“Unexpected Love”
Original sermon given on February 23, 2025, written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“Unexpected Love”
Luke 6.27-38
Luke 6.27-38
In the name of the Living God and the Christ who has appeared to us. Amen.
The One who had everything, gave it all away. The one who was slandered and lied about kept silent. The one who had every right for vengeance and retribution, forgave. The Judge over all humanity was condemned as a criminal. Eternity took on time, holiness, sin; life itself embraced death.
This our Lord Jesus did for us and for all of humanity because he is God’s Love Incarnate. Agape love. The self-giving, self-sacrificing, self-emptying love of God in mercy to those who don’t deserve it.
In a frightful thought you might be able to imagine with me, a different God — one who shows little mercy to his creatures; or is inconsistent or capricious; or gets too busy to too crabby to care; or comes down once in a while for mischief and fun, and then departs again — like the gods of the pagans.
Or perhaps you’d rather have the Perfect Fairness God who knows all and distributes rightly to everyone precisely as they have it coming. The perfect Karma God. Everything is fairness, equity, and the scales of justice balanced perfectly for you and everyone else. Is this the God you really want? But what happens if it’s discovered that you’re worse than you let on, on the outside. If the externals are all in order, but the heart is filled and festering with resentment and covetousness and hatred.
Or perhaps, the most frightful thought of all: you’d rather enthrone your own self as God. Make your own choices. Live with your own consequences. Total freedom to do what you want to do and be what you want to be. But are you sure this is this the God you really want? For what happens when you let yourself down; can’t forgive yourself or silence the incessant, internal criticism; or can’t claw your way out of anxiety, depression or despair; or can’t find meaning outside your own desires.
You see where this leads us? All the gods of Man’s making ultimately terrify us.
The only true God is the one who revealed himself in Jesus Christ, who gave himself in mercy for all. So (follow me on this) if this is the case, it means that the very nature of the omnipotent God is love — that’s what’s behind the creation of the universe, that’s what’s behind the babe in the manger, the Godman bleeding on the cross, the power bursting through death, the gift of the Holy Spirit. And that’s what awaits you and me in eternity — love which never ends.
And if this is true, then it also leads inescapably to a radical way of looking at and living life. Jesus’ words in this sermon challenge us in three ways: how we love, what we possess, and who we judge.
How We Love
Jesus, who was agape love enfleshed, had to teach about this love. Had to because it is so unlike our world and our ways. How countercultural and convicting are his teachings here in Luke 6! Our Lord ploughs right past the Ten Commandments and the moral law and the expectations and rules of every law in every society which has ever existed: “But I say to you… love your enemies and do good to those who hate you…”
We’ve got a hard enough time loving even those people the world expects us to love, let alone our enemies: we find it hard enough to be charitable to our family, our roommates, our coworkers, those we serve with in the church, those we commune with. The smallest misunderstanding or bitterness festers into hatred and disgust and division. How unlike Christ this is! How would it be if our Lord had the same attitude towards us as we towards each other? Jesus turns the tables over on us by commanding us to go even further, and love those who hate us.
What We Possess
And what of our possessions? The one who died impoverished and naked, having not one article of clothing remaining, calls us to live a life of emptying ourselves to others. “Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who take away your goods do not demand them back.” Yet we clutch with both hands every possible comfort of this world; we spend more on ourselves in a day than on others in a month; the amount we spend on the mindless, even godless is exponentially more than we give to the Lord’s work of the gospel. All of this, even when we know that in the end, we can’t take a single earthly item with us when we die.
Who We Judge
And what about judging? If the body of Christ spent as much energy and effort loving those around them as we do condemning them and complaining about them, I imagine our churches would be filled. This is to our shame, because we know the gospel is underserved mercy for each of us. And yet how easy is it to treat those around us as morally inferior, or those we oppose online as if we’re morally superior. Really? How does that work? Grace is an undeserved gift, but I’m better than everyone else?
Friends in Christ, the Lord Jesus speaks some hard words to us in this “sermon on the plain”. He cuts through it all: the pretention, the clean-cut exterior, the pleasant piety, the niceness and niceties we exchange daily. He cuts through every earthly ethic or law ever written. His word gets to the heart of the matter: “Love like I am, give like I do, take criticism and slander like I did; get nailed to a cross, if it comes to that, and forgive.” This is the way of the Son of God, and it is our way, too, those baptized into him.
In the end, Christians can only live lives of grace. This means, first and most importantly, relying solely upon the grace of God given to us in Jesus. How far we fall and how often we fail, yet Christ’s merciful blood shed for us brings us forgiveness beyond our deserving and beyond our understanding. Christ’s perfect, righteous life is given in exchange for ours at the cross — His kindness to the ungrateful and the wicked, including us.
Christians can only live lives of grace, also, in our gracious disposition towards others. We are daughters and sons of the Most High by grace, for grace. As the mercy of God was inserted into this world by the cross, so also we, born of the cross and bearers of the cross, are inserted into this raging world’s vicious spin-cycle of endless reprisals. By grace, for grace.
Jesus’ words bring us to the realization that in the end, you can’t hate your way out of this. Praise to the Lord who loved us out of this.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.