Proper 18C - 9.7.25

SERMON

CHURCH OF THE ATONEMENT

PROPER 18C

SEPT 7, 2025

The Rev. Anne Wrider

There are times when the lessons for a given Sunday are filled with beautiful thoughts and inspiring and comforting words. Writing a sermon for those times is a true pleasure. And then there are weeks like this one. Today’s lessons are tough. They are challenging and harsh. How do we find the good news of God’s love in them?

Moses says to the people of Israel, ”if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God…then you shall live…but if you are led astray to bow down to other gods…you shall perish…I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life…” And Jesus’ words are even harsher. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

Now, one rule of thumb when studying Scripture is that we do not take it literally. But we DO take it seriously.  We have enough instances of Jesus telling us to love one another that we can pretty much trust that he doesn’t mean that he now wants us to start hating. But he’s using these extreme words for a reason, and we need to try to understand what that reason is.

I think he may mean something like this. Do you remember the first time you fell in love, really fell, head over heels? Or if you don’t have that memory, do you remember when you first fell in love in another way? It may have been finding a passion for an academic or professional calling. A friend of mine, for example,  was telling me about discovering her passion for languages. What she described sounded a lot like falling in love. When that kind of love hits you, you will go anywhere and do anything to be with that person or be immersed in that passion. Nothing gives you greater pleasure than being with your love, nothing else seems important anymore.  Activities and even people who seemed important before take second place to your love. You would dare to give up your dearest possession for your love. I think that is what Jesus is talking about.  We are called to love God more than anything else in this world.

And if we hear it that way, the words of Moses make more sense. And even the Psalm take on a different tone.

1 Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, *nor lingered in the way of sinners,nor sat in the seats of the scornful!

2 Their delight is in the law of the Lord, *and they meditate on his law day and night.

3 They are like trees planted by streams of water,bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; *everything they do shall prosper.

The tree drinks in nourishment from the streams of water, and the deeper it sinks its roots, the stronger it becomes. If we allow ourselves to fall utterly in love with God, if we sink our roots deep into the Divine, we are nourished by infinite love and we are given life, joy, and the power to love.

And, going back to Moses, what is it to choose life? It seems to me that it is the choice to live in love, to let the power of compassion lead us, and to learn to love every person and thing that God has created. That’s not always easy. We religious folk tend to be pretty clear about what’s right and what’s wrong. We admire those who are just and merciful and wise. The problem comes when we are confronted with people and situations that are unjust and unmerciful. Then we tend to get pretty unloving pretty fast. 

A lot of us have struggled with that in the last eight or nine months. So much of our public life has become filled with bitterness, injustice and rancor. It is natural that we become angry in the face of institutional brutality and cruelty. But it is very easy to slip from anger into hatred. We see innocent people treated with callousness and we want to strike out. We want to love our neighbors and hate our enemies. But if we take living the way of Christ seriously, we don’t get to do that. Every person, including every politician, is a beloved child of God.  To choose life is to choose life for all creation. And the call of Christ is to love all creation, even the worst of it.

 In a sense, then, this is Jesus’ words in Luke turned on their head. By choosing to love God above all other things, to choose love in every moment, is to see all things in the light of God’s love. We turn our gaze away from the people and things of our world so that when we look at them again, we see them with God’s eyes and not our own. This is hard work, which may be why Jesus’ words are so strong. He knows that the work of love, real love, Christian love, is a challenge, and not to be taken lightly. That is why we come together week by week – to be strengthened for the work of love. We are welcomed, forgiven and fed, and the love we experience here goes with us as we go back into the world.

May God continue to challenge us to love more deeply, and lead us to streams of living water, where we may put down our roots and drink from everlasting life.

Amen.