A sermon for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, February 23, 2025. The scriptures are Genesis 45:3-11, 15, 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50, Luke 6:27-38, and Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42.

At Morning Prayer last Wednesday, we read Psalm 109. That psalm begins simply enough, but it very quickly gets into some harsh language. It’s aimed at an enemy, the kind of person who speaks with a “lying tongue,” who accuses falsely, and who is ‘wicked.”

The Psalm rails at God,

Because he did not remember to show mercy, *
but persecuted the poor and needy
and sought to kill the brokenhearted.
Let his children be waifs and beggars; *
let them be driven from the ruins of their homes.
Let the creditor seize everything he has; *
let strangers plunder his gains.

I have to admit that some of that angry language felt really good to say. Like believers for thousands of years, the psalm helped me to name and vent some feelings and frustrations—with people (who seem to get away with doing bad things), and a little bit of my frustration with God, for not dealing with some people the way I think they deserve.

The scriptures today can seem challenging but are timely, I think. We see a situation that might have called for one of those angry psalms in the very first reading from Genesis.

If anyone was ever justified in using an angry psalm to hurl abuse down on his enemies, it might have been Joseph.

To understand what’s going on in today’s reading, we need to recall a little of the story of Joseph. He was the favorite son of his father Jacob, and Joseph had a gift of dreams and visions. His father loved him so much that he gave him a special coat, one the King James Bible describes as a “coat of many colors,” thus the Broadway show, “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.” But Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him. They hated hearing about his dreams (which usually privileged him over them), and they resented their father’s love for young Joseph. Finally, the rage and resentment of the brothers grew to the point that they threw Joseph into a pit and sold him into slavery. They told their father that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.

But Joseph eventually ends up in the house of an Egyptian official and has all kinds of adventures you can read about in Genesis 37-50. Because Joseph receives dreams and can predict the future, he is able to see that a famine is coming, so he helps Egypt prepare. At the height of the famine, Joseph’s brothers (still living back in Canaan) begin to search for grain and end up begging for food in Egypt. They come to Joseph, but don’t recognize him as their brother. And even though Joseph tests them a little, (and I like to think Joseph is really trying to decide whether he can forgive them or not), Joseph eventually decides to forgive, and we have the highpoint of the story—a story of forgiveness—that we heard in today’s scripture reading.

Joseph hasn’t reached this position easily. At some point, he must have used angry psalm-like words against his brothers. And yet, God’s grace overtakes Joseph and helps him to see that if he matches anger with anger, resentment with resentment, nothing is accomplished. Having reached this point of choosing how to respond to his brothers, he explains, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good” (Gn. 50:20).

If we were in the position of Joseph, of somehow having power over someone who had tried to do us wrong—how would we act? Would we go for the jugular and really make it hurt, seeking vengeance, wanting to feel like a wrong is being righted, somehow trying to balance scales of an eye for an eye? Or do would we remember the sometimes-challenging way Jesus?

Jesus says,

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Jesus is not saying, “embrace being the victim.” Instead, he’s suggesting that even when we’re victimized, we still have agency. We can choose what to do next. If we choose NOT to remain the victim, we can “turn the other cheek,” or “give shirt and pants as well as a coat,” and in so doing, we take control of the situation for good and for God’s good. We turn the energy and the power of the equation and offer blessing, forgiveness, and a way forward. We can say with Joseph, ““Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”

The Franciscan Richard Rohr suggests that sometimes loving our enemies involves what he calls “integrating the negative.” Rohr points out that often the very thing we hate about others, the things that really get us going, are perhaps aspects or parts of ourselves that we hide, or suppress, or pretend don’t exist. He writes

“Our enemies always carry our own shadow side, the things we don’t like about ourselves. We will never face our own shadow until we embrace those who threaten us (as Francis of Assisi embraced the leper in his conversion experience). The people who turn us off usually do so because they carry our own faults in some form.” [See Richard Rohr’s post for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2025 on his blog with the Center for Action and Contemplation.]

I’m not sure Rohr is right about that in every situation. But his advice that we look within is good advice to slow us down, to put a pause on whatever it is we’re about to do or say, and to think and pray carefully, if there is also some aspect of ourselves, we need to look at, before hurling abuse at the one we perceive as an enemy.

Rohr suggests that “loving the enemy” includes two things:

“First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive…. Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship….

“Second, we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that they are. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy….
There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of their acts are not quite representative of all that they are. We see them in a new light. We recognize that their hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched in their being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.”

Jesus calls us from a purely reactionary way of living. Without thinking or reflecting, we can return hate for hate. In the same way, it’s sometimes easy to love those who love us, regardless of whether that affection is helpful or warranted. Jesus calls us to a Christ-centered way, in which we pause, reflect, pray, and ask for his direction. That direction then gives us what we need to ACT with intention and with love.

There will probably always be those times for me, when the angry words of Psalm 109 seem like the only kind of prayer I can muster for certain people. But those words and sentiments are burned away in the light of Christ’s love, a love that move toward, not away. It’s a love that transforms me and the other. And it’s a way of mercy—for myself and for others.

In just a few weeks, we begin the Season of Lent. You’ll notice that at the very beginning of our worship services, instead of saying or singing “Glory to God in the highest,” we’ll instead say or sing, “Lord have mercy upon us.” Lent is a season for asking God’s mercy—but may the Spirit enable us not only to ask for God’s mercy to be shown to you and me, but also that God would enable us show mercy to ourselves, to one another, and to the world.

Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “Be merciful, just as God is merciful.”

May God have mercy on us, and let us in the ways of mercy and love. Amen.