Gumball Ethics

Luke 6:27-38

I always thought having a gumball machine would be cool. It would be so awesome to put my money in, get the gumballs, and then be able to get all the coins back! It would be more efficient if you just got a bag of gumballs for Christmas, but that wasn’t the point. The point was feeling like I was getting something for free. Like I was beating the system.

In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus talks about beating a system – the system of how people treat one another. Jesus is preaching a sermon, and he is talking ethics: the moral principles that govern a person's behavior. Jesus identifies the prevailing ethic of how people treat one another that I talked about in my children’s sermon. If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

I’ll call it “the gumball ethic”: put something in to get something back. It’s a transactional way to live – I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine. It is a way of acting that at some level keeps score.

The gumball ethic has its place. It works well for customer service and carpools. It is important to keep in mind in the workplace or anything with a collective goal. We all put something in to get something back.

But there are times when the gumball ethic is limiting. I remember my car got towed in my first week of classes at Yale Divinity School. I had to get to the impound to pay the fine and get it back. I didn’t know anybody in New Haven. The only person I could think of was a guy who had struck up a conversation while we’d been standing in line at the bursar’s office. I remember how hard it was to call; I hadn’t put anything in, so it was hard to ask for anything back.

Furthermore, the gumball ethic doesn’t offer much when we are wronged. If all we know is to give out what was put in, then when we are hurt, all we can do is retaliate. And as I saw on a bumper sticker, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

Jesus, however, seems to have a higher purpose in mind for his disciples. Instead of a gumball ethic – a way of relating to people built on transactions – Jesus advocates an ethic built on love. Love your enemies, Jesus says, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return. For Jesus, love is not a feeling – it’s an action: doing good, lending, caring for another. And love is also not a deal; it is freely given, with no expectation of return.

Love your enemies, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return. Jesus goes on to say, Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Jesus indicates that there is reward for this kind of ethic: the reward is to be children of the Most High. This kind of loving behavior toward friends, strangers, and even enemies finds its source in how God acts toward us. If God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, we are to be kind to them too. Be merciful, Jesus says, just as your Father is merciful. It’s a love ethic: we are to treat others with the same love that God has already given us, regardless of how they behave toward us.

My friend Grace has always had a difficult relationship with her mother. Grace could never measure up to her mother’s standards. One bone of contention was that Grace had moved away. Grace’s sister lived right down the road; why did Grace have to move two hours away? “I can never see the grandkids,” her mom would complain. But when Grace invited her mom to visit, her mom declined to come. We have too much to do with your sister’s kids, her mom would say. But Grace knew it was just a passive-aggressive way of expressing her hurt and anger that Grace hadn’t chosen to build a life nearby.

This behavior went on for years, and in fact, is still going on today. But Grace has learned a thing or two over those years. Grace tried talking to her mom to come to a truce. She yelled back at her mom to get her to back off. She tried taking a break from the relationship as a protest to the treatment. None of it worked. But Grace began to understand that her mom wanted connection, even though she went about it in a damaging way. 

Grace eventually took a new approach: letting her mom be her mom, and not letting her mom’s behavior dictate Grace’s behavior. Now Grace invites her mom to special events, but she learned to invite a special friend to cheer on her kids as well. It’s a creative way to love herself, her kids, and her mom. And sometimes now, her mom even shows up. But most importantly, Grace and her mom have stayed connected in a relationship that could have ended in bitterness years ago. That’s what they both wanted in the first place.

Jesus’s love ethic for our individual lives can also be taken into our collective lives. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s in our country is an example of the creative resistance at the societal level. Leaders of the civil rights movement took seriously Jesus’ mandate of non-violence and the words from the gospels to love your enemies. They did not respond with violence when they were attacked. They did not fight back when arrested or seek revenge against their adversaries. When the American people saw children attacked by police dogs in Birmingham and peaceful marchers beaten in Selma, the true nature of racism in our country was unmasked, people’s hearts were converted, and political change became possible.

Sometimes it takes a courageous act of love to come to the place we all long for. We have the opportunity to live out Jesus’ love ethic every day: in our families and friends, our classrooms and workplaces, our neighborhoods and our churches. It is not easy to demonstrate kindness and mercy when we are mistreated and hurt. But I want to point out that if the content of love is showing kindness and mercy, it comes from a place of empowerment. Doing good to another – being kind – shows you have capacity, and that is a form of personal wealth. Jesus was not calling for his followers to be quiet or subservient. We are not doormats or church mice. Rather, Jesus’ ethic calls for a powerful form of creative resistance, one that undermines hurt and hate with love.

From the personal to the civic, we are called to more than gumball ethics. We are called as Christians to do more than love those who love us. Jesus calls us to love like he loved – without reserve, without retaliation. Jesus did it from the cross, forgiving those who put him there. But Jesus also said, A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put into your lap. It’s an image of abundance in the midst of moral strenuous action. When we move from a transaction to love, we channel God’s love. God’s mercy and love for us is unlimited. And so that is where we begin and end: in our prayer and in our living, we are challenged, inspired, forgiven and held in the merciful and abundant love of God that we may love as God loves.