United Methodist Church Westlake Village

Power in Vulnerability and Community

• United Methodist Church Westlake Village

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The episode delves into the challenging teachings of Jesus from the Sermon on the Plain, highlighting the complexities of loving one's enemies and the struggle between instinctual responses and the call to resilience through love. It explores the nature of true power and encourages trust in the divine teachings to foster humility and authentic relationships. 
• Reflecting on the Walk to Emmaus experience 
• Exploring the essence of the Sermon on the Plain 
• Jesus’ call to love the unlovable and its challenges 
• Examining fears around vulnerability and power dynamics 
• Humorously discussing cultural references to power in relationships 
• Addressing concerns over Christian nationalism and authority 
• Distinguishing between mandated love and lived experience 
• Understanding temporary versus divine power 
• Encouraging trust in Jesus’ teachings for a better life 
• Highlighting humility as a path to grace and understanding 

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Pastor Darren:

I have spent the last couple of days over at a Walk to Emmaus. Do we have any Walk to Emmaus crew here? It's kind of a Christian revival movement. Yeah, me and Leroy, any others? Oh okay, Candy's walked to Emmaus. All right, there's a few of you out there, all right, decaloris. So anyway, I'm a little tired, not a lot tired, but a little bit tired. Good experience, though I'm appreciative of my friend Boyd who got me connected to all of it. But I start the journey here. I'll recontinue our journey here.

Pastor Darren:

We've been talking about this better life that our vision statement has been talking about Setting a course to a better life. Who and where do we want to be? And we switched a couple weeks back to the front part of the mission statement Setting course. What are we doing to get to the place where we want to be? And we continue here in Luke. This is the Sermon on the Plain. If you remember, last week, we have Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, where he's on the mountain and he's preaching down, coming from God, message delivered from on high, whereas Luke's version he's on the plane. He's, even with those that he is preaching to, trying to make those connections. And so, as we continue that journey through this summary of what Jesus was really trying to teach about how we're supposed to live, how we're supposed to behave.

Pastor Darren:

I have to confess, in my journey this week, I landed in a different spot than I thought I was going to land. I got hung up on the very beginning of the passage. Do you remember what it said right at the very beginning? But I say to you that listen. But I say to you that listen, isn't that an interesting way to start? Because to me it sounds just maybe a little bit cynical. Right, I say to you that listen, whatever percentage of you that are actually hearing what I'm saying, this is who I'm talking to at this point. You know to me, in some ways, it makes sense if you know the message that he's delivering at this time. It is a difficult lesson, these are difficult things to be asking of human beings, and so we shouldn't maybe be fully surprised.

Pastor Darren:

I think, if the passage was a dialogue instead of a monologue, every other verse would be the phrase yeah, but Right, listen to this, are you ready? But I say to you that listen, right, listen to this, are you ready? But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you yeah, but Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you yeah, but If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also. Oh, yeah, but from anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt. Yeah, but give to everyone who begs from you. And if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Yeah, but do to others as you would have them do to you. Can we say it together? Yeah, but these are rough, these are big asks, these are hard to do.

Pastor Darren:

I might even argue that they are counter-instinctual to our very being to do these things that Jesus is asking us to do, instructing us to do. They go against what we're naturally inclined to do. If someone hits you in the face, you don't go. How about this one? That's just not what our beings are given to do, right? If we say to love those who hate us, it feels like we're condoning that, we're enabling that. To love those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who abuse us, it feels like we're saying it's okay to keep doing that to us, even if we aren't saying it to convince ourselves. We feel like we're leaving the door open for the other person to continue to do that. Give them the other cheek. Well, why not my house and my car as well? Thank you for hitting me. Here's all my stuff. Right. Then, luke, he's got to pile on even further. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Well, it's easy to love the ones who love you, is it not? Usually? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Again, that's easy. That's American economics right there. They did good to you. You do good back. Even sinners do that. So Jesus doesn't lighten up on it in any way.

Pastor Darren:

I think there's a genuine fear in play here, a fear of opening the door to further damage, further hurt. But I also think there's a power dynamic that's in play there. Why we wrestle with it? Maybe all it is is this power to keep them from doing it again. Still, it's a power thing. Nonetheless, we can't afford to give ground here. It makes us vulnerable. It's a power we want to have hand. Do you remember the Seinfeld episode To have hand? Oh, you don't watch Seinfeld. How do you go to sleep at night. That's the last thing I'm watching every night with seinfeld, george costanza. He's the neurotic friend you know that's in a lot of these sitcoms, right, and? And he's attributing all of his lack of successful relationships. And you know all of this. Not being able to keep a partner is because he doesn't have power. He doesn't have hand. He needs hand. It's about power. In many ways, I wanted to think about this power just a little bit.

Pastor Darren:

Anybody watching hockey on Thursday night? Yeah, okay, good, we've got a few of us. A few of us were watching hockey. It was the big. Instead of the National Hockey League All-Star Game, they did a 14-tournament, country against country. The countries who had the most players in the NHL played against each other, and sure enough, because Canada and the US tend to have the most players, it came down to Thursday night best against best, usa versus Canada.

Pastor Darren:

Are you ready for my confession? Canada, are you ready for my confession? I was rooting for Canada. All right, I'm not alone. Those Canadians are good people. They're nice folk up there. Am I right? Those Canadians you meet good people? I married a Canadian, a Canadian who didn't know the game was on. Mind you Right? Isn't Nancy Bonds like the nicest person you've ever met. Right, she's a true Canadian and Tim's kind of honorary Canadian, am I right? He's like super nice. I'm a pastor, I'm supposed to be nice, but you're paying me to be nice. He just does it because he's a good guy, right? Canada I'm going to root for Canada here. That know, that was a little bit what was going on. But also in my head I'm like there's some nationalism going on in our country. That gets me a little bit concerned, a little anxious. Do we really need another thing to be overconfident about? I don't know.

Pastor Darren:

Sometimes, my Christian brothers and sisters, you know we're wanting to assert our Christian authority over society and I get nervous about that. It feels problematic to me. Right, could we mandate Christian love? God didn't mandate Christian love. God didn't mandate Christian love. God sent Jesus down and tried to persuade, convince, to show what it looked like. That's how God worked. Even God really didn't try to mandate it. I'm not even sure we would all agree all us, the body of faith, would we agree on what Christian love is and what it looks like. It's rough.

Pastor Darren:

So when we start trying to assert ourselves into that conversation and mandate it all, it feels like it's a problematic power at its best. I don't know that we want to be in a position where we are deciding how others are going to philosophize, theologize their lives. I think we're in the convincing business. We're in the heart business. They're going to decide because of how we treat them, not because we've mandated it, mandated it. But you can see how this power thing kind of plays out, maybe a little bit. It plays out in the scripture, obviously, when we look at the things that Jesus is instructing us to do. If we were to take the opposite right, it would be giving hate for hate, curse for curse. With those who hate us, we're going to hate them even more and we get into this dynamic. I'm going to presume that enough hate is going to lead to some actions that live out that hate and then there's probably likely some end to that, even a victor of some sort that wins this whole dynamic.

Pastor Darren:

Do we have any rap fans in the room today? I'm guessing. All right, steve, all right? Did Kendrick win? I think he won pretty convincingly. Kendrick and Drake this is the big rap battle of the last decade. I think it's been going on a long time. When you get to be in the Super Bowl halftime show and you have done all of your shots at the other guy in front of the world. He won. He wins the war. Drake ought to just quit and move on.

Pastor Darren:

Look how relevant I am. Is it relevant when there are only two other people who even know who I'm talking about? I guess relevant is relative, in other words, but yeah, maybe we even get to the point where somebody actually won the battle, maybe you won the battle. Now you get to assert yourself, your will, your view. But what's the nature of that power? It would be hard to call it permanent, right, it's not really a permanent power. You didn't come to some shared agreement about how the future was going to lay out. You just got the other person or people to step back. The power would last, presumably until it was gone, until you didn't win, or maybe somebody else wins and won over the power.

Pastor Darren:

In any case, it's just a temporary power that you were able to amass, certainly not a divine power, right? Not anything that was sacred, steeped in the eternal, something that makes things better. See, I think Jesus, he's trying to invite us with this invitation, this instruction that feels so difficult, feels so counterintuitive. He's trying to get us into this new realm of understanding how the world works and I want to reiterate, how this world works, not some other world. God wanted to build the kingdom here and in this there is a deeper power. Not just a power that allows us to feel like we won, feel like we were right, feel like we were the truth. It's actually a real power that comes with healing, that comes with growth, that comes with the capacity to allow everyone to bloom into the creature that God wants each and every one of us to be from our very birth, that God wanted us to be. It's not a power that overpowers or conquers. It's a power that wins over, that builds bridges, that leads to healing. It's not an absolute power that overcomes everybody and mandates everything. Fall in line, you turn that other cheek. There is no guarantee you aren't going to get hit again. Not everybody is open to this different realm that Jesus is inviting us to, but by doing so, in some ways, we've shed a different light, a new way of doing things, onto the situation, onto the conflict. The hope is that something in their heart, something that God put in their heart, might open up a little bit awaken, just a little bit Awaken, just a little bit, but I'm not going to linger there.

Pastor Darren:

I sat there thinking, oh, we've been preaching this sermon because it is so difficult for 2,000 years. You've probably heard this sermon many, many times. We've been wrestling with it for forever. Maybe the real question for us is are we going to trust it? Are we going to trust this teaching that Jesus gives to us, this teaching that also appears in Matthew? This teaching we're pretty convinced was a core message that Jesus brought? Are we going to trust it? I told you I was at the walk to Emmaus.

Pastor Darren:

It's kind of a faith revitalization weekend kind of thing. It's been really powerful for a lot of people in this world and I was doing the talk on obstacles to grace, things that get in the way of us understanding and believing and living out God's unconditional love for us. And as I got to the end, I ended up asking this very same question. We know that Jesus describes and models for us a new way of living life. Are you going to trust it? Are you going to trust that it leads to something better? Are you going to trust that it leads to an enriching of your relationships? Are you going to trust that it's going to build the body of faith in this world. Are you going to trust that it's something that enables others to fully bloom Bloom into being able to offer all that God is hoping they will offer to this world?

Pastor Darren:

Maybe Luke has it right here, opening with Jesus saying to those who will listen, because that group that he's preaching to it often doesn't include us. We don't always believe in this fully, this new way of living, of looking at the world. We make other choices, we don't always trust, we don't always listen. But it's in that, the humility, the humility it takes to do what he's teaching here, that we come to find God's fullness in ourselves. God's abundance in ourselves comes as we are able to live out that sacrificial love for others. When we can redirect ourselves to that sacrificial relationship that Jesus modeled, we get a taste of what Jesus knows to be very, very true about life. We get to know the part of life that is sacred, that is divine, that is full of life's abundance. God calls us to this humility, not that we might defer to the world, but that we might understand the beauty that comes and the strength that comes from that humility.

Pastor Darren:

Now I can tell you that sometimes life does humble us. Sometimes life takes us where we really don't want to go, and my guess is, all of you have a story about being in that space, Life leading you to difficulty, to challenge, to questions with no answer. Sometimes life does that for you. To me, the irony of that is it can be a gift in the way it humbles us, in the way it opens us to a new way of understanding the world, a new way of understanding its challenges, its pains. It's a counterintuitive gift of sorts we don't ask for this gift for sure but it can have its value. This is a way that God often works through us.

Pastor Darren:

You guys are going to receive a gift this morning. You guys are going to receive a gift this morning. Lois Jackson has walked the journey with this church for a long time. We haven't seen her in a bit, but she has a gift from God that she shares her music and she's going to be singing a song that I think lives into that reality, a song about how, when life can bring a lot of hurt, a lot of pain, it also can bring an awareness of God and awareness of God's love, and I invite you to listen for that message She'll be singing during our offertory, during our offertory. So, with that, I'll invite you to prepare yourself for that and say Amen, amen.