There are times when I turn to the Holy Scriptures and God’s comfort is undeniable, but sometimes, on the first read, I can read our sacred texts as an impossible bar to clear. In today’s gospel, I have to confess, my first thoughts were that I do not love my enemies as I should; if someone took my goods, I would, in fact, ask for them again. And I felt myself begin to make a mental list of all the things one needs to do to ‘win’ at Christianity. You gotta give to everyone, you gotta not be judgy, you gotta bless those who curse you. Pretty soon, I felt myself sliding into a slimy understanding of what God might be inviting us to here. I felt overwhelmed by the idea that this list just sets us up to fail, and if that’s the case, the question begins to creep in, “is it even worth trying to meet this high bar?”
And with all of this in my mind, it was actually the last line of our gospel text that made me pause: “the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” Something clicked in my brain, and I realized that I was forcing my perception of Christianity around what I thought Christ was meaning instead of simply listing to the teacher and letting his words guide me.
And I don’t want us to get it wrong. Jesus is not saying these words in congratulations to this crowd for all the ways in which they’ve got it right, but he is instead, inviting them to a life that is shaped by the love that will ultimately land him on the cross. The words of Jesus here are the words of God inviting us into a deeper way of life; this way of life, this cruciform, meaning this cross-shaped, way of living is one that Christ is offering to the crowd as they, too, consider if it’s worth it.
In the Sermon on the Plain, which comes right before this, and we heard last week in church, Christ works to make things level, and it gives us a chance to decide. Do we actually want to be disciples of Christ and not just Christians in name only? Do we want to take up the patterns of life that Christ offers here?
There are moments in our lives, sometimes fortunately and sometimes unfortunately, that allow us the opportunity to pause and truly ask ourselves deep questions. Tragically, the time after a natural disaster shows us who we are at our core and eventually allows us to ask who do we want to be. What kind of people do we want to be? What kind of Christians do we want be? What kind of Church do we want to be?
Maybe it is easy for us to love our enemy, but hard to not judge? Or perhaps it’s easy to write checks without need for repayment, but the idea of forgiveness rattles our weary bones? Maybe you’re waiting to feel stable after the flood or maybe just all of it feels impossible right now, as the compounding effects of the floods both logistically and physiologically are too heavy.
The reality is, we are all different people than we were three years ago, y’all are a different faith community, and the unique gift of that is it allows us to stop and consider whether we actually want to be disciples of Christ. Not whether we want to be Christians just because that’s what we’ve always done, something terrifyingly easy to do in our region of the world, but whether we want to be changed by the teacher, the Christ, who invites us to a deeper way of life.
I would argue that it is worth it. I would argue that the measure we give is worth paying attention to. That loving our enemy is worth what it costs us, as is judgement-free mercy that challenges us in this deeper way of life. I believe that it’s worth it, I believe that it worth considering the measure we give and accepting God’s invitation into a deeper way of life, but this is a decision that you will have to make on your own.
We each must consider what it will cost to be a disciple of Christ on our own and then we come together to the uncomfortable places that Christ invites each of us to in today’s gospel. So, consider the measure you give to the world, and whether you would be happy with it being returned unto you the same.
The measure we give to the world is one that will be deeply shaped by the things laid out in today’s gospel, perhaps especially to the extra tricky parts. And so, I invite you this week, as we all stand in this in-between place full of grief and recovery to consider the measure you give, the measure we collectively give. And as you do so, consider whether or not you’ll accept Christ’s invitation into this deeper way of life to become disciples of our crucified and resurrected Messiah.
A sermon delivered to the people of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Hazard, Kentucky on February 23, 2025 for Epiphany 7C on Luke 6:27-38.
Becca Kello 