The Reverend Mike Riggins 2/20/22

“I think you'll find the same...”

Psalm 37:1-11
Luke 6:27-38

I believe I first heard the following story when I was a Boy Scout. So during the

Mesozoic Era. At any rate, it made an impression on me and it seems to apply to

today's lesson. An old man sat on a park bench outside the county court house. A

woman started to walk past him. Suddenly she stopped and said, “I'm new here.

What would you say people are like in this town?”

“Well,” he replied, “what were they like where you lived before?”

“Oh, friendly and generous,” she answered. “I found I could talk to just about

everybody and I was happy. People were great there.”

“I think you'll find the same thing is true about the folks here,” he said. She

smiled, thanked him, and walked away. A few minutes later a man walked up. Without

so much as a how-do-you-do he said, “What are people here like?”

“Well,” the man on the bench replied, “what were they like where you lived

before?”

“Angry, impatient and nasty,” the man answered. “Always trying to take

advantage of you if you didn't look out for yourself.”

“I think you'll find the same thing is true about the folks here,” said the old man

on the park bench. The other man scowled and walked away.

We get what we give. If we project friendliness most folks will be friendly. If we

project suspicion many will react with suspicion. In Psalm 37:8 David tells us, “Refrain

from anger and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil.” The Hebrew word

translated “fret” does not refer to worrying. It is more narrowly targeted at obsessing

over perceived slights, unfairnesses and the like. It is the difference between staying

up at night worrying over whether you can pay the bills, vs. staying up at night nursing

your resentment that some people seem to have all the luck. The former can do

damage to your psyche and soul; the latter can destroy them.

Again and again in this Psalm David counsels his readers to orient themselves

toward the Lord. Trust in the Lord. Take delight in the Lord. Commit your way to the

Lord. Be still before the Lord. When we focus on God, the power the destructive sort

of fretting has over us gets broken. David experienced this in his own life. He

experienced betrayal and false dealing. He spent a significant portion of his young

adult years running from his enemies for his very life. He had sinned and sinned

boldly, committing adultery and contributing to the death of his best friend. A man with

a poet's soul, he must have spent many a sleepless night fretting. But experience truly

is the best teacher. The most effective school for most of us is the School of Hard

Knocks. David learned not to nurture hatred toward those who wished him harm. He

learned to turn toward God.

The concept of Karma has become inaccurately defined in western culture.

Karma has become seen as a kind of revenge Mother Earth takes on those who

misbehave. Go to your favorite video site and search for “bad drivers Karma”. You will
find thousands of videos of people who get into accidents while speeding or after

running a stop sign. When we fret about perceived injustices we can long for some

sort of natural justice. We want the bad guys to get their comeuppance. But the

Hindu and Buddhist concept of Karma means nearly one hundred eighty degrees

opposite from this. Properly understood, Karma is the belief that we bear

responsibility for our own actions; even more, that our own actions create a kind of

force that determines what sort of life we will have in the next life.

I am not here to preach that we all become Hindu or Buddhist. For them, the

next life is reincarnation, a new existence in this world. For them, Karma measures

how enlightened and dispassionately they lived in their former lives, thus determining

whether they have a higher or lower form of existence in their next lives. I am here to

preach something related yet different, something based on David's psalm and Jesus'

teaching. When we turn toward God we learn to give as we want to get. If we fret

about perceived injustices, no matter where we look we will see only people cheating

us. Allow me a digression. I have used the phrase “perceived injustices” in order to

draw a distinction between self-absorbed outrage and genuinely merited outrage.

There is genuine injustice in this world. It deserves our outrage. But when we start

demanding that Karma, or “the universe”, or even God punish those we feel have

victimized us, it is important to be careful. Sometime others truly do want to harm us.

Sometimes we only imagine they do, or we project our own unjust behavior onto them,

or any of a number of other psychological tricks may be in play.

 Turn toward God. Let that orientation guide your attitude and your behavior.

This morning we read the second half of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or as Luke has

it, Jesus' Sermon on the Plain. What attitude and what behavior does Jesus require

from his followers? His first statements are a collection of calls to give grace to those

whom our culture would say deserve bad Karma. Love our enemies. Do good to

those who hate us. Bless those who curse us. Pray for those who abuse us. Turn the

other cheek. Every one of these admonitions flies directly in the face of our instincts.

We cannot obey them without the power of the Holy Spirit pushing us in the right

direction. As so often happens, this conundrum makes me think of Dr. Martin Luther

King Jr. With Bachelors and PhD degrees in theology, King thoroughly understood the

teachings of Jesus. With a brilliant mind and a keen longing for justice, he

incorporated the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu, into his thinking.

What King thought about fretting was that aiming it at the proper kind of injustice

required turning towards the Lord. He worked tirelessly to rescue the Civil Rights

movement from becoming a grievance grift. He wanted nothing to do with reparations

for past injustices—no matter how grievous. He wanted instead for oppressed people

to show dignity and discipline while demanding justice now. Grounding his thinking in

Jesus and his non-violent tactics in Gandhi, he wanted to reveal to the world the

naked, startling sin of racism. He wanted to prove that people of color had the same

God-given right to opportunity and freedom as white people. It is little known that

while in seminary he had a lengthy relationship with a white daughter of German

immigrants. Despite the efforts of many a bigoted reporter, nobody digging into that
relationship has ever found anything in it other than the normal starry-eyed young

love. Some have tried to paint it in a damning light. But they have succeeded only in

damning themselves. The point of mentioning it now is that Martin Luther King really

did not see any reason for segregation. Of any kind. And he lived out his beliefs.

What he did see was that Jesus preached, “Do not judge, and you will not be

judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.” Martin Luther King was

not Jesus. He was not perfect. The world now knows some of his sins, often because

of the work of those reporters who have only malice toward him in their hearts. So be

it. Jesus tells us not to judge him. Jesus tells us not to condemn him. Because what

we give is what we get. As Jesus once told another audience, “Let whoever is without

sin cast the first stone.” I have been here long enough not to be completely sure

about whether I have already used particular sermon illustrations. I did a word search

of my files and found nothing incriminating, but I think I may have used what follows. If

so, please forgive me. But I take the risk because it is such a powerful story.

In the summer of 2007, during band camp at the high school Linda's and my

children attended, and while our son still did, the band took a lunch break. The

students dispersed to local fast food places. One trio, having finished their meal,

turned left onto the busiest road in the entire region. The driver looked left, then right,

then turned...into the path of a pickup truck later estimated to be traveling at ninety

miles an hour. She told police she had seen the vehicle when first looking left but

believed it was too far away to be a problem. The collision killed her two friends in the
backseat. She survived with debilitating injuries. The pickup driver, loose and easy

under the influence of nearly twice the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream,

sustained only superficial injuries.

The trial was brief. Witnesses unanimously testified to the pickup driver's guilt.

The jury hardly sat before returning to the courtroom to declare him guilty. Then the

truly extraordinary portion of the proceedings took place. The parents of the two dead

girls took the stand for the sentencing phase of the trial—and begged the judge to

show mercy to the driver of the pickup. All three of the parents who testified knew him.

They knew about the struggles he had encountered in his life. They knew his

emotionally abusive ex-wife. They knew he had served in the Army in Iraq. They

knew he had started drinking when he was diagnosed with a rare auto-immune

disease, which has since killed him. They knew he had just lost custody of his

daughter. And they took seriously their Christianity. The mother of one of the dead

girls told a local news reporter, “I keep asking myself, how would I feel if I had done

this? And I think the guilt would be all the punishment I would need.”

There is more than enough grief and pain and evil in the world already. Unless

we turn to God we cannot deal with it all in a spiritually healthy manner. Turn to God.

Try to embody the teachings of Jesus and ask for forgiveness when you fail. Pray for

strength. Use the fellowship of the church to find encouragement and perseverance.

And do everything you can not to judge, not to condemn. For which of us can throw

that first stone?