Luke 8:26-39
“Return home and tell how much God has done for you.” (Luke 8:39a)
 
In this story, an initial confrontation between good and evil occurs, and good ultimately prevails. Jesus meets up with a man who has an evil spirit—in fact, he has a legion of evil spirits or demons. The evil spirits recognize the power of God (which is something that demons in the New Testament generally do; recognizing the true God is not their problem.) Jesus sends the evil spirits out of him (this passage raises all sorts of fascinating questions about where the Abyss is the demons don’t want to go back to, and where they go after being sent into the swine. But I digress.) The man is saved, Jesus is triumphant. End of story, right? Wrong.
Solving the initial problem turns out to be only the beginning of the story. For the man, things do get better. He is clothed and in his right mind the next time we meet him. But the swineherds are upset over the fact that their livelihood has just run over the cliff, full of demons. They tell their neighbors, who understandably become upset as well. They are upset because they are also afraid. They do not want that kind of power in their neighborhood. Who knows what Jesus might do next? So they tell Jesus to go away.
Here, at the end of the story, the man pleads to go with Jesus, but Jesus tells him no; the healed man’s mission is to return to his resistant neighborhood and tell the story of his healing. Really, Jesus? Right back into the thick of things?
We don’t know the rest of the story and what happened to this man. We never even find out his name. But we do know that, whatever his misgivings, he obeyed (without even giving an elevator pitch first) and began to preach the Gospel.
So much fought and vanquished; so much left to fight. How, whatever our particular trouble may be, can we take the next step? Remember Who it is that comes in power and comes in silence, Who walks beside us and goes ahead of us. Be quietly faithful. Tell the story of what Jesus Christ has done for you. For His glory! Amen.
 
O Lord, make us have perpetual love and reverence for Your holy Name, for You never fail to help and govern those whom You have set upon the sure foundation of Your loving­kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(from the Book of Common Prayer)

Luke 6:27-38
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (vv. 27-28)
 
As a response to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in our lives, the question to ask is, “How am I manifesting the glory of Christ in the world?”
We find the answer to the question in Luke 6, where we discover these teachings by Jesus, a part of a longer discourse often called the Sermon on the Plain, which shares many similarities with the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. The Sermon on the Plain begins with Luke’s version of the Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-26) and then moves directly into this passage, which somewhat resembles Matthew 5:38-48. (Like any good preacher, Jesus appears to have made more than one use of His best material.)
At first glance, this passage seems to be just a collection of pithy statements. But it quickly becomes apparent that most of those pithy statements are in support of Jesus’s provocative thesis statement here: Love your enemies (v. 27). Jesus first describes the self-sacrificial nature of this love (vv. 27-31), then anticipates some common objections He imagines His listeners might make (vv. 32-34), then concludes with a clear plea for mercy rather than judgment. Those who show mercy will ultimately receive a reward of overwhelming mercy from the Father in return (vv. 35-38).
It strikes me that of all the commands Jesus gave His followers, this may be the one that we have been the worst at. Setting aside current events and conflicts, the history of Christianity has frequently been one of conquest and coercion in the name of Christ, not of mercy and humility (made more evident when we study the entire history of Christianity from Jesus to the present).
Truly living out love for enemies manifests and reveals the glories of the Kingdom in unmatched ways. Church father Tertullian once commented that one of the best arguments for the truth of Christianity to a pagan world was “Look how these [Christians] love one another.”
So, who are your enemies? No, don’t tell me. Just go and love them. Maybe it is really that simple.
 
Lord Jesus, You have taught us that without love, whatever we do is worth nothing. Pour into our hearts Your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and all virtue. Without love, our lives count for nothing and we are accounted as dead before You. Grant us love for the sake of Your only Son, Jesus Christ, in whose Name we pray. Amen.

Share Your Bread – Isaiah 58:6-9a
… is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter” (Isaiah 58:7a)
 
The Book of Isaiah is simultaneously the most comforting and the most challenging in Scripture. At the beginning of today's passage, the coming of God into the situation Isaiah addresses means challenge, not comfort. Isaiah 58 warns the people of Israel that simply “going through the motions” of worship and devotion will not be enough. Those in leadership fast, expecting God to hear them. But all the while, they are oppressing and exploiting those who work for them, even breaking out in fistfights with each other (vv. 3-4)! They wear sackcloth and ashes as the Scriptures instruct, so that they will appear humble. But they do not have true humility; they do not have sackcloth and ashes in their hearts.
No, the prophet says: true fasting begins with setting "the oppressed free" and breaking "every yoke." Since they have been called out earlier in the passage for oppressing their workers (v. 3b), we assume God probably wants them to start with the unjust yokes they themselves have laid on others. But God goes further. Take the homeless poor into your own houses; share your bread with them; share your clothes; remember that we are all kin, children of the same Father.
Take the homeless poor into your own houses. This is challenging to me. After all, I lock my doors at night. I lock my car. I give to charities, and sometimes even to those on the street who ask, but in my own house, Lord?
Several years ago, a church decided to start a soup kitchen. They also wanted to have a fellowship meal for church members and friends. But they didn’t have enough staff and volunteers to do both. So they combined them into a single Wednesday night meal, to which they invited not only church members but everyone in the downtown community surrounding the church. Some people pay for dinner. Some don’t. Everybody goes through the same line and sits at the same tables. They've learned each other’s names. People from the community began attending the Wednesday evening Bible studies that follow the meal. Some also started attending church. Several people left a life of addiction and several others have been baptized.
I don’t know about you, but to me, that is beginning to look a little bit like light breaking forth like the dawn and healing springing up quickly.
Lord Jesus, help us to not go through the motions. Help us to see how our own actions may hurt others, and help us discern how to break the yokes we see around us. May we enable our light to break forth like the dawn for Your glory.  Amen.

1 To you, Lord, I call; you are my Rock, do not turn a deaf ear to me. For if you remain silent, I will be like those who go down to the pit. 6-9 Praise be to the Lord, for he has heard my cry for mercy. The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.  The Lord is the strength of his people, a fortress of salvation for his anointed one. Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever.

     Psalm 28 is a lament, in which the psalmist cries out to God for help in the midst of deep suffering. Yet in this desperate moment, God chooses to remain silent (v.1). The psalmist honestly expresses how he feels in the face of God’s silence: “If you remain silent to me, I will be like those who go down to the pit.”
This experience of “God’s silence” is not unfamiliar to many of us. In times when we desperately need help and deliverance, God seems to deliberately hide Himself, as Job described:
“But if I go to the east, He is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find Him. When He is at work in the north, I do not see Him; when He turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of Him.” (Job 23:8–9)
    
I know a devout sister whose son has suffered from severe mental and physical illness since childhood. For over twenty years, he has endured intense torment, and no treatment has brought any relief. This sister’s heart has been pierced through like a sword. In recent days, many of us in the church have been praying fervently for them, hoping that God might at least ease the boy’s pain, even just a little. But when we asked the sister about his condition on a recent Sunday, her response was: “It’s even worse than before.” At that moment, looking at her—so exhausted yet still holding on with strength—I found myself at a loss for words. I didn’t know how to respond, much less how to offer comfort.

     Yet it was at that moment that this devout sister shared something through her tears that deeply moved me: “I don’t know why God is letting us go through this pain, and I’m not sure if there are still spiritual lessons I need to learn. But I know that God has always been here. Even if it seems like He’s not doing anything for now, I know that He hears every single word of our prayers. As a mother, I long for the day my son might be completely healed, but I have already begun preparing myself in case this illness stays with him for life...”

     What a pure and profound faith! Yes, David knew—even though he had not yet been delivered from the attacks of the wicked— “He has heard the voice of my cry for mercy” (v.6). And this mother knows—even though her child’s suffering has not lessened— “God has always been here.”
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     In all our afflictions, God is never absent. At the end of his psalm, the psalmist calls out to God to shepherd His people. And indeed, this prayer was heard. One day, God Himself became our Good Shepherd, and through the love He showed by His death and resurrection on the cross, we see more clearly than ever: In all our suffering, He has never been absent, “…he too was distressed…” (Isaiah 63:9). He shepherds and sustains us forever.