The secret word
As people of the New Testament we read the Hebrew Scriptures with different eyes. We don’t necessarily regard the Hebrews as predicting Christ at the time but when we read back we can see Christ and Christ figures there. Joseph is one of those characters who here seems to prefigure Christ. Not the young Joseph you understand - that one was a snot-nosed kid, rubbing his brothers noses in his “favourite son” status and his special coat; smugly reporting in detail dreams where he lorded it over them … No it is this older, wiser Joseph we read about today. While Joseph may have been an extremely annoying brother and Jacob a very unwise parent, the actions of the brothers were dreadful.
Would you have blamed Joseph on meeting them again years later to have wreaked revenge on them - what’s that old saying about “revenge is a dish best served cold”? I wonder how we would have acted in that situation? But Joseph acts with grace and mercy, he is generous and forgiving. Joseph reflects what we later see in Christ on the cross forgiving his torturers. He reflects what we hear in the teaching of Christ we read today about loving your enemies. In acting this way Joseph is truly bearing the image of our loving, merciful, generous God. He personifies grace.
In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus began with blessings and woes and now turns his attention to how to live a grace-filled life. Here we read the “golden rule”.
In the Message it reads “To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.” “Love your enemies”. How does that look in practice? A quick series of images flash before our eyes: “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,” and offer those who strike, beg, or steal not retaliation but rather a startling form of assertive, flip-the-script giving: Here’s my other cheek, not just the first one; Here’s my shirt, not just my coat (and remember: most people in Jesus’ audience wore just those two garments, a coat and a shirt — that’s it!); and Here’s what you stole from me — keep it, it’s yours. Summing up this series of examples, Jesus puts it this way: “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return”. This last idea, “expecting nothing in return,” is the key to the whole series. The opposite of ROI. Jesus challenges his listeners to love not as a strategy for gain, a quid quo pro, but rather for the sake of love itself — or better, for the sake of the beloved.
The ROI or “fair exchange” model, according to Jesus, can reduce love to a parody or a commodity. True love doesn’t rely on reciprocity or quid quo pro. True love isn’t fair, it lives and moves beyond the arena of fairness. What do we call this kind of love, this gratuitous giving ? It is grace. We think of grace as God’s territory, God’s characteristic but Jesus calls us to live as children of the Most High, to be merciful as God is merciful. When we love this way we embody the love we were made for. In Genesis God says “ Let us make humans in our image” our purpose as humans is to bear the image of God, God who is generous, just, merciful, loving; one who creates and sustains.
The Greek word for grace is spelled charis, pronounced Har-riss and if you look at this gospel reading in the original Greek this word charis or grace appears 3 times. In the NRSV it is translated credit. “If you love those who love you, “what grace is there in that?” Like a drumbeat, Jesus repeats the word three times: What grace is there in that? What grace is there in that? What grace is there in that? His point is clear: We are made to be gracious, to love gracefully, to practice charis in the image of God’s Charis.”
The emphasis in the Corinthians reading is on the resurrection. in v 49 Paul says “Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.” An alternative reading of that last phrase is “let us also bear the image of the one of heaven.” Bearing God’s image means reflecting his grace.
Like me you may have been appalled by what happened in Auckland this past week when members of Destiny church violently disrupted a children’s event in a Te Atatu library where they had a drag queen reading stories. It was a horrific event by any standards, but for me it was doubly sickening to see this being done in the name of God. This was the opposite of bearing the image of God. God’s love is inclusive and unconditional and this is the kind of love Jesus challenges us to live out.
One commentator puts it this way,
“Jesus is recommending an “unfair” kind of love, an extravagance that benefits not the one who benefits you, but rather the one who opposes you; or indeed, an extravagance that gives more to a thief than the thief takes in the first place! There’s a playful spirit of hyperbole darting in and out of these ideas, as if they’re designed to evoke a kind of absurd, ecstatic state of generosity, a state of pure mercy, a state of grace. Turns out this isn’t a “Golden Rule” at all. It’s a Golden Love, a playful, beautiful, graceful way of life.”
“Jesus is recommending an “unfair” kind of love, an extravagance that benefits not the one who benefits you, but rather the one who opposes you; or indeed, an extravagance that gives more to a thief than the thief takes in the first place! There’s a playful spirit of hyperbole darting in and out of these ideas, as if they’re designed to evoke a kind of absurd, ecstatic state of generosity, a state of pure mercy, a state of grace. Turns out this isn’t a “Golden Rule” at all. It’s a Golden Love, a playful, beautiful, graceful way of life.”
The late Jim Cotter was an Anglican priest and a poet. He wrote the alternative Lord’s prayer we find in our prayerbook, the one that begins “Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain Bearer, Life-giver …” He also wrote a beautiful version of that old hymn For all the Saints
Verse 5 goes like this
“And there will dawn a yet more marvellous day,
the saints with laughter sing and dance and play,
the Clown of Glory tumbles in the way:
Alleluia! Alleluia!”
In the musical Godspell Jesus was portrayed as a clown and certainly some of his teaching and parables have a clown-like ridiculous sense of humour embedded there. I’m sure he had his disciples roaring with laughter at times. So let’s join the Clown of Glory, lets sing and dance and play; instead of living lives characterised by a transactional Golden Rule let us bear God’s image, reflect God’s grace and live lives characterised by a playful, beautiful, generous Golden Love, lives full of grace. Maybe the Kingdom of God would seem more like Good News if everyone realised that it was characterised by that secret word, Grace - the Grace God extends to us and the grace we in turn extend to all around us. Wouldn’t it be great if that became the worst kept secret ever?
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