Image: "The Resurrection" from Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, 1515,
February 23, 2025: Epiphany 7C
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38
A Radically New Life
Did you hear? A near-earth asteroid was in the news recently. Until Wednesday, scientists gave it a 3.1% chance of striking earth in 2032. In the darkened corners of social media that I frequent, one of my favorite comments was this one: “I’m a deep-sea oil driller so if anyone has any connections at NASA just send them my way. Me and my crew will handle this.” But there were darker comments: “Pulling for the asteroid these days.” “Probably for the best at this point.” In addition, you can buy a T-shirt online that reads like a political ad: “Giant Asteroid 2032: Just End It Already!”
Of course, these comments are tongue-in-cheek. But there has been a growing sense of despair in American life for a while now. From 2005 to 2019—before COVID!—an average of 70,000 Americans died “deaths of despair”. Included in these deaths are suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning.[1] Despair and fear are constant companions for many people these days.
The time that Jesus lived in was scary, too. A lot of people despaired of a better life. The Roman Republic, as unrepresentative as it was, at least diffused power under several families. With the assassination of Julius Caesar and civil wars, all power had been centralized under Augustus, who loaned it to certain favored lieutenants. That system had continued under Tiberius. While this centralization brought a measure of peace, it was an oppressive peace. Most people in Jesus’s Palestine had no legal privileges. Most lived at a subsistence level, plying a trade or sharecropping. Most of their earnings went either to the taxman or a landlord. Starvation was only one bad harvest away.
Despite their powerlessness, Jesus called on his listeners to take up their power to live a new life. And this life is radically different from what they have known. It is based on faith, not fear.
But the way Jesus calls us to embrace hope seems counterintuitive at best and downright foolish at worst. Love your enemies? Then as now, we live in a world where love and mercy are seen as weaknesses, not strengths. People seem to keep grudges forever, entertaining dreams of revenge. The song “Sorry Not Sorry” by Demi Lovato captures the spirit of the age: “It’d be nice for me to take it easy on ya, but nah.” Many are afraid that if they show any vulnerability, admit any weakness, that people will stomp all over them. Love your enemies? Do not withhold even your coat? Give to anyone who asks of you? Do to others as you would have them do to you? (Not “do to others before they do to you.”) To the wise of the world, this sounds like a recipe for being a doormat.
But Jesus points us to another reality: that of his and our heavenly Father. And this Father does not love like we do. As Jesus says in so many words, anyone can love someone who loves them. Anyone can be kind to someone who is kind to them. Our Father in heaven loves the unlovable, the ungodly, the ungrateful, and the wicked. That love is true power. And news flash: the ungodly? The ungrateful? The wicked? That’s us. Paul writes in Romans, “God proves his love to us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Why? So we could be merely better people after the way of the world? So we could be nice rule-followers? No! Christ died to give us his life, a life that is radically different from the one we have now. It is so radically different that death is not the end of it.
Rather, that life is all about transformation. When we are baptized, a miracle happens, even though it may not look like much of miracle. At a baptism, we might see a cute baby (or a not-as-cute adult), proud parents, sponsors, and the pastor. The pastor pours some water on the baptized. The congregation oohs and aahs. Pictures are taken. It’s a lovely moment. But much more is happening that we cannot perceive. The baptized has been drowned. The old Adam or Eve within them has died. And though the baptized will struggle with their old sinful self their whole life, that old self has suffered a mortal wound. The new person, in the image of Jesus Christ, has been born within them.
Paul writes about this new life, the baptized, resurrection life. We have the unfortunate translation choices of “physical” and “spiritual” to describe the life that ends in corruption and death and the life that shares in Jesus’s resurrected life. The resurrected life is not a disembodied soul floating to heaven as the word “spiritual” implies. Rather, this life is animated by God’s Spirit, which is given to us at our baptism. And it is this Spirit that makes a new kind of life possible, even on this side of glory. A life of mercy, love, forgiveness, justice-hungering, and peacemaking. This way of being in Christ is the only way that doesn’t lead to more hurt, more pain, and more revenge. The way of the world—do to others before they do to you, get what you can while you can, never show vulnerability—leads in the end to hatred, fear, and death.
While Jesus’s way of mercy, enemy love, and generosity leads to life—a life animated by the Spirit of God. This is not life as a doormat. Look at Jesus’s life. No one who spoke truth to power as Jesus did could possibly be considered that. Rather, Jesus lived God’s mercy. All his acts of healing, all his works of generosity, even all his confrontation of religious and civic leaders was a revelation of the mercy and love of God, and therefore a revelation of the resurrected life. A radically new kind of life. There are contemporary examples of this life all around us: the mercy of God shown on someone suffering from addiction through the MN Adult & Teen Challenge program. Or the lives empowered through Love INC’s Transformation Tuesdays. Or perhaps you have some stories. In fact, I’m sure you do. People in this room today have felt God’s mercy for them personally. And I’m sure whatever it was, it was transforming!
People of God, know this: Jesus is going to continue to transform us until that work is complete, and we share fully in the Spirit-animated life. In the end, the last word is God’s. And that word is love. Amen.
© 2025, David M. Fleener. Permission granted to copy and adapt original material herein for non-commercial purposes with appropriate credit given.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/americas-crisis-of-despair-a-federal-task-force-for-economic-recovery-and-societal-well-being/.
