First Reading: Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
1The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw. 2O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? 3Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. 4So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. 21I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. 2And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. 3For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end — it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. 4Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.”
Psalm 62
1For God alone my soul in silence waits; from him comes my salvation. 2He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be greatly shaken. 3How long will you assail me to crush me, all of you together, as if you were a leaning fence, a toppling wall? 4They seek only to bring me down from my place of honor; lies are their chief delight. 5They bless with their lips, but in their hearts they curse. 6For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him. 7He alone is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken. 8In God is my safety and my honor; God is my strong rock and my refuge. 9Put your trust in him always, O people, pour out your hearts before him, for God is our refuge. 10Those of high degree are but a fleeting breath, even those of low estate cannot be trusted. 11On the scales they are lighter than a breath, all of them together. 12Put no trust in extortion; in robbery take no empty pride; though wealth increase, set not your heart upon it. 13God has spoken once, twice have I heard it, that power belongs to God. 14Steadfast love is yours, O Lord, for you repay everyone according to his deeds.
Second Reading: 2 Timothy 1:1-14
1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus, 2To Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. 3I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. 4As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. 5I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. 6For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, 7for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. 8Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, 9who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, 10and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, 11for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, 12which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. 13Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 14By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.
Gospel: Luke 17:1-10
1{Jesus} said to his disciples, “Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! 2It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. 3Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, 4and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him.” 5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? 8Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? 10So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”
Forgiveness, Love, and Prayer
This past September has been a month to remember. On September 11th, the country paused and remembered the 24th anniversary of the terrorists’ attack on the twin towers in New York City. And then there were the three horrific events that occurred in just over 2 weeks. First Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Then a man in a boat shoots diners in a Southport restaurant, and then the next day, just last Sunday, a man drove his pickup truck into the front doors of a church, set the church on fire, and then shoot members fleeing the burning church. All these incidents, and the people involved, were unrelated, but were all centered on one thing, hate. It’s hard to deny that our world, our country, and even here in our state, hatred has manifested itself in such destructive ways.
In this past Monday’s news, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed new details about the gunman who killed four people and injured several others during a crowded Sunday service at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Michigan. Leavitt told that, through conversations with FBI Director Kash Patel, she has learned that Marine veteran Thomas Jacob Sanford harbored a hatred for people of the Mormon faith.
Leavitt is quoted as saying, “From what I understand, based on my conversations with the FBI director, all they know right now is this was an individual who hated people of the Mormon faith, and they are trying to understand more about this, how premeditated it was, how much planning went into it, whether he left a note, all of those questions have yet to be answered, but certainly will be answered by the FBI.”
Who will deny that hatred for one another has infected our society. At the end of last week’s service, I recall vividly saying that we need to stop the hate, so much so that I mentioned that we need to put this on our sign out front. Little did I know that within 1 hour of me saying this, Thomas Staford would unleash his hatred against the members of the Morman church in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The truth is, it’s easy to hate. Hatred feeds the sinful Adam within us.
In an article written earlier this year for Resto NYC, the unnamed author details the changes that occur in the brain due to this emotion. According to the article, “Hatred is a strong emotion that can have profound effects on the brain. When someone feels hatred consistently over time, it can actually alter their brain structure and function.” The effect of hatred will enlarge the amygdala, weaken the prefrontal cortex, alter dopamine signaling, and diminish the ability for empathy. To summarize, chronic hatred basically puts the brain into overdrive by over-activating emotion centers. It also leads to gradual impairments in logical decision-making regions. Over time, this fuels more reflexive, uncontrolled hatred.
Additionally, those who harbor hatred tend to become preoccupied with the subject of their hatred, returning to it constantly in their thoughts. It diminishes cognition and is linked to declines in memory, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Hatred makes people view the target of their hatred as less than human. This makes it easier to mistreat them. Haters develop an extremely narrow focus that blinds them to nuance. They see issues in black-and-white terms. To help justify their hatred, chronic haters avoid acknowledging their own flaws, which distorts their self-perception.
In essence, hatred acts like a neurocognitive parasite – it takes over key brain structures while impairing a person’s higher-order thinking abilities. Over time, haters become so fixated on their hatred that they have trouble seeing situations clearly. Psychologically and physiologically speaking, hatred is a destructive force within us. Yet we hear little of hatred’s effects in the news.
Instead, what we hear in the news is people openly talking about, justifying, and even promoting the hatred others. We listen as some of our elected officials degrade those who hold an opposing opinion, some even call for violence against their opponents in not so veiled ways. Just after the shooting of Mr. Kirk, House Speaker Mike Johnson asked for a moment of silence and tried to lead a prayer for the Kirk family only for the House floor to erupt into chaos that ended in a shouting match. All this compels one to ask, what is happening to us? Where is compassion? Where is common respect? Is there no love left in this world?
These were the things going through my mind as I logged on for the Monday morning Zoom meeting with other pastors to discuss the readings for this week. After a short amount of the typical chit chat, I began to look at our Old Testament reading for this week and immediately the thoughts that had been running through my mind came flooding back as I read the words of the Prophet Habakkuk: “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted (Habakkuk 1:2-4).
Is there a more appropriate reading for the questions and despair that many are feeling today? Of course, the events I named earlier are but a few examples of the hatred that fill our world today. Across the globe, Christians are being persecuted today for simply confessing that Jesus is Lord. Entire groups of people are subject to attack simply because they were born into this group or that group of people. The war in the Middle East and in Ukraine rage on over hatred and greed. And how many die on the streets of large cities over turf wars, drugs, human trafficking, and money? How many of our children die each day because of negligence and abuse? How many of our elderly suffer neglect, a lack of adequate care, or are simply forgotten by families? Too often these things happen not because of outright hate at first, but begin in much smaller ways, laziness, indifference, apathy, or a simple disregard for the needs of others.
Sometimes the reason for hatred grows over a simple dispute. Other times it’s because of an outright offense. Whatever the reason, our failure to forgive, love, and pray for our neighbors, numbs our view of them and if we’re not careful, our view of the other can diminish. In response to this apparent lack of genuine concern for others, the question was asked on Monday, “how can we, as faithful believers, begin to change things in our families, communities, and in our world. For me, there are three things that need to happen, forgiveness and love, no matter how we’re treated, and prayer. Interestingly, Jesus tells us the same thing. Where do you think I got these from? Of the three, the need to forgive is the easier one of these to address.
In our gospel reading for today, Jesus makes our obligation to forgive very clear when He said, “Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him” (vss. 3-4). And if this requirement to forgive isn’t clear enough, in His Sermon on the Mount, when the disciples asked Him to teach them to pray, Jesus finished with this warning, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But…if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins (Matthew 6:14-15).
Now there are those who might be pondering what I’ve said so far thinking, forgiveness is one thing, but to love those who have abused me? That is a whole new matter. I agree. And for guidance on our need to love our neighbor, despite what they have done to us, we need to look again to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. In St. Luke’s account of this famous sermon, Jesus said, “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
[Jesus continued], “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 lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But [I say] love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get 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 wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:27-36).
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless [or pray for] those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” In today’s environment, is there any command, given by Jesus, that is harder? Possibly perhaps, but not likely. In fact, we would prefer not to forgive, love, and pray for our enemies. This is especially true when we see those television images of the jetliners barreling into the Twin Towers for the thousandth time, when we see the videos of Islamic extremists calling for our eradication, when we see families weeping at the graveside of their loved ones killed by unbalanced people. It’s hard to find anything resembling love in our hearts for such barbarians who would do such things.
But we must confront Jesus’ commands here “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28). The truth is, we would rather read about our enemy’s execution than show any kind of compassion and forgiveness. Seriously, must we really love our enemies? What does Jesus mean?
It should be noted that, both in Jesus’ time and in our own, there are some folks who seem to think that it’s almost a sacred duty to hate anyone who is not “one of us” — forget this love stuff. The Essenes of the Qumran community, the people who preserved the Dead Sea scrolls, were like that. They believed that they were to “love all the children of light and hate all the children of darkness.” Whether Jesus was thinking of the Essenes when He brought the subject up, in His Sermon on the Mount, we have no way of knowing, but the point is that people, (religious or not), think and act in terms of hatred for their enemies, but Jesus says, “This ought not to be.”
On one level we can go along with Jesus’ command here. Sitting here at home, we can say, okay, I shouldn’t hate Muslim radicals, or the guy down the street who kicked my dog, or the teenager who is driving me nuts, or any other enemy. Afterall it is good advice. Research has convinced me that hating others does more harm to the one doing the hating than the one who is the object of that hate. Our difficulty lies in the fact that Jesus took this one step further: Jesus didn’t say “Do not hate your enemy”; what He said was “Love your enemy,” there is a world of difference here.
What Jesus is saying is, we need to love our enemies with the same love He has for us, agape love. Agape love is the kind of caring and concern we would have for someone whose welfare is really important to us; it means an unconquerable compassion, an unfailing goodwill will exist no matter what, even in the midst of conflict. It means we love others without limits.
But the question might be asked, how far should this “unconquerable compassion” go? Does this mean that we’re to condone evil? Does loving our enemies mean that we can never confront them about what caused tension between us? Of course not. It isn’t loving, or looking out for someone’s highest and best good, if we let them get away with anything they please. God is the one who set limits on behavior. As parents, we love our children and thus we let them know what the limits are, knowing that children are better off when they know the boundaries. People need to know what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable behavior.
Agape love isn’t the kind of love that will just allow anything to go on, it seeks the highest and best for our neighbors. Yes, this is a tall order. This is where the third part comes in, Jesus commanded us to pray for our enemies. If you genuinely pray for your enemies, what you’ll find, sooner or later, is that you cannot hate someone you’re praying for. Think about it, how does God treat enemies? It’s pretty strange when you think about it in a worldly sense. We know that there are people in this world who scoff at God and His commands; they have no reservation about the most heinous sin; they would never consider darkening the door of a church. But what happens to many of them? Not much that we can see. We often comment, they seem to get along okay, they have the big cars, fine homes, lots of money, and we wonder why. We might even complain that it simply isn’t fair. Apparently, God doesn’t worry much about transitory things. God’s blessings are available to all, at least in this life. However, there will come the day of judgment. But that isn’t our worry. What Jesus is telling us is, as far as this world is concerned, our treatment of other people (even our enemies) is to be based on seeking the highest and best for them … agape love … love other exactly the way God does.
And our Lord makes another point here. If we act the same way as others around us, what makes us any different from anyone else? If we only love the people who love us back, so what. Jesus says that even the dregs of society are willing to respond with love for love. As disciples of Jesus, we’re called to do more than that; were commanded to respond to hate in love. If we cannot manage more than love for love, what makes us different from the lowest of the low? Nothing, nothing at all!
Then there’s the question of being civil. Jesus tells us that if the only ones we’re willing to extend niceties to are those in our own crowd, how are we any different from even the pagans? Our call is to reach beyond our own crowd, beyond what I call polite society and extend common courtesies. We cannot be content to act like everyone else in the world, even in the matter of who gets a greeting from us and who does not. As children of the most-high God, as people who have received God’s amazing grace, we’re called to be different from the world around us. This includes how we respond to, and treat, our enemies.
Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” As William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, said, “The only way a Christian has of getting rid of his enemies is to love them into being his friends.” When I started writing this sermon, I chose the title “Stop the Hate”. But I realized that doesn’t even begin to address the problem or the how do we stop it. So I asked myself how are we to respond to the hate we see being exhibited in our world today? We look to God’s word.
Jesus was clear in His teachings, we’re commanded to first forgive; remember, forgiveness isn’t optional. Then we’re called to love others as Christ loves us, and finally we’re called to pray for our neighbors. Remember, if we truly pray for others, including our enemies, out of forgiveness and love, it’s impossible to hate. Will this be easy, no! But Jesus has promised to be with us even to the end, so He is present with us even in times of hatred and persecution and He will provide the strength we need to forgive, love and pray.
Amen