Luke 6: 27-38 (links validated on 1/18/22)

I’ve shared in the past that I have a list of daily intentions that I pray for. And some years ago the Lord had put on my heart that I needed to name and pray for “enemies” or “people who’ve hurt me/or those I love” or “people I wildly disagree with and frustrate me” or more generically and simply “people I hate.” It might be a bit shocking or disappointing to hear that a priest says there are people he hates. I agree – which is why I felt the Lord directing me that I needed to be more intentional about rooting that out. That when there’s someone that generates that type of emotional response – and knowing what Jesus says in this teaching, I have a responsibility to confront it. So I have a list. One name that I’ll share is the former Archbishop of Newark, the disgraced since laicized Theodore McCarrick...

When the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, Gerrit tenZythoff was 17 years old and leading the sort of life that was common for teenage boys even then — a life filled with schoolwork and sports and good friends. And then his life began to change. First the authorities confiscated the textbooks written by Jews. Then his Jewish teachers and classmates disappeared, the family doctor — also a Jew — died by suicide, and the local butcher who had served the family for so many years — another Jew — was beaten to death. Gerrit’s parents had been active in the underground movement to transport Jewish people out of danger. After the occupation, his father gave specific instructions to Gerrit and his five siblings. He said, “One day you will see people whose presence you will deny. You will see faces that you shall not remember. And you will never ask a name.” So, the tenZthoff children heard movements in the night that were never explained to them, and their parents harbored mysterious people until they could make the next leg of their journey. Some mornings they had breakfast with people who were “never there.” Gerrit found his own ways to protest. He was a good student, but once he came home with a report card with an F in German. He was proud of himself for deliberately flunking the class. His father, a school principal, said “Son, it was not always like this in Germany, not will it always be. A day will come when you have to know the language. After the Germans have lost the war, we will have to talk to them, and you will have to know the language if you want to be part of the solution.” So, he compromised and agreed to pass the class. In 1943, when he was a university student, Gerrit refused to sign a loyalty oath to the German regime...

I don’t know if you have read the book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff (and it’s all small stuff) by Richard Carlson. It offers advice and examples as to how we can live a loving and (more) peaceful life. One chapter shows us a way to be patient rather than upset when someone else does an annoying thing. For instance, if a car swerves in front of you, instead of your asking, “why in the ‘%$#’ did he do that?” ask the question, “what is he trying to teach me?” It is like a game in which everyone is wise and you want to learn. That question changed my perspective a number of times. When a car went through a very narrow opening behind a truck and careened into my lane with several inches to spare, I tried this method. Instead of leaning on the horn and unpacking some road-rage, I asked what the swerver was teaching me. Honestly, it softened my attitude and gave me some compassion...

A racist psycho named Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17, 2015 and ruthlessly gunned down nine innocent people during a Bible study. Among the nine was Ethel Lance, whose daughter, Nadine Collier, while offering her impact statement at Roof’s sentencing, said she forgave the murderer and prayed God would have mercy on him. In 1998 Aaron McKinney and an accomplice lured a young gay man, Matthew Shepherd, out of a bar near Laramie, Wyoming, tied him to a fence, beat him, and left him to die. When McKinney faced the death penalty, Shepherd’s parents, Dennis and Judy, asked the judge to spare his life in their son’s name. Ed, Nadine Collier, and Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd are stunning examples of forgiving the otherwise unforgiveable...

In the opening of her sermon on this text, Rev. Dr. Barbara Lundblad describes getting into an argument with a church sign while on a drive one day. The sign said: “Following Jesus is Loving and Practical.” Lundblad had no issue with the first part, it was the “practical” quality that raised her ire. Practical? In this world? Following Jesus is anything but, she thought. Practical results that lead to worldly success seems a far cry from the life of discipleship. But with Luke 6, Lundblad discusses how the descriptor “practical” can also be applied to the action, without thought of the “results.” In this sense, practical carries a quality of ordinary, or everyday-ness, quotidian. So yes, being a disciple is loving and practical after all. It’s a bit like this Ikea commercial, which somewhat comically depicts our furniture and fixtures as “everyday heroes” who go mostly unrecognized and underappreciated for simply doing what they are supposed to do. Though we know that our Christlike response will be noticed, it is simply and matter-of-factly, what disciples do, day in and day out. Our heroism ought not be so extraordinary if we truly believe in and rest upon Christ and his love.

When the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, Gerrit tenZythoff was 17 years old and leading the sort of life that was common for teenage boys even then — a life filled with schoolwork and sports and good friends. And then his life began to change. First the authorities confiscated the textbooks written by Jews. Then his Jewish teachers and classmates disappeared, the family doctor — also a Jew — died by suicide, and the local butcher who had served the tenZythoff family for so many years — another Jew — was beaten to death. In the midst of these horrors, Gerrit’s family — like so many other Dutch Christian families — sheltered Jews in their home...

“the Gospel in a nutshell,” is the phrase “womb-like”. Womb-like is a very literal translation of the Hebrew and Aramaic words which are translated as “compassionate.” Marcus Borg reminded us that to be compassionate is to be womb-like, to be like a womb.“GOD is like a womb, Jesus says, therefore, you be womb-like.” Borg asks, “What does it mean to be womb-like? and then he answers, “It means to be life-giving, nourishing. It means to feel what a mother feels for the children of her womb: tenderness, willing their well-being, finding her children precious and beautiful. It can also mean a fierceness, for a mother can be fierce when she sees the children of her womb being threatened or treated destructively. Compassion is not just a soft, woozy virtue. It can have passion and fierceness to it as well.”...

I want to begin today by telling you about Rocky Mallardi. It has been quite a while since Rocky Mallardi passed away, probably about twenty-four years or more. His wife, Mittie moved up to Tallahasee, and I believe she also has passed on. Rocky was a member of St. Ignatius for many years. He was the head usher at the 9:00 am children’s Mass. I always found him happy and affable and extremely generous with his time to the parish. One Sunday Rocky came up to me and said that he wanted to apologize for his part in any bad feelings there may have been between us. I was shocked. I told him that I never felt any negativity coming his way and didn’t mean to give him the impression that I was ever upset with him. He said to me, “Well, Father, I haven’t always been the most supportive of you. And I think that it is really important that I apologize.” I never saw Rocky like that before, and I realized that something was going on within him, so I just said, “Rocky, if there is anything you need to say your sorry for, I accept your apology,” and I gave him a hug. I later found out that for the two weeks before that, Rocky was seeking out anyone with whom he felt at odds and setting matters straight. It was not a matter of who was right or wrong. It was a matter of Christian charity and forgiveness. Mittie told me that the day after Rocky spoke to me, he went to his doctor for a full physical. He told the doctor that he felt his life was ending. The doctor told him that everything seemed fine. That night Rocky sat down in his recliner and passed away. That Rocky somehow knew his death was coming is shocking. But even more amazing is the way he approached death. He was determined to die at peace with everyone in his life. Rocky is one of these stones here that is the foundation of St. Ignatius. He is also a man who took today’s Gospel reading very seriously...

Henri Nouwen often highlighted this in his writings. We are not, he tells us, separate from the events that make up the world news each day. Rather, what we see written large in the world news each night simply reflects what’s going on inside of us. When we see instances of injustice, bigotry, racism, greed, violence, murder and war on our newscasts we rightly feel a certain moral indignation. It’s healthy to feel that way, but it’s not healthy to naively think that it’s others, not us, who are the problem. When we’re honest we have to admit that we’re complicit in all these things, perhaps not in their crasser forms, but in subtler, though very real, ways: The fear and paranoia that are at the root of so much conflict in our world are not foreign to us. We too find it hard to accept those who are different from us. We too cling to privilege and do most everything we can to secure and protect our comfort. We too use up an unfair amount of the world’s resources in our hunger for comfort and experience. As well, our negative judgments, jealousies, gossip, and bitter words are, at the end of the day, genuine acts of violence since, as Henri Nouwen puts it: “Nobody is shot by a gun that isn’t first shot by a word. And nobody is shot by a word before he or she is first shot by a murderous thought: Who does she think she is!” The evening news just shows large what’s inside our hearts. What’s in the macrocosm is also in the microcosm...

my friend told me about the dog he’d had for many years: a gray terrier mutt named John that his kids had brought home one day. After his kids moved out, he said he waited patiently for years for John to die a natural death. Well, John stubbornly held on for 15 years, driving my friend absolutely nuts at times with his frustrating canine habits. Time after time after time John would chew through the pickets of their backyard fence and escape. My friend would conceive new ways to block his access to the fence, but John would always find a way around them—resulting in numerous tickets from the county’s animal control. One day the police showed up at his office threatening to take him to jail for “contempt of court.” Apparently one of the animal control citations issued when John had rampaged through the neighborhood had inadvertently not been paid. “It would have been so easy to decide to get rid of that dog,” he told me. “But John taught me a lot about loving. After all, love is a choice, and I made the conscious decision to love John. I learned how to put up with his bad habits and appreciate his loyal love for me. And before long, I was applying this concept of deciding to love to other people, including myself. John changed my life.”...

In the NY Times last Sunday, Charles Blow wrote about dealing with his Covid-related anger. He’s frustrated with people who refuse vaccines and masks, allowing COVID to spread and new variants become more likely. We can’t move on because a minority of people refuse to act, so we all suffer. The comment section was fascinating. Health care professionals told anguishing stories of their sense of futility as they tended to the dying and their anger at the living. A nursing home administrator expressed her grief at the death of 40 percent of her residents despite their best efforts. A few people said they felt like refusing to treat unvaccinated people. Make the unvaccinated go to the end of the line in the ER, charge them higher rates on insurance, or don’t allow them access to needed ventilators. This outcry is like a MASH episode where people get angry at Hawkeye for saving the life of a North Korean soldier in surgery. He’s the enemy who is killing us. Fortunately, a few Hawkeyes commented that doctors save lives regardless of their patients’ moral or political positions...

One of my favourite films is Of Gods and Men (2010) by Xavier Beauvois. In fact, as Lent is fast approaching, I’d recommend it as a spiritual resource (that’s also another way of saying that it’s not one to kick back to on a Friday night!). It tells the true story of a community of Cistercian monks in the little Muslim village of Tibhirine in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria. It’s 1995, and Algeria is in the throes of a vicious civil war between a corrupt government and the Islamic fundamentalist Mujahidin. The monks are the only Christians in the village community. The people love them: one of the monks is a doctor and provides free medical care, the medicines being supplied by the monks’ mother house in France. The monks are deeply respected for the simplicity of their lives, eating what they grow with the assistance of trusted friends from the village. Relations between the monks and the imam are excellent, and Fr Christian, the superior, has an impressive knowledge of the Qu’ran. After migrant building workers from Croatia are killed by the Mujahidin, Fr Christian summarily refuses an offer of armed protection from the government. The monks defuse an attack by the Mujahidin and later Fr Luc, the doctor monk, treats their leader for a bullet wound. The monks struggle, individually and as a community, with the question of whether to stay (as the villagers desperately want them to) or to leave. And Fr Christian grows in his understanding of authority. Martyrdom will come eventually – but who martyred them has never been established...

includes lots of Greek exegesis

always good insights!

When Pope Francis was a parish priest in Argentina, he met a young mother whose husband abandoned her and their children. She didn’t have a steady income, so between jobs, she would prostitute. She continued to attend church, and the parish helped her and her children with food and clothing. Then one day she came by the church and asked to see the priest. Pope Francis writes, “I assumed she wanted to thank me for the package of food, so I asked her if she received it.” “Yes, thank you for that, but I’ve come here to thank you for more. You knew I lived a life of sin…” she said, as tears ran down her face, “But you never stopped calling me Señora.” (That is the Spanish word for a married woman with dignity.) Francis went on to write, “Experiences like this teach you how important it is to welcome people delicately and not wound their dignity. For her, the fact that the parish priest continued to call her Señora, was as important – or perhaps even more important – than the food and clothing we gave her.”

About a year ago, Sally Kohn, who is a political commentator on CNN and describes herself as an openly gay left-wing commentator did something brave and bold. She reached out to people who follow her on social media. But not fans or supporters of hers. Instead, she contacted those who wrote some of the grossest, vilest, most hateful of things you might ever read. People who participate in what’s called “internet trolling” – a type of bullying online where people will write some of the most inflammatory outrageous things to get attention for themselves or divert attention for whatever the initial posting was about. Sally said she expected that some of her political posts would generate a wide range of reactions from people- but was startled by the fact that even the most innocuous of posts – like a picture of her dog in the park would get a rise out of people, causing them to post all kinds of horrendous things. Executives from Twitter told her that she had, what they described, as “some of the worst trolls on the platform.” So she decided to reach out to some of her “trolls” including those who were most vicious to her online, as research for her book “The Opposite of Hate: A field guide to repairing our humanity.” She would message them first, speak with them on the phone, ask them about the messages they sent her...

In 2008 Nadia Bolz-Weber, a 6’ tall, tattoo covered former stand-up comic and recovering alcoholic turned Lutheran pastor started a church in Denver, Colorado called the House for All Sinners and Saints. The people who attended the church were her kind of people – drag queens, transgender youth, street people, addicts, depressives, and people in recovery. Then in 2011 several things happened – Nadia was invited to preach at a large Christian rally in Denver, the Denver Post did an article on her and the House for All Sinners and Saints and people from the suburbs started coming to her church to see what it was like and stayed. Nadia was not happy. She had been praying that the church would grow, she had been doing everything in her power to help it grow, but in her mind when it grew it would continue to be filled with the same kind of marginal people it already had. Nadia was not so happy about the invasion of the suburbanites that after 3 months of people from the suburbs – clean-cut, white, middle-aged people, coming to her church she called a congregational meeting hoping and trusting that if they heard the stories of the people who had been at House for All since the beginning those suburbanites would understand that her church really wasn’t for them and they would go back to their own churches where they belonged.

Generosity is also a product of strength. In her book Nine Steps to Financial Freedom, finance guru Suze Orman uses the analogy of the closed fist. If your fist is closed around what you have, nothing more can come into it. Giving is a matter of faith. Stinginess is a matter of fear. When you obey Jesus’ command to generosity, you’re making two statements of faith. First, you’re saying you believe in God’s providence. You can give because you know God won’t let you starve. You’re also saying you believe in that to which you give. You’ve made the choice to extend God’s blessings to a righteous cause. You’ve nudged the Kingdom of God just a little bit further forward by your generosity. So ask yourself: Would you rather be faithful or afraid?...

A few months ago in October, Pope Francis canonized a modern-day saint, Archbishop Óscar Romero from El Salvador. You may remember the archbishop. He spoke out very boldly and clearly against the injustice and the violence in his country. He was hated by those who wanted to perpetrate violence, by those — the military and the rich who looked down on the poor. He was hated because he was working for justice, rejecting violence, and rejecting war. As you may remember, he was shot in that tiny chapel where he used to say Mass every day near a hospital where he lived. Standing at the altar as he was about to offer the gifts, an assailant opened the back door of the church, took aim and shot. The archbishop fell to the floor and died in a matter of minutes. But just two weeks before that happened, he had been interviewed. The reporter asked him about all the threats against his life. "Shouldn't you leave your country? Or at least shouldn't you at least be silent?" The archbishop told the reporter, "I have been threatened with violence many, many times. But I do not believe in death without resurrection, and even if they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people." That did happen. He's remembered everywhere in El Salvador...

In John Steinbeck’s classic novel The Grapes of Wrath, readers get to know the Joad family pretty well. The Joads are dirt poor “Okies” who are forced by the Dust Bowl to travel cross-country to California where, they have been led to believe, a virtual paradise awaits them. There will be plenty of work, warm weather, a bounty of fresh fruit and vegetables to eat. Along the way they encounter every imaginable hardship, including losing to death both the grandpa and grandma who had set out with them. They are in perpetual need. But as they travel, something comes up almost like a refrain and it is to the effect “Never go to rich folks to ask for help because they won’t give it. It’s the poor that always helps out folks. From what little they have, the poor share in a way the rich never will.” It’s a quirky paradox of life: the more you have, the more you calculate before giving something away. You want to insure your investment. You don’t want to be snookered. Yet those who have very little give more freely. The very people who by all rights ought to be watching out for every penny they have are often the same ones who are generous to a fault. It feels like the kind of thing Jesus was getting at in Luke 6.

Martin Luther King Jr's home was burned down one night by a group of white men who did not like his message about the equality of the races. The situation after the fire was extremely dangerous. African Americans, under the leadership of King were becoming more confident of themselves, and less willing to be oppressed and neglected by society. And they were angry... Angry about how they had been treated for years by white society. Angry in particular that night that their leader's home had been destroyed. A crowd of King's friends and supporters gathered outside the shell of the burnt out house. Some talked of getting guns. Others talked about getting petrol and setting fire to the homes of all the white people in the area so they could suffer as the black people had suffered. The crowd wanted to hurt those who had hurt them. They wanted to hurt those who had burned Dr King's home. They wanted to hurt their enemies. Indeed they wanted to destroy them. That night however did not end up that way. Instead the crowd left their enemies in peace and they went home determined to win the victory with votes instead of with guns, with politics instead of with fire, with love instead of hate. One of the things Martin Luther King Jr told the crowd that night was this: When you live by the rule ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, you end up with a nation of blind and toothless people. Martin Luther King Jr was a person who tried to live the gospel of radical social reversal...

I can think of no better way to begin my own preparations to preach on this text than to look to the work of the great Walter Wink. I will always be indebted to this amazing teacher for all that I have learned and continue to learn from him. The videos below comprise the various parts of a lecture that Wink offered on the subject of Jesus’ teaching on Non-Violence. For anyone who aspires to follow Jesus this lecture is a must see. Wink’s books are well worn friends that I have often thumbed through to find more than a nugget or two to enable me to teach anew something that I have long since come to know as a result of Wink’s excellent work!...

Four of the seven events the class of 1981 remembered were “The Death of John Lennon”, “Prince Charles Marries Lady Diana Spencer,” “Terry’s Fox’s Marathon of Hope” and “Idiot Tries to Assassinate Pope JPII.” I’m not sure what we thought of the man who shot and killed Lennon - but we called Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who tried to kill the Pope, “an idiot”. As far as I know Chapman is still in prison after having been denied parole 11 times but Agca is a free man. Some time after the shooting, the Pope met with Agca in prison and forgave him, and furthermore, asked that he be pardoned. When he was finally released he returned to Rome and placed two dozen white roses on the late Pope’s grave...

our human nature often goes against this instruction to love, do good to, and forgive enemies and those who do bad things to us and others. So I’m in awe of someone like Antonia Brenner who died at the age of 86. Known as the “Prison Angel,” she left a comfortable life in Beverly Hills to minister in a notorious Mexican prison with a population of 8,000—eventually giving away most of her possessions, putting on a homemade nun’s habit and spending more than 30 years living in a cell to be closer to inmates. La Mesa was a notorious hellhole where rich drug lords ruled the roost while hundreds of their poorer brethren lived in the cold and squalor amid rats and raw sewage, with no beds, food or even lavatory paper unless their relatives brought supplies. Abusive prison guards contributed to the misery, mistreating the mentally ill and administering cruel interrogations. Mother Antonia had a neuromuscular disorder called myasthenia gravis and was a twice divorced mother of eight children when she began working with the poor in Mexico in the 1960's. She first began providing basic needs like aspirin and eyeglasses for the prison population. She sang in worship services, got a contract to sell soda to the prisoners, and used proceeds to bail out low-level offenders. She prepared those killed in gang fights for burial. Inmates reported how Mother Antonia once walked into the middle of a prison riot while bullets flew and tear gas filled the air. When the inmates saw her standing there fearless in her habit—the fighting stopped....

Walking through the woods in winter, it is easy to spot mistletoe. It sits in splendor on lofty branches high in an elm's canopy. After all the leaves have fallen and the woods have turned to grey, the mistletoe offers white berries and shiny green leaves like a Siren's song to those wandering beneath her. It is no wonder that all kinds of myths and legends have been written about mistletoe. Mysterious and vulnerable, she hovers above in glory offering plenty of room for those of us below her to judge her - both for her beauty and her poison. People have shot mistletoe down with BB guns and climbed dangerously high just to capture her twigs. Bound in ribbon and tied under a doorway, she emboldens those who stand beneath her to await a kiss. One legend declares that the dangerous fruit of mistletoe was used to poison the arrow of an enemy of the goddess of love in order to kill her son. Weeping tears on the deadly arrow, the goddess cast a spell over mistletoe promising all who passed beneath her to be given a kiss. Mistletoe is a good symbol for the absorption that we give an enemy...

Nadia Bolz-Weber, after describing mistreatment as a chain that binds us, writes stunningly about the power of forgiveness. I want to share her words in conclusion, because they speak so powerfully to me: “Maybe retaliation or holding onto anger about the harm done to me doesn’t actually combat evil. Maybe it feeds it. Because in the end, if we’re not careful, we can actually absorb the worst of our enemy, and at some level, start to become them. So what if forgiveness, rather than being a pansy way to say, ‘It’s okay,’ is actually a way of wielding bolt-cutters, and snapping the chains that link us? What if it’s saying, ‘What you did was so not okay, I refuse to be connected to it anymore.’? Forgiveness is about being a freedom fighter. And free people are dangerous people. Free people aren’t controlled by the past. Free people laugh more than others. Free people see beauty where others do not. Free people are not easily offended. Free people are unafraid to speak truth to stupid. Free people are not chained to resentments. And that’s worth fighting for.”...

It was shortly after World War II when the World Council of Churches decided to check on how its money was being spent in a remote area of the Balkans where the World Council was trying to help needy churches re-build after the war. So it dispatched John Mackie, who was an officer with the WCC and the president of the Church of Scotland. Accompanying Dr. Mackie were two other pastors, both of whom came from a fairly conservative, pietistic denomination. One afternoon they paid a visit to an Orthodox priest in a remote village. The man was clearly thrilled to receive the visit in that he otherwise worked in rather lonely isolation. Immediately upon seating the guests in his study the priest produced a box of fine Havana cigars and offered one to each of his three guests. Dr. Mackie gingerly took one, bit the end off, lit it, and took a few puffs, saying how fine it was. The other two pastors looked horrified. "No thank you! We do NOT smoke!" they quickly said. Feeling bad that he maybe had offended the two brothers, the priest wanted to make amends and so left the room only to re-appear with a flagon of his finest wine. Dr. Mackie took a glassful, swirled it, sniffed it like a connoisseur, and then praised its fine quality. Soon he asked for another glass. Meanwhile his traveling companions drew back even more visibly. "No thank you! We do NOT drink!" they snapped. Well, later when the three returned to their car, the two pastors assailed Mackie. "Here you are an officer with the World Council and the leader of Scotland's Church and yet you smoke and drink!?" "No, I don't," Mackie barked at them. "But SOMEbody in there had to be a Christian!"

Some years after the Civil War was over, the famous Confederate General Robert E. Lee went to visit a friend's plantation in Kentucky. Out in front of the mansion were the sad remains of a grand old magnolia tree whose limbs had been blown away by the artillery of the Union Army. Despite the passage of years, the lady of the house was still bitter and she wept angry tears as she showed Lee the scarred and blackened tree trunk. Then she paused, waiting expectantly for him to denounce those hated Yankees. The general was silent for awhile and then, looking at the tree, he said, "Cut it down, dear lady, and forget it!" For years that woman had been poisoning and shrinking her life by clinging to bitter memories, and it was long past time to stop...

I was reading a story from Sarajevo in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1992. At four o'clock one afternoon in May, a mortar shell exploded in a square killing twenty-two people who were waiting in line for food. The next day, at the same time, a cellist from the Sarajevo Symphony went to the spot where the shell had exploded, set up his chair and instrument and played Albonini's "Adagio." The cellist returned each day for the next twenty-two days to play the same piece, once for each of the twenty-two persons killed. One might call it an act of consecration of remembering so that the dead would be honored and not forgotten...

In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, Mahatma Ghandi developed a whole philosophy of non-violence. This young man from India, bright, articulate, and educated as a lawyer, was trained to be an English gentleman, to dress like an English gentleman, to act as an English gentleman. But in a night of dramatic conversion, he saw what he felt was a greater truth, Truth with a capital T. He saw the Truth. He renounced his wealth and chose a life of radical simplicity, giving away all his jewels and wealth to the poor. He then began to practice non-violence and passive resistance to all evil he encountered in the discrimination against fellow Indians in South Africa. In the 1930s, during a riot at the salt mines in South Africa, thousands of Indians were beaten, arrested and killed, but no one, under the leadership of Ghandi, fought back. Ghandi became a symbol of the power of non-violence. He was killed by a violent assassin’s bullet, and he became even a stronger symbol of non-violent resistance. Ghandi is still a powerful symbol of non-violence today...

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn. He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. "He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says. As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."...

President Kennedy once appealed to the Golden Rule in a speech he made during the enrolment ceremony at the University of Alabama when, for the first time, black students were included. He asked the white students to consider what it would be like to be treated as second-class citizens because of the colour of their skins. He asked them to imagine what it would be like to be black and to be told that because that because they were black they couldn’t vote, go to the best colleges, eat in some restaurants or sit at the front of the bus. He said, ‘the heart of the questions is whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.’ The Golden Rule asks us to imagine ourselves in someone else’s place and to treat them as we would want to be treated...

Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was burned down one night by a group of white men who did not like his message about the equality of the races. The situation after the fire was extremely dangerous. Blacks, under the leadership of Dr. King were becoming more confident of themselves, less willing to be oppressed and neglected by society - and they were angry - angry about how they had been treated for years by white society, - and angry in particular that night that their leader's home had been destroyed. A crowd of Dr. King's friends and supporters gathered and some talked about getting guns and others talked about getting gasoline and going and setting fire to the homes of all the white people in the area so that they could suffer as the black people had suffered. The crowd wanted to hurt those who had hurt them, - they wanted to hurt those who had burned Dr. King's home, - they wanted to hurt their enemies - indeed they wanted to destroy them. A pretty natural feeling I would say - We all feel like hitting back when we are hit, We all feel like returning insult for insult, and curse for curse. That night however did not end up that way - the way that feels so natural - instead the crowd left their enemies in peace and they went home determined to win the victory with votes instead of with guns, with politics instead of with fire, with love instead of hate.. One of the things that Martin Luther King Jr told the crowd that night as calmed them down was this: "When you live by the rule "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, you end up with a nation of blind and toothless people"...

Juliette Binoche, the wondrous French actress, was being interviewed on the Jay Leno show about her film “Chocolat” – a marvelously Catholic film in which chocolate is a sacrament of the goodness and love which animates the universe. Mr. Leno, as is his custom, was making fun of President Clinton. Ms. Binoche was not amused. You Americans, she informed Leno, do not have enough respect for your leaders. You should respect them more. Leno was nonplused. None of his guests had ever said anything like that. He tried to laugh it off. Ms. Binoche would have none of it. I am serious she said, if you don’t respect your leaders, then you wont respect your country. Leno tried to change the subject. The woman was trying to deprive him of his comedy sthick. Yet which of the two was following more closely the description of Christian behavior in today’s Gospel?

Three times Jesus asks, "What credit is it to you if you love someone who loves you, if you do good to someone who does good to you, if you lend to someone who will later lend something to you?" The Greek word translated as "credit" is charis, which most often is translated as "grace." So we could paraphrase these verses to ask, "What grace is that of ours to love just those who love us, or do good to those who do good to us, or lend to those who can lend us something back in return?" What Jesus calls on his disciples to do is "keep score no more." To trust the God who pulled a paradigm shift on the cross, settling a whole world’s "old scores" then and there, and then tearing up the ledger...

Pay back time. Yes, our first reaction when someone has done us wrong is probably that of Bill Cosby to Junior Barnes. As a flesh-and-blood victim of a horrible crime, Joseph had all the reason in the world to look for his chance. But there is a better way. Joseph knew it. And we know it. Do you need to forgive someone? "To forgive is to put down your 50-pound pack after a 10-mile climb up a mountain. To forgive is to fall into a chair after running a marathon. To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that prisoner is you. To forgive is to reach back into your hurting past and recreate it in your memory so that you can begin again."(6) Then that ancient spiritual takes on a wonderful new meaning: "Free at last, Free at last. Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last."

Two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side-by-side, sharing machinery, and trading labour and goods as needed without a hitch. Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference, and finally, it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence. One morning there was a knock on John’s door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter’s toolbox. “I’m looking for a few days work,” he said. “Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there. Could I help you?” “Yes,” said the older brother. “I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at the farm. That’s my neighbour; in fact, it’s my younger brother. Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there is a creek between us. Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I’ll go him one better. See that pile of lumber curing by the barn? I want you to build me a fence – an 8-foot fence – so I won’t need to see his place anymore. Cool him down, anyhow.” The Carpenter said, “I think I can understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post-hole digger and I’ll be able to do a job that pleases you.” The older brother had to go to town for supplies, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard all that day measuring, sawing and nailing. About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job. The farmer’s eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all. It was a bridge – a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work – handrails and all – and the neighbour, his younger brother, was coming across, his hand outstretched. “You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I’ve sad and done.” The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in the middle, taking each other’s hand. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder. “No, wait! Stay a few days. I’ve got a lot of other projects for you,” said the older brother. “I’d love to stay on,” the carpenter said, but I have many more bridges to build...

Bill Pelke had come a long way from the day he had a vision of his murdered grandmother while atop his crane at a Portage, Indiana steel mill to the day he told his story to a Gary, Indiana high school classroom seven years later. He had traveled the distance between a desire for revenge and the need for reconciliation. It remains an unfathomable gap to some, including his close family members. When Pelke finished telling the Lew Wallace High School class how he had come to forgive—and even love—a former student of their school who had brutally killed his grandmother, some shook their heads. Some gasped. "You must have a big heart," one girl said. Pelke replied, "I have a big God."...

Learning to turn the other cheek can at times involve a certain lightness of spirit. In 1954 in Carlsbad, New Mexico, a narrow one-lane bridge spanning the Pecos River was all that connected a very well-to-do neighborhood to the rest of town. Drivers were accustomed to approaching the bridge slowly and yielding to traffic already on the bridge. One day, Mrs. Tracy, a very important woman in her own mind, drove her Cadillac onto the bridge, ignoring the fact that Mrs. DeBagorrie was more than halfway over in her Chevrolet. They came to a halt, bumper to bumper, and Mrs. DeBagorrie spoke up cheerfully, "Hello Mrs. Tracy! You must not have seen me coming!" To which Mrs. Tracy snipped, "I have places to go and appointments to keep! You just back up this instant and let me go through!" Mrs. DeBagorrie was astonished--this was not appropriate bridge etiquette. She thought that perhaps Mrs. Tracy was just flustered, so she responded good-naturedly, "Mrs. Tracy, I was clearly on the bridge first, I believe it is up to you to back up for me!" Well by this time, the ladies were beginning to draw a crowd. Mrs. Tracy was furious. After all, she was an important person with important places to go. She roared at Mrs. DeBagorrie, "I will NOT! I NEVER back down for a fool!" Mrs. DeBagorrie smiled sweetly and said, "Well, I always do." Then she waved and backed her Chevrolet off the bridge, letting the important lady cross the bridge. In 15 minutes, the story was all over town. I think Mrs. DeBagorrie followed Jesus’ advice of turning the other cheek...

The following story is from a sermon by Martin Luther King. "My brother and I were driving one evening to Chattanooga, Tennessee, from Atlanta. He was driving the car. And for some reason the drivers were very discourteous that night. They didn’t dim their lights; hardly any driver that passed by dimmed his lights. And I remember very vividly, my brother A. D. looked over and in a tone of anger said: ‘I know what I’m going to do. The next car that comes along here and refuses to dim the lights, I’m going to fail to dim mine and pour them on in all of their power.’ And I looked at him right quick and said: ‘Oh no, don’t do that. There’d be too much light on this highway, and it will end up in mutual destruction for all. Somebody got to have some sense on this highway.’...

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