Epiphany 7 Sermon, Year C 2022 ‘Schadenfreude People”

The Rev. Peter Faass, Rector
Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38
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​“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” 
Whenever I proclaim these words of Jesus I can almost hear an audible gasp from the congregation.  “Seriously?” we think. Love my enemies? (of which there seems to be no shortage these days.)  Do good to those who hate me? Bless those who curse me? Pray for my abusers? Good heavens, Jesus, how much time do you think there is in a day?
 
Our conditioned response to dealing with our enemies, and those who hate, abuse, or curse us, is to desire revenge. To pray for an opportunity for retribution. To conjure up ways to inflict great harm on them.  We desire these things because when they happen we can engage in schadenfreude, which is the experience of pleasure, joy, and self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, humiliation, or even death of a person we are at enmity with.
 
Be honest.  How many of us feel a desire to pray for or bless anti-vaxxers who contract COVID, become hospitalized, or even die?  I’d say we’re more likely to enjoy engaging in schadenfreude at their circumstances over offering love and compassion.
We are a schadenfreude people.
Jesus knows this, which is why he tells us to do all these counter-intuitive things when it comes to dealing with our enemies. He wants to heal us of our schadenfreude.
 
This passage in Luke’s Gospel is part of the Sermon on the Plain, which is similar to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, except Jesus comes down from the mountain to the plain to deliver it. It is an exposition on what the qualities of God’s Reign are and what we must do to live in that Reign. Jesus is here to inaugurate this new world of God, which, to say the least, is a very different world from the one we humans have devised.  This world is one that levels the playing field for all people – ergo the symbolism of being delivered on the plain. It is a world that desires the health and well-being of all people.  This world requires a different ethos than what now exists.  To achieve this world, we are to forsake malice, hatred, retribution, vengeance, and the twisted delights of schadenfreude if we are to live as God desires us to live . . . to live as God lives.
 
Now do not misinterpret what is being asked of us.  Jesus is not asking us to approve of evil, malicious, or cruel behavior.  Jesus is not saying that those who engage in hurtful and harmful conduct are not to be held accountable. Jesus is not saying to suck it up and just deal with abuse.  To do any of these things is antithetical to the whole message of leveling the playing field, where the health and well-being of all people are paramount. Health and well-being are equally desired for us as well as for others.
We are not to be passive doormats, quietly enduring the abuse, malice, and hatred of others. When you let someone walk over you, there’s no mutual respect, compassion, and love in that. It is not the way of God’s new world.
 
“Do to others as you would have them do to you” is a reciprocal formula.  It requires mutuality, of respecting the dignity of every human being.
 
What Jesus is asking us to do is to always keep the best interests of the wrongdoer in mind.  To not forget that despite how disagreeable or odious or hateful another person is, that they are still made in the image of a loving God . . . even though their brokenness and the presence of evil in them may prevent them from behaving that way.
This idea of keeping the others best interest in mind is rooted in the Greek word used for love in the opening phrase “Love your enemies.”  There are three words for love in Greek: eros, which is erotic love. Philos, which is love for our nearest and dearest. And agape love, which is a love that engages in active feelings and behaviors of benevolence toward another person, regardless of what they do, of who they are. Agape love never allows us to desire anything but the highest good for another person. We can’t love our enemies as we erotically love a partner, or engage in philos with them as we do toward our family and friends.  To do so would be unnatural, wrong, and more than a little perverse.
But what we can do – what Jesus calls us to do – is no matter what another person does to us – the insults, ill-treatment, injuries – is to always focus on seeking nothing but their highest good. Agape love is an act of will-power to do good, so that love can prevail over evil.   
This is not an easy love to offer.  It is deliberate.  It is counter-intuitive.  It requires us to set aside our preconceived notions about what is just and unjust. It is a visceral force of will that requires all our heart, strength, and mind to live as God calls us to live.  But it is exactly what we followers of Jesus are to do. There is no alternate way or easier option that has been offered us.
This morning we get a snippet of the Joseph story in our Genesis reading. Because Joseph was an obnoxious and pretentious little kid, his brothers didn’t like him, so they sold him into slavery.  They feigned his death to their father Jacob by pretending Joseph was killed by a wild beast.  Long story, made short, Joseph eventually is redeemed from slavery in Egypt and becomes the second most powerful man there after Pharaoh. Years later a famine in Israel compels Jacob to send ten of his sons to Egypt to buy grain.  They end up dealing with Joseph, who they do not recognize, but who knows who they are.  
If anyone had the inclination to desire vengeance, be hateful, and engage in schadenfreude, delighting in seeing his brothers suffer, it was Joseph.  He held all the power over his brothers and he could do with them what he willed. Even kill them. But he didn’t.
When Joseph reveals his identity to his brothers, the text tells us, “his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.”  That may be a bit of an understatement.  I’d say they were terrified realizing that after what they had done to their brother, they were in for some serious retribution, now that he had them in his grip.
But Joseph doesn’t engage in vengeance or malice. Rather he wills himself to engage in agape love. He is benevolent toward his brothers and he keeps their highest good in mind. 
Joseph then engages in some philo love, after-all they are his family. We are told, “he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.” 
Joseph diffuses any thoughts of hatred, malice, and vengeance. He keeps his brothers higher good in mind, and in so doing he tends to his own higher good as well.
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
We live in fractious times.  Enemies abound. There’s no shortage of hate, cursing, and abuse to go around. Judgment and condemnation abound.  Forgiveness is in short supply.  None of this reflects the new world of God.
 
Our response to this sad state of affairs is exactly what Jesus admonished us over in the scripture. We focus only on loving those who love us.  We are good only to those who are good to us.  We balkanize ourselves by drawing hard and fast boundaries in our lives, only associating with people who are like us. We do this by segregating ourselves into red and blue, Black and White, rich and less rich, educated and less educated, straight and gay, one kind of church over another. This way we can keep our enemies at bay, making sure they are not our neighbor in any way, whether by physical habitation or association.  None of this reflects the new world of God, either.
 
Think about it: to love our enemies is to understand that everyone is our neighbor. The command to love our enemies calls us to replace the concern about the limits we have placed on who it’s acceptable to associate with and who’s not, with a concern for inclusiveness, for keeping our real and perceived enemies highest good as our main concern, with leveling our lives so we are all on the same plain.   Loving our enemies is to engage in a willful act of love so that the Reign of God may be fulfilled, both for us and prayerfully, for those who have harmed us.
Ultimately it is to understand that if we want to live in a world that has the qualities of God’s Realm, we must treat everyone in Realm-like ways. It can be no other.
Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Do not judge. Forgive. Love one another as you have been loved.  Each time we do these things the plain gets more level. Brokenness becomes healed. Relationships are healed. Enmity diffused. Schadenfreude set aside. And the Reign of God draws ever closer.   Amen.