2/23/25 Sermon

My friend Ari is the one friend I love dearly that I hope no one here ever meets.  I’ve known Ari for over 30 years at this point and the guy never ceases to amaze me.  When I first met him he was a nice, smart Jewish kid from Toronto. I met him in Chautauqua.  There was a big group of us who would hang out at the fountain which is in the dead center of town.  Ari was great.  He pushed me to go to lectures and the symphony.  That was the cool thing about our group of friends.  They pushed you to learn things.  Learning and culture was cool to them.  So if you wanted to fit in or hang out with them, you went to lectures together during the day and then talked about them after the concerts at night.  It’s kind of how I became a nerd.

But something must have happened after high school. Ari showed up to Chautauqua no longer the clean cut nerdy Jewish kid. Ari returned to Chautauqua utterly transformed — dreadlocks, shirtless, utterly uninhibited. In fact, I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve seen Ari in a shirt since then.  Which is fine.  It was always summertime when we were there.  But he’s kinda hairy.  Ari was just wide open from then on.  And I mean wide open.  I could tell you some wildly inappropriate stories about his swimming habits in the fountain at night but that should be enough to give you the idea.  He’s one of those people that are completely fascinating to be around and yet utterly terrifying to be associated with.  He’s like a giant child with a brilliant mind.   I go back and forth on whether he’s the craziest or sanest person I know.

One of the most beautiful things I ever saw happened with Ari.  In Chautauqua there’s the Amphitheater which is this huge open walled building that holds I think around 2,000 people where the main lectures and performances take place. Its kind of like Ravinia.  And the symphony plays there every Tuesday night.  It isn’t the most formal setting, but it is the Symphony so Ari had to put on a shirt.  We stood in the back that’s open for standing and walking around.  And usually there are quite a few people back there.

Now, I gotta admit, there are times where the symphony is so good that I tingle the whole time.  I hope you all’ve had experiences like that, where the music or something gives you goosebumps.  It just reaches in and grabs something deep inside you.  For me that’s one of the strongest arguments for God there is.

Now, I don’t remember what the symphony was playing that night.  But it was upbeat and electrifying.  I remember that.  And Ari must have felt it too.  However unlike me, Ari lacks inhibition which is sometimes a blessing and other times it’s a curse.  And I guess he couldn’t  contain himself any longer while listening to the symphony because he suddenly erupted into a full dance.

I mean, Pure joy radiated from his face. He danced everywhere — In front of people who sometimes take life a little too seriously.  And I started to have the feeling that it would be a good opportunity to slowly fade into the crowd and disappear lest I be implicated as an accomplice or even blamed for this whole thing.

But then something amazing happened.  Instead of shushing him, these typically reserved people were delighted. Ari’s joy was contagious. He grabbed little old ladies and spun them around. He danced with children who knew him from butterfly chasing in the park earlier that day. He even got me to join in.  He lit up the back of the Amphitheater with pure, unfiltered glee. It was wildly inappropriate—and possibly the most fun anyone had ever had at the symphony.

Now, not everyone was or is an Ari fan.  He drives some people nuts... ok, he can drive a lot of people nuts.  And my girlfriend at the time, who happened to be the stage manager for the symphony, was one of the people who Ari drove crazy.  He and I  got a stern, stern lecture about our impromptu dance party later that night.   And Ari did something I always wanted to do but never had the courage to do.  He laughed in her face.  Which looking back on it I actually think was the right reaction.

Ari is one of those people that not only dances to the tune of his own drummer.  But I think he’s dancing to instruments some of us have never even heard of before.  The main thing Ari taught me is this: we are called to live life as we should regardless of what other people think of us or how harshly they judge us. He embraces each moment as it comes, unapologetically seeking joy, sharing it so freely that it’s infectious.

He knows people disagree with the way he lives and what he does. And sometimes I disagree too.  I don’t think swimming in public fountains is socially acceptable.  But Ari does it so freely.  And he shares so openly the joy he finds in life with other people that it’s hard for his joy not to be contagious.

Now, if I step back and put myself in your shoes, I’d be wondering what in the world does any of this have to do with this part of Luke that’s called the sermon on the plain and echos the sermon on the mount in Matthew. And here’s the thing.  It really does seem like everything someone can say about this passage has already be said before.  And it isn’t that I believe in always being original, but we all have our own understandings and have heard this piece of scripture dozens of times before.

EVERYONE knows turn the other cheek.  So, what I want to say about this piece of scripture, what I want to offer to you to think about goes like this:  This piece of Scripture is a lot like my friend Ari. It flies in the face of just about everything we’ve been told is socially acceptable.  We just don’t do it. Things like love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you sound like good ideas. We like the way it sounds — but not how it looks.  And those who do it or even suggest it are usually judged pretty harshly. It’s like dancing at symphonies.

I remember shortly after September 11th, 2001 I was asked to moderate a teach-in at my college about what happens next. It was during parents’ weekend.  So, we got the Philosophy,  the sociology, and the Political theory, and the theology professors all up on stage and asked them a bunch of questions.   And when the question of what the response to Al-Qaeda should be, the professors all launched into different ideas of securing us and/or attacking them and how a war on terror would or could be fought.

And JET Thomas, the theology professor  - my professor, the one I worked the closest with - in front of parents and students said we should bomb them.  Bomb them with food. Bomb them with clothing.  Bomb them with medical supplies.  Bomb them with education. And he was yelled at and almost booed off stage.

I get it. Good theology doesn’t always make good foreign policy. But I couldn’t help but wonder—was he right? Is it possible that choosing grace in a world conditioned for retaliation is exactly what Jesus calls us to do? That loving our enemies isn’t just a nice idea, but an actual, radical, transformative command? It just seemed like dancing at symphonies.

Because we think things would be nice but  we don’t necessarily actually do them. And because of that, we never know the results. We never really know what would happen.

A lot of people think that Jesus is telling us just to accept that evil things happen and there’s nothing we can do about it - or nothing we should do about it.. But Jesus isn’t calling us to passivity. He’s not saying we should simply accept wrongdoing or let injustice flourish.

What He’s saying in this passage is: Don’t play the world’s game on the world’s terms. Don’t fight fire with fire. Don’t let hatred turn you into what you despise. Paul echoes this in Romans saying: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Even Nietzsche—who wasn’t exactly a big fan of Christianity—warned, If you are going out to fight monsters, make sure you don’t become one yourself.

That’s the challenge of Jesus’ teaching. To turn the other cheek, to love your enemies, to walk the extra mile — none of these are about weakness. They’re about strength. They’re about refusing to let the world dictate who we become. They’re about standing up, not with fists clenched, but with hearts wide open. They’re about meeting hatred with grace, injustice with defiant love, cruelty with kindness.

And that’s hard. It’s hard because it’s easier to match insult for insult. It’s easier to justify our grudges. It’s easier to love the people who love us and to give only to those we think deserve it. It’s easier to retreat into cynicism, to say that kindness won’t change anything, that forgiveness is just letting people off the hook, that mercy is weakness. But Jesus calls us to something different. Jesus calls us to dance at symphonies.

And what does that look like in our lives? It looks like choosing to forgive even when we don’t get an apology. It looks like responding to gossip with grace instead of more gossip. It looks like standing beside the person that no one else wants to stand with. It looks like choosing peace in a culture that glorifies outrage. It looks like answering cruelty with kindness, injustice with a stubborn refusal to hate, and fear with faith.

It looks like a world where people expect revenge, but instead, they find grace. Where they expect judgment, but instead, they find compassion. Where they expect walls, but instead, they find open arms.

That kind of life? That kind of faith? That kind of love? It’s contagious.

Jesus didn’t call us to fit in. He didn’t call us to protect the status quo. He called us to righteous living. He called us to love in ways that don’t make sense, to stand up in ways that don’t conform, to defy the logic of this world with the logic of the Kingdom. He called us to live in such a way that people look at us strangely at first — until they see the joy in it. He called us to dance at symphonies.

Because when one person dares to dance at the symphony, at first, people stare. Maybe they shake their heads - maybe they whisper. But then something shifts. Someone smiles. Another person taps their foot. And before anyone realizes what’s happening, the whole back of the amphitheater of life is alive with movement, with laughter, with joy.

That’s the power of grace. That’s the power of love that refuses to play by the world’s rules. It looks strange at first —sometimes even foolish. But when we live it out, when we love recklessly, when we choose kindness over revenge, when we stand for justice without letting hatred take root in us — something shifts. And before we know it, others are stepping in too, drawn into the rhythm of something deeper, something holier, something undeniably good.

So what if we lived that way? What if we forgave without waiting for an apology? What if we answered gossip with grace? What if we stood beside the person no one else wants to stand with?

What if we actually lived like Jesus calls us to live?

I wonder what might happen.

I wonder how the world might change.

I wonder if, just maybe, it would look a like a dance party breaking out at the symphony.

So Go ahead - love recklessly. Forgive boldly. Stand for justice without letting hate win. Choose grace, even when it costs you.

Go ahead—dance at the symphony.

Amen.