A shelter of grace (2.23.25)

Luke 6:27-38

Deep in Central Mexico in a mountainous state called Tlaxcala, there is a small Roman Catholic Parish called the Sagrada Familia. Sacred Heart.  The church is white stucco and situated right in the middle of an average neighborhood surrounded by white stucco homes with their walled in yards.  Behind the church is a giant paved courtyard. Part of the yard is covered by a corrugated tin roof as a shelter from the sun. (At that high altitude, with those bright blue skies, the sun can be fierce.)  There’s a chicken coop in the corner with rabbits and hens and a small office nearby with mostly things like acetaminophen, aloe vera, and Band-Aids.  There’s humble bunk room next to the kitchen with a few dozen bunks.  Though some nights there are far more people in the shelter than beds. On the bright orange wall of the courtyard, near the small soccer court, there is a painted phrase that reads,

“nada te turbe, 
nada te pase. 
Todo le pasa-- 
Dios no se muda. 
la paciencia todo lo alcanza, 
quiene a dios tiene, 
nada le falta. 
Solo dios basta.”

St. Theresa of Avila wrote these words in the 16th century, and later, the Taize community in Eastern France later made them into a song: 

Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten, 
those who seek God shall never go wanting. 
Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten. 
God alone fills us.

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This short little verse gives some context for how Jesus is speaking in our gospel reading today.  Last week we heard the words that came right before this where Jesus says “blessed are you who are hungry for you will be filled.” “Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh.”  Jesus offered all the folks there listening to him blessings. He wanted them to live lives of contentment, wholeness and even joy.  And in the case of his bedraggled followers, there with him, he taught them how they can hold onto peace and even joy, while the world around them is swirling with judgement, animosity, contempt and violence. 

When someone is cruel to you, oh, how it can feel good to be cruel back. When someone is judgmental, it can feel so good to put them in their place. When someone is hateful, compassion and mercy can be the farthest things from our minds. But Jesus is teaching those listening of a different path. 

This is not the first time Jesus has taught a way of living that goes against the grain.  A few weeks ago, we heard the story where he rooted back into the books of Isaiah and Leviticus to remind us that just when the world is quick to rank some people as worth more than others, we remember that is not true. All people are beloved to God, no one is more important than the other. Full stop.

This week, Jesus lays out another challenge to his followers: “if you love those who love you,” he says “what grace is that?”  It’s almost like he said, “Come on now, it’s easy to love people who love you back! It’s easy to lend money to someone you know will pay you back!”  You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!  Quid pro quo.

That kind of love and lending is a transaction. It means that what you’re going to do is going dictate how I’m going to act.  Your behavior is going to have an outsized influence on mine: If you’re hateful, I’ll be hateful. If you’re judgmental, I’ll be judgmental. Now, if you’re grateful and humble, lovely! I’ll be kind to you. But if you are my enemy? …I’ll be yours.

The challenge is to love people who we don’t like. To love, even, our enemies.

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The cement courtyard in that church shelter butts right up against the train tracks where a freight train barrels through the Mexican countryside, it’s dozens of cars long. As it approaches at full speed, 
the ground trembles. It slows a little in this small town of Apizaco where the tracks turn and people hop off to spend a night in this shelter. The people who cling to the top of this train hitching a ride call it la bestia.  They ride that train up from Chiapas and come from many places: Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Caracas, Managua.  Once, I met a man and his son there who were from Iran.  But one thing holds true: 
they all need shelter and a safe place to spend the night.  

I’ve never been in need of that kind of physical shelter. My life has been uniquely easy, even profoundly easy in many ways. Yes, I’ve needed shelter from a rainstorm, but I’ve not experienced that kind of desperation where I’ve not been sure where I’ll sleep. 

That said, I have had moments in life where I’ve needed other types of shelter. I think we’ve all have.  Think of the shelter of a parent that nurtures his child, like a hen gathering you under her wings. Or, the the shelter of a friendship that protects you and listens to you when you feel misunderstood or lost or the shelter and relief of companionship when you’re alone. Think of the shelter of someone who helped you when things went off the rails in your lives or the shelter of forgiveness when we’ve made a mistake. 

Sometimes we need spiritual shelter.  Maybe you’ve read headlines that shout that pieces of your identity and who you love are unlovable. Maybe you’ve heard that how you were made was a mistake. Maybe you’ve heard a few too many messages that that the amount of melanin in your skin determines the amount of love and honor you deserve.  Maybe the barrage of hatred makes you feel like you’re not wanted in this country—or your own country--or anywhere; and you find a spiritual shelter in knowing that all of who you is fearfully and wonderfully made, wanted, honored and loved by God. 

We all need a shelter of grace.

But what about a shelter for someone you don’t like? Or that you despise?

When I zoom out, I can see that, our best shelter is the radical, steadfast, healing love, that Jesus speaks of here.  It is a forgiving love. It is a love that acknowledges one another’s humanity. It is a shelter of grace.
This kind of shelter is easiest to offer to someone we love or even like.  Offering this kind of gracious shelter to our enemies is very hard.

Shockingly, Jesus says, "God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." That's a tall order if we’re supposed to emulate that. This kind of love is a little maddening. It might even seem dumb or foolish because the world doesn’t exactly run on grace.  Returning hatred with vengeance or contempt is a lot more common and mainstream.   But as Theresa of Avila wrote, don’t let this hate trouble you, don’t let it frighten you, (don’t respond to it, let it shape your behavior), find your fullness in God.  

A shelter of grace. 

But a shelter of grace for our enemy?  Is that wise? 

There’s a lot of talk of ideological enemies these days or foes.  I’m not suggesting that we simply shrug and roll with an opinion that challenges your convictions.  I am not saying that you shouldn’t feel upset or angry about other’s differences or offer this forgiving shelter to someone who has shown exceptional personal evil to you, (in that case, someone else needs to take that baton instead of you).

Instead, I am saying, that we aren’t to participate in this conventional pattern of contempt and tit-for-tat. We’re to step out of the ring. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that we are to be “to be God’s question mark against the conventional wisdom of the age.”  The large scale problems that we face as humanity will not be solved in isolation. We have to find a shelter of forgiveness where we find our fullness in God that pulls us out of this pattern where we slug each other.

Michael Curry, former national bishop of the Episcopal church once said that “trying to make meaningful progress when contempt controls the discussion…is like trying to grow a plant in radioactive soil.” 
In this shelter, we grow in our relationships and understanding. With hope, we will even grow towards solutions. So, the very act of refusing to return violence with violence or judgement with judgement is a method of resisting a world bent on vengeance, judgement and self-righteousness. 

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Today, we will celebrate the baptism of little M. Baptism is many things: it is freedom and forgiveness in God. It is this physical expression of God’s grace, it is this sacrament where we learn and know that we are so beloved to God and sheltered in God’s keeping.  Baptism is also an on-ramp to a certain kind of lifestyle that is characterized by love, compassion, nonviolence, generosity and forgiveness.  As Christians, we do not anchor ourselves to vengeance, contempt or judgement, but to love. 

(Honestly, anyone who thinks that following Christ is an easy, tame project needs to read these words of Jesus again.)  Jesus commands us to love our enemies, this is not a friendly suggestion of his. This is our obligation as disciples. 

We do this, not so that God blesses us.  God doesn’t work that way. Of course God blesses us, but God blesses us because that’s who God is, not because we did the right thing and got a prize. 

To that end, when Jesus says, at the end of our reading that, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”  This is the promise: that just when we’ve run dry, that just when the life will be drained out of us, just when we’ve been consumed by contempt God will find us, fill us, shelter us, heal us.

When Jesus had died on the cross, God could have destroyed everyone with vengeance. But God doesn’t respond that way. God responds with love. God responds and resists, and raises Jesus from the dead. 
And this is the pattern: grace upon grace a pattern, a movement, a way of God that draws us to shelter, that mends that which has ruptured that fills those who are emptied, that bring life from places we were convinced were dead. And we’re called to participate.

Little M., we are here to live this call with you, what a time to be baptized, what a gift to all of us to participate today.  God bless you on this occasion of your baptism and may God hold you close today and always.