

You might go look for it once in a while, but it's not popping up on your screen.

You're like, oh, that video, I want to see it right now.

No, it's subscribed and you definitely know merchandise yet.

No merchandise, no notifications.

All you have is like, if you want to look, you can kind of check in.

And the question that Jesus asked that group of people is, if you love me, if you love, sorry, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

Now, this is a bit of a jarring question because it touches on cultural assumptions about human relationships,

assumptions that were true then and assumptions that are true now.

It seems that Jesus is tapping into this golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do to you and somehow saying that is the way to do it.

As you would have them do to you and somehow saying that that's insufficient.

That's not enough.

This question, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

Exposes to us the conditional nature of so many of our person to person interactions.

I wonder how often I'm nice to someone just hoping that I'll get a similar response.

Maybe I buy you a Tim's coffee so that tomorrow you pick up a Tim's coffee for me.

I help you.

You're going to help me.

I scratch your back.

You scratch mine.

Or let's think about it in terms of driving.

So for those who are here, perhaps you drove to church this morning.

If you're in person, what was your response if somebody cuts you off?

Maybe that happened to someone on the way in this morning.

See, Jesus is using this rhetorical question to challenge our cultural assumptions of conditional relationships.

I'm going to root us before we dig too deep into the text in a very practical example.

This is something that's happened to me at work.

On the screen, you can see one of YSM's five buildings.

This one's an apartment building.

Most of our programs at Yonge Street Mission are day-based programs.

But back 30 years ago, we already knew low-income housing was a need.

The wait lists were not as long as they are now because now wait lists go anywhere from 10 to 15 years in Toronto.

But the need even then for affordable rent geared to income was there.

And so back in 1991, Genesis Place Homes was built.

And it's a 26-unit building.

It's got two sections, the front section, which you see in the pictures, and a back section.

They're connected by a courtyard in the middle.

And who you see there on the screen is Mike, who's our super.

And yes, he has an ever-present cup of Tim's in his hand.

Now, my role at YSM is to oversee our programs that includes Genesis Place.

So in addition to the usual things that you might expect of a kind of administrative role,

staff care, budgets, annual plans, spiritual formation, part of my job is to get the complaints.

So one morning I open up my email and I find in my email a complaint from a tenant.

It has to escalate a little bit before it gets to me.

And in this email attached are multiple, multiple pictures of poop.

Yep, close-ups of poo.

I already get more emails than I would like to get, and I don't like getting pictures of poo in my email.

And so there's a long complaint about neighbors and about two dogs in the courtyard making noise

and leaving poop on other people's doorsteps.

So just imagine for a moment that you open your front door, whether it's an apartment or a house, doesn't matter.

But as you go to go outside, there is poop on your doorstep.

Now, I'm going to think you're going to have some big feelings, right?

Big feelings, surprise, anger, frustration, maybe a little bit of fear and disgust.

You might worry about your kids. You might worry that you're stepping in.

Lots of things could cross your mind when you see this on your doorstep.

What might change that initial response?

What if you knew that the only person around you was a neighbor with two dogs?

Would some of those feelings start getting directed there?

What if you knew those dogs were officially the kids' dogs, and you didn't witness the kids really taking great care of them?

What if you knew that those were the youth's dogs?

They were kids, yes, older teenagers, but those were kids who were struggling at school,

and those dogs were supposed to be support to them, giving them something to learn, responsibility.

Would your feelings change then?

Regardless of how it gets there, what are you going to do when you see this poop?

Do you ignore it, thinking someone else is going to clean it up?

Do you clean it up but not say anything, just forgive and forget?

Do you ask someone else in your household to clean it up because you're running late?

There is no way. You're just going to step over that, pretend you didn't see it, just keep going.

Maybe you text next door because you know it's there, dog.

Maybe you ring the doorbell next door and say, yeah, I'll need to pick up your poop.

Would you call an animal bylaw officer to get those dogs taken away?

I want you to hold this situation in mind because we're going to return to it later.

In our context, what we have is Jesus talking to a large crowd.

They've gathered to learn and to be healed, and what he's done in asking this question

is actually reiterate some teaching that he has just given them.

So in the section before what we heard read, this is what Jesus already said to those gathered.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.

Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.

Now, if you've been around church or read your Bible, these words might just kind of roll off your back.

They might be a little bit familiar to you, but those would have been radical words,

unheard of expectations in first century culture and frankly unexpected in ours too.

And so just to make sure the crowd is listening, what Jesus does is then ask questions that ties to the teaching that he just gave.

He says this, if you love those who love you, what grace is that to you?

Even those not following the way love those who love them.

If you do good to those who do good to you, what grace is that to you?

Even those living in their own ways by their own standards, they do that too.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what grace is that to you?

Even the non-law abiding, they lend to people when they expect to be repaid in full.

Jesus is using these questions to push us beyond the golden rule,

beyond the do to others as you would do have them do to you thing.

In fact, again, if you look back, because you might have your Bible app open or Bible on paper in front of you,

that's verse 31 and we started at verse 32.

Just before these questions between that teaching and these questions,

he throws in that rule because he's trying to push people beyond thinking about conditional relationships,

transactions, reciprocity.

You know, that golden rule is one of those Bible verses that sometimes we even still see posted in public places, right?

There's famous paintings about it.

There's a beautiful Norman Rockwell with a quote and lots of people on it.

But Jesus this morning is using it as a foil and pushing us saying it's not sufficient,

that we need to show up with grace, not just with that golden rule of reciprocity and conditionality.

He's extending this rule, moving from conditionality to compassion.

See, conditional relationships are these kind of if then relationships.

If A happens, then B.

A conditional relationship assumes the other person is going to meet some kind of criteria.

And we are trained in conditional relationships from a young age,

even in our families, which can be places of unconditional love.

One of my earliest memories is of my mother not giving me ice cream.

So here's the context.

I was very little preschool, kindergarten age.

I had some playmates over and at the end of some kind of playing in the basement, everyone was supposed to clean up.

And I was a bratty little kid.

I refused to clean up.

And my mother said there was a consequence.

I thought she was kidding, didn't hear it, whatever, didn't do it.

I didn't get the ice cream.

And I remember the feeling.

I was devastated.

I was angry.

I told this to my mother the other day and she's like, I don't even remember that.

I was like, oh, I do.

I do.

And I learned to clean up and to listen to what mother said because there were consequences.

Right.

There were consequences.

And my mother loves me dearly and loves me regardless of whether or not she gives ice cream.

But I interpreted the ice cream conditionally.

If I get the ice cream, I get it because I clean up.

I get a treat.

We have societal expectations of conditional relationship.

And our society is based on these relationships.

The cleanup treat example is a transactional one.

We see this type of relationships in schools and workplace settings.

If I hand in my homework, I can get better grades.

If I show up, I get participation marks.

If I put my time in at work, I might be eligible for a promotion.

I'd pass my probation.

Right.

We put in the work if, then.

And these kind of conditional relationships back in Jesus' day existed, too.

The focus was on hospitality.

Hospitality was expected to be shared no matter what.

You would receive a stranger, but you would expect to be offered hospitality if you need it.

You give, you get.

Perhaps this kind of reciprocity is still in your home today or in your cultural background.

Do good, expect good, and return.

Maybe you bring in your neighbor's Amazon packages, hoping that they'll put yours away so no one steals them as well.

Or maybe if you have a larger yard, you offer your leaf blower, hoping your neighbor will let you use their snow blower.

Or maybe you buy the lemonade from the kid down the block, knowing that their parents are going to buy your Girl Guide cookies when you try coming by to sell them later.

Right?

Reciprocal transactional relationships, they form a solid foundation for neighborliness, and there is nothing wrong with them in and of themselves as a starting point.

But they are a starting point, not the end game.

Because this kind of conditional relationship, it doesn't demonstrate grace.

Now you probably noticed that when I read the verses earlier that I used a different word than you saw on the screen.

The screen said credit, but I substituted the word grace for credit.

Why did I do that?

Well, the English word there that we have translated as credit is the Greek word charis, meaning grace.

What grace is it to you?

Instead of our societal conditional relationship, Jesus says to us, be merciful just as your father is merciful.

Be compassionate as your God is compassionate.

And the why, the why we do that is connected to God's character.

So I want to take us back for a moment to the situation.

An example that I shared with you at the beginning.

By the way, it's not done.

I actually have a meeting on Monday with the mom whose boys this dog is.

OK, these dogs are.

So it's still in process.

And I wanted to use an example in process because I think working this out in our lives, how we do this is not done.

It's something we work out day in and day out.

So back to this dog poop situation.

I heard about this from a couple of different tenants and they are well within their rights to complain.

And here's what some of the solutions were.

Put up posters clarifying what's already in our tenant handbook.

Start the eviction process.

Especially if nothing changed within a day.

It's good.

Call the animal bylaw officer.

When we refuse to do that, they called the animal bylaw officer and the officer came by a day or two later, checked on the situation, checked on the well-being of the dogs.

I think that the person who called the bylaw officer may have emphasized that the dogs belong to the youth.

And so I was hoping maybe that might get the dogs removed.

But then there was one of these neighbors that took a different approach.

She talked to the mom and she offered support.

Here's what she did.

She offered to dog sit those dogs.

Did you catch that?

She offered to dog sit the very dogs that were pooping on her doorstep.

She's not expecting any payment.

There is no extra money to go around in this community, but she's doing exactly what this passage prescribes.

She is lending her time with no expectation of return, no strings attached.

She's extending grace.

And I wonder what in my life and what in your life might be the equivalent of offering dog sitting.

Now, if you've been following in your Bible app or in your physical Bible, you'll have noticed that I skipped over half a verse in 35B.

So we're going to cycle back there now.

Verse 35 reads this.

Love your enemies, do good to them, lend without expecting anything back.

Then your reward will be great and you will be children of the most high because he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.

Now, at first read, that might seem to negate everything I've just been talking about about conditional relationships moving to compassion.

Isn't the word reward there?

Like, do I miss something there?

This verse kind of stuck in the middle is what helps us to figure out how we actually get to being the ones that do grace.

Right. How do we actually get ourselves be the one that are aligned with God's ways with each other?

We can only do that if we have a vertical relationship where we are receiving grace ourselves.

So that word reward, it echoes back to something Jesus had just said.

Just like the questions echo is teaching back in 23, he says, rejoice in that day leap for joy because your great is your reward in heaven.

See, this little section here connects how we're supposed to deal horizontally with our neighbors, with how we receive grace from God above.

It is moving us into that upward relationship focus so that our horizontal relationships can also be changed.

We are made children of the most high by grace.

It's not our power that does that.

This identity as children of the most high is not something we achieve and none of us, thank God, are rewarded by God according to what we deserve.

No, our belonging in God's family is all through the gift of grace.

It's by grace we've been saved through faith.

It's not of ourselves. It's a gift of God, not of our own works, not any of the transactional things we might do for our neighbors or transactional things we try to do with God to get God to love us.

None of that.

God looks on us and God looks on us with compassion because of who Jesus is.

And once we receive that gift of grace through Jesus, then we can move into verse 36.

We can move into acting that out with our neighbors.

The recompense, the reward is a vertical relationship.

There's no divine points for virtual signaling, no extra likes on your feed, no extra zeros in your bank account.

This is not prosperity gospel here.

No, no, Jesus is calling us away from rooting our hopes in any kind of temporary and instant gratification that comes from the reciprocity of this kind of relationships towards compassion.

The reward ultimately is that there is a little bit more of heaven here on earth, a little bit more of God's kingdom breaking in right here, right now between you and that neighbor who might have something equivalent

to dog poop on your front step.

Here's how a band you to describes grace.

She takes the blame.

She covers the shame.

She removes the stain.

When she walks on the street, what was once hurt.

What was once friction.

What left a mark.

No longer stings.

Because grace makes beauty out of ugly things.

The grace we receive is the grace that we give.

It's a living out of our true identity as children of the most high.

And so we are being called in this passage to move from conditionality to choosing compassion.

So for those of you who are already following Jesus, what my choosing compassion look like in your relationships today?

For those of you who are curious about what might it mean to live like Jesus, what changes would you make to even think about what compassion might look like in your relationships today?

See, choosing to be compassionate is a bit of an upending of all societal expectations of these human to human relationships.

And the examples that Jesus has given us are quite timeless.

Being kind to the ungrateful, being generous without expectation of repayment, loving in the context of conflict.

And now while these are timeless, there is something in here that's important for me to note.

And I hope and I pray that one day I do not have to say this when I preach.

But unfortunately, there is still mixed teaching in the church about this.

And unfortunately, the statistics tell me that intimate partner violence could still be happening in a community of this size.

So I need to say this.

This passage is not condoning abuse.

I have to say it.

If you're facing that situation, help is available and there's staff here that can support you.

And when you have the energy, when you feel safe, please reach out.

Confidentiality is key here.

Conversations would stay that way and it's safe.

And then Jesus says unconditional response that is not in the situation of abuse.

For the rest of us, I want us to think to finish up on something a little bit more mundane.

Something mundane and ordinary.

This is one of the things I like about the Anglican Church.

Most of the year of our church is called ordinary time.

It's called ordinary time because it's in the ordinary time, I think, that we work out our relationship with God into our relationship with our neighbors.

So I want to finish with a little bit of an exercise of spiritual formation to how to move all of this thinking and feeling we've been doing about compassion into potentially something practical for your relationships.

So choose a nonviolent conditional relationship, please, and start by thinking about where you are.

So up on the screen, you're going to see a map.

This is a classic Google view of where this church is.

If you're in person, you can geographically place yourself here.

If you're online, folks, just think of us of yourself in a place where you interact with people.

So that could be church.

If you're younger, it could be school.

If you go to a workplace, it could be a work cubicle, could be your apartment hallway, your commute, your family home.

Everybody got a spot where typically you're interacting with other people.

Okay.

So now I want you to get a little bit closer into that spot.

Just as I'm sort of zooming in, as I am on the map, I want you to take an inventory of who is around you and what is around you in that spot.

So think about the names and the relationships of the people who are around you.

So if you're thinking about your home, you might think about who's the neighbor across the street, who's beside you, who's behind you.

Think about who those people are, their names, their relationships.

Do you eat lunch with them?

Do you avoid them?

Do you smile at them?

Don't know much about them?

You know they like the J's.

Excellent, but they don't like the leafs?

How can they?

You know, like just think about what you know about the people around you.

And now I want you to add a little bit, one more layer of color to this.

And I want you to think about somewhere in that midst of people that you interact with regularly.

So either somebody that feels like that image on the screen, right?

Somebody where the feeling that you have towards them is a little bit mixed, conflicted, maybe they're hard to relate to.

And I want you to stick with that person for a moment, because we are going to pray right now and ask for the grace from God

that we are going to need to share grace with this person in the next week.

So would you pray with me?

Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, we need your help to move away from conditional relationships to compassionate ones.

And we are listening for the leading of your spirit as we think of this neighbor, this person in our circle that we have a hard time relating to.

We pray.

Give us your eyes to see them with compassion.

We pray. Give us your heart to feel towards them with your compassion.

Please give us strength of our hands and wisdom in our mouths to move and speak in compassion.

And we pray all this for the glory of your name.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

And we hope that you found this sermon encouraging as you go about your week.

And if you liked what you heard today, please make sure to rate and review our podcast so that we can continue to reach even more people with the good news.

And make sure to come back next week as we unpack yet another question that Jesus asks.

This sermon was taken from the August 13th, 2023 sermon at Trinity Church, Streetsville in Mississauga, Ontario.