Sermon Seeds: A Good Measure

Sunday, February 23, 2025
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany| Year C
(Liturgical Color: Green)

Lectionary Citations
Genesis 45:3-11, 15 • Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40 • 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50 • Luke 6:27-38
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=e&d=20&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 6:27-38
Focus Theme: A Good Measure
Series: Posted Sentinels (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

Early in my corporate career, Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
attained wide popularity. A mantra that came out of that productivity movement was based on a quote partially attributed to Peter Drucker that Covey expanded, “What gets measured gets attended to, and what gets attended to gets done.” The concept highlighted the critical importance of measurement for accountability and evaluation in achieving one’s objectives and goals. It has been a few decades since I read the book so I cannot remember if Covey also referenced the biblical basis of his thesis.

Jesus speaks of a good measure. Measurements are both objective and relative tools of evaluation and description. There are quantitative measures such as kilometers, miles, grams, and pounds. A trip across country may be measured in miles or estimated days and hours. These measurements are defined for consistency every single time they are referenced. On the other hand, qualitative measures are more subjective. The trip may be considered long for some or faster than expected for others. A good measure is subjective and qualitative, yet Jesus begins this discourse by framing and defining the perspective that calls what he asks of his followers as good.

Verse 27 opens a second section of the discourse: “Nevertheless, I say to you who are listening.” The beatitudes and woes have announced the social reversals that mark “the reigning presence of God” and illustrate the working of divine grace for the benefit of the poor and hungry, the weeping and persecuted. But what does life that is congruent with God’s rule look like? How are disciples to live in the world? The balance of the discourse begins to make this plain. At the heart of it is this charge: disciples are to take their cue from the compassion of a merciful God.
John T. Carroll

Jesus amplifies the standard set through the litany of blessings and woes with specific examples of lived practices. Luke’s version of the sermon not only teaches principles; it declares consequences in which the human actor shapes their world and their participation in it as an actor and one acted upon.

Jesus then shifts from performative declarations to imperatives. Thus God’s commonwealth also includes directives for implementing blessings. Luke 6:27–38 is centered on relationships encapsulated in: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (6:31). Because this is not “do to others as they do to you,” it contravenes even mutuality and inverts retaliation into love, including accommodating to others. Second, it means mercy that surpasses what others deserve. Hearers of both Jesus and Luke would understand this in terms of concrete relationships in village or community life. Enacting this behavior does not depend on individual resolve but is inspired, motivated, and made possible by a relationship with a merciful God, like that between parent and child (6:35–36). Relationships with others involve relationships with God; relationships with God involve relationships with others. To be God’s children means that behavior is begotten by God. The “great reward” in 6:35, as in 6:23, is a metaphor for vindication by God.
Robert L. Brawley

The message claims a countercultural way of being in relationship with others, neighbors, friends and foes, that reflects the kindom of God and enacts the ways of God on earth as in heaven. This model of behavior, while commendable, also has self-serving ends: we get to live in the world we create. While the term “cancel culture” has problematic connotations, there is a necessary critique of taking self-preservation too far. Self-love is necessary to the kindom and part of the command of God as Jesus describes. At the same time, we are to love others as we love ourselves. We can define “as” to be in the same way, or we can consider it to mean at the same time. Both seem authentic and embodied in the admonitions to give without return and to forgive as well as the other examples named by Jesus. The law of love is distinctly anti-retaliatory. If everyone returns evil for evil, what room does good have to grow, flourish, and spread? Evil is like the most resilient weed, it must be suffocated, removed by the root, and replaced with fertile soil.

Rather than retaliating, the disciple will respond with unexpected restraint, generosity, and kindness. Bearing the pain and the insult of a slap to the face, the disciple will double the pain by offering the other cheek—and so turn the shame back to the other. Deprived of one’s coat (or cloak, the outer garment, the himation), the disciple will, unasked, surrender also the shirt (or tunic, the garment worn next to the skin, the chiton)—and the resulting nakedness will turn shame back upon the one (a soldier, or perhaps a creditor?) who has taken the coat. This is nonretaliation, to be sure, but it is far from passive (cf. Vinson 187); an act of unexpected restraint and kindness transforms the encounter and exposes injustice for what it is, for all who observe. In a world where the poor and not the wealthy are considered blessed, a world of status transposition, honor and power are not what they have seemed. In Jesus’ vision of things (in the world God rules), genuine power resides with those who, faced with evil, respond with unflinching, courageous, nonretaliatory kindness.
John T. Carroll

Kindness emerges from the well of compassion as a good measure of participation in the kindom. In other words, kindness is compassion embodied and the emotion of love translated in acts that prioritizes the other as well as the self. Again, kindness is self-serving as it has replicative and contagious qualities. The challenge of Jesus remains clear: to create the world in which God desires we live. This is redemptive and restorative work that recognizes the sovereignty of God and our citizenship in the realm of the Holy One despite our geographical location.

A good measure insists that our sanctuaries remain safe harbors for the persecuted and pursued. A good measure declares the humanity and value of every human being as being formed in the image of God not despite their diverse identities but, in truth, because of them. A good measure recognizes scientific discovery and advancements as revelation and gifts from Creator. A good measure understands that the creation of relentless chaos is not only antithetical to the gospel, but it also attempts to reverse the good work of creation when Creator brought order to chaos as the primary strategy of creation. Destruction for destruction sake has never been God’s plan. Renewal through the cycle of life to death to new life is completely different.

Jesus comes that we might have abundant, flourishing, and full life. How we live and measure that is a communal and individual decision that we continually choose. Make it a good one….a good measure.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
Now that I was a few months into my conscious journey toward the Sacred Black Feminine, She was lovingly calling me to not just argue that God is a Black Woman, but to also embody the Sacred Black Feminine. You see, I was good at the arguing part. Really good at it. As a social psychologist, theologian, and professor at Duke University’s Divinity School, I had mastered the masculine ways of knowing and could easily defend my journey toward the Sacred Black Feminine. I had conducted extensive academic research on the divine feminine and could cite famous church saints, such as Julian of Norwich, who affirm that God is mother. I could make a logical, social science–based argument that the Sacred Black Feminine is a necessary antidote to the ills of white patriarchal religion. I could give thoughtful lectures on the history of the Black Madonna and draw upon the work of well-respected theologians as I argued for the legitimacy of the Sacred Black Feminine. And I had plenty of opportunities to argue for the legitimacy of the Sacred Black Feminine. As people in my spiritual and academic circles caught wind of my public musings about God’s race and gender, my inbox filled with questions and accusations.
“How can you claim that God is female when Jesus was so obviously male?”
“But how do you know that God is a Black Woman? Prove it.”
“Are you a witch?”
In response to these questions, I spent a ridiculous amount of time justifying my beliefs and framing them through the lens of traditional Christianity. But my dream invited me into something beyond the so-called acceptable ways of knowing, teaching me that the Sacred Black Feminine cannot be distilled into a TED Talk or a tidy sermon. Though She can rock with the best of the intellectuals, She exists beyond the edges, beyond the orthodox ways of knowing, and beyond traditional logic. She beckons us in dreams and speaks to us through our embodied experiences. As I continued to journey toward the Sacred Black Feminine, I could see that She was guiding me away from my obsession to prove Her and instead inviting me to simply experience
Her. Indeed, Pinkola Estés traveled the world to gather data about people’s experiences of the Black Madonna and concluded that She stands “at the dividing line between waking consciousness and dreaming consciousness . . . taking in the two worlds, the mundane world of known facts, and the deeply creative, insightful, emergent world of Spirit.”1 In whitemalegod’s hypermasculine world of reason, tradition, and certainty, the Sacred Black Feminine is entirely otherworldly, declaring Her truth not just through ideas but through magical and expansive experiences. Unlike whitemalegod, who is held hostage by logic, She also dwells in the feminine realm of intuition, possibility, and mysticism.
Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman

For Further Reflection
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” — J. Krishnamurti
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.” — Zelda Fitzgerald

Works Cited
Brawley, Robert L. “Luke.” Gale A. Yee, Ed. Fortress Commentary on the Bible: Two Volume Set. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014.
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
Consider your community and what prophetic actions your ministry may offer in solidarity to the vulnerable in your midst.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/after-epiphany-7c-february-23/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.