The Imperishable Stuff
(Free Version) Readings for the 7th Sunday After Epiphany- Genesis 45:3-11, 15; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50; Luke 6:27-38
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Knowing our God as the One who is self-giving, frees us from the need to retaliate; and, it frees us from grasping on to the gifts which he has given us. God has an endless supply of love, so we do not need to fight back. God has an endless supply of resources, so we don’t need to hang on to our stuff.
Jesus’ words in our gospel reading (Luke 6:27-38) are not moral commands in the strictest sense. Rather, they are an invitation into God’s new world—a world where enemies are loved and people give without expecting anything in return.
How do we live into this new world? Each week in worship, Christians gather around this new world in Christ. We are called into God’s presence, our sin is revealed, we are forgiven. We are healed by God’s Word and his body broken and blood shed and shared. We are sent as his ambassadors of reconciliation into a broken world.
Christians are to align our loves, our thoughts, and our behaviors with the reality of resurrection. All of us often define “the good life” in ways that do not look like the kingdom of God. We chase visions of The American Dream rather than the Kingdom of God. All of us have thoughts that are defeating, discouraging, or judgmental. When someone hurts us, where do our thoughts go? When our resources are threatened, what anxiety creeps up in us?
In the broken places of our lives, the places were we reject God, we are reminded that we have been forgiven. Because of Jesus, we are part of a new family, a new world, a new story. Paul’s argument for resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50) is not merely an effort to align everyone with the finer points of doctrine. Resurrection means that God has not given up on the world, that he has not given up on us! God’s faithfulness means that things which are planted will also be raised.
In many ways, Joseph (Genesis 45:3-11, 15) is a foreshadowing of Jesus. The one who carried the images of God’s new world was rejected by his family and sold into slavery. But God had his hand on him. When faced with those who rejected him and sold him, Joseph resists the way of vengeance and instead turns to love. The one who was left for dead was raised to a new, high place.
God has invited us into a better way…the way of love, even for those who don’t deserve it…Because we did not deserve it. Our God is radically embracing and radically generous.
In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo writes, “The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather, loved in spite of one's self…Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the light when one has love.”1
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, (Blacksburg: T.Y. Crowell and Company, 1887), 158.