Eating together as enacted grace (Luke 5) #3

Little Miss Sunshine

The film Little Miss Sunshine is the story of a girl who by default gets through the regional final the Little Miss Sunshine beauty contest. So her dysfunctional family head off in their dysfunctional VW van. She’s a fat girl with big glasses about to enter a beauty contest. At one point Olive, the daughter, says: ‘I don’t want to be a loser because Daddy hates losers.’ Here Dad is a failed motivational speaker. His conversation consists of clichéd aphorisms that berate people for being losers. The irony, of course, is that he’s a loser and his family are losers. At one points he says, ‘there are two kinds of people in this world: winners and losers’. And on the word ‘losers’ the camera pans round his family: his foul-mouthed father, his suicidal, homosexual brother-in-law, his son who refuses to speak, his down-trodden wife desperately trying to hold them all together, and himself, the failed businessman who can’t face his failure. And they are thrown together in a VW van which is itself dysfunctional – the door falls off, they can’t switch the horn off, they have to push start every time. I often look round my congregation and see a bunch of dysfunctional people thrown together, somehow managing to be family. And I smile of the ridiculous grace of God.

There’s a moment in the film when they suddenly realise Olive isn’t in the van – they’ve left her behind at the last gas station. We see the van moving across the screen in one direction and they collect her (without stopping because they can’t restart van). And then you see the van moving back across in the other direction and we hear the father’s voice: ‘No-one gets left behind, no-one gets left behind.’ That’s the church – it’s the place where no-one gets left behind.

The climax of the film is when this massively dysfunctional family arrive at the beauty contest. And of course a beauty contest is the epitome of a perfect, respectable, manicured (literally), world without blemish or fault, but with a seething undertone of envy, rivalry and arrogance. And these two worlds collide with, as they say, ‘hilarious consequences’. And that is what is going on here at Levi’s party. Two worlds are colliding. Jesus comes crashing into the Pharisees world of self-reliance, pride, confidence, superiority, hypocrisy, self-justification with his utterly subversive message of God’s grace.

When Jesus eats with Levi the message is clear: Jesus has come for losers. Jesus has come for people on the margins. Jesus has come for people who feel left out. Jesus has come for people who have made a mess of their lives. Jesus has come for ordinary people – the people who do not make it into the history books. Jesus has come for you.

The only people left out are those think they are okay; who think they don’t need God. The self-righteous and the self-important. The sad thing is that includes so many people. So many people miss out on the party because they will not admit they need Jesus. They are like people dying of cancer, wasting away in pain, but never admitting there is anything wrong. They miss out on the grace of God because they think they are too good for it or too important.

God’s love for his enemies

This sequence of stories comes to a climax in Luke 6:11: ‘But they were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus.’ (Luke 6:11) Jesus is rejected by the leaders of God’s people. And so in 6:12-16 he chooses a new people of God and begins to them what kind of community they are to be in Luke’s equivalent to the Sermon on the Mount, only this is a sermon on the plain.

‘But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

32 ‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” lend to “sinners”, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’ (Luke 6:27-36)

We read that as a new ethic which is of course what Jesus intends. But what is the basis of that ethic? Look at verses 35-36: ‘Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’ (Luke 6:35-36)

We are to love our enemies because God loves his enemies. We are to love our enemies because we are God’s enemies and God has loved us. God has sat down and eaten with us. When he sat down with Levi, he was sitting down with you.

Listen to these words not as an ethic for you, but as a description of Jesus Christ:

‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back … 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.’ (Luke 6:27-36)

Love your enemies. ‘When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son.’ (Romans 5:10) I was an enemy of God and he loved me. And he demonstrated his love in the gift of his own Son.

Do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you. I was a God-hater. when we get the chance we kill our Creator. I have cursed God in my heart a thousand times. And every day he returns my curses with blessings. Every breath I take is a blessing from God. Every joy, every smile, every love is a blessing. He does me good.

Pray for those who ill-treat you. I crucify my Lord and he cries out, ‘Father forgive.’ (Luke 23:34) He has prayed for me just as he prayed for Peter when he predicted his denial (Luke 22:31-34).

29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. When they struck Jesus at his trial (John 18:22), he could have answered with the might of angels. But he turned the other cheek. When they soldiers blindfolded him and struck him again and again, calling on them to prophesy who struck him (Luke 22:63-65), each time he could have answered with the might of angels. But he turned the other cheek. And then Pilate has him scourged (Mark 15:15). And with each lash of the whip, he could have answered with the might of angels. Each lash could have been the last had he chosen for it to end. But each lash he bears in my place. Each lash should have fallen on me. ‘But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.’ (Isaiah 53:5)

If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. ‘And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.’ (Luke 23:34)

30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back … Jesus has given everything for me demanding nothing in return. We have took everything from him: the praise of angels, the comfort of heaven, the infinite, intimate love of his Father. He gave it up for me. He ‘did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing.’ (Philippians 2:6-7)

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Jesus has not lent to me. He has cancelled my debt without expecting anything back (Colossians 2:13-15).

Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. His reward is my salvation. That is the reward God has given him. That is the recompense for his sufferings. He has divided the spoils with me (Isaiah 53:12). He is the true Son of God, revealing the Father’s love and grace, kind to the ungrateful, merciful to the wicked.