The gospel this week is Luke’s version of Jesus’ most famous sermon- the sermon on the plain (in Matthew, it’s a mount). It’s really the only sermon we have the text from.
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again”.
Love your enemies might be one of the most challenging things that Jesus taught. And he was pretty challenging. Kinda as a rule.
Jesus and His audience lived under an oppressive occupying Roman government. The Romans routinely employed torture and murder to keep their subjects in line. Everyone who was sitting on the plain, listening to Jesus say “love your enemies”, had ample of opportunities to experience deep“I hate you with every ounce of my being” enemies in the soldiers and prefects that carried out social domination. Bless those who curse you? If Romans spoke to them at all, it was probably to curse. Those who abuse you? They did that too. As a matter of course. Those who strike you on the cheek? All the time. Because they could. They were like obdurate abusive prison guards, who intimidated and abused to demean and break spirits. The goal of these Roman soldiers was to keep the Jews so frightened, so dominated, so afraid that they wouldn’t dare to revolt. If anyone takes your shirt? Just for fun.
So Jesus says “Do to others as you would have them do to you” It’s the golden rule. So well known that we might not even hear it anymore. We can think it means fairness.
But Luke Timothy Johnson “The ‘golden rule’ of ‘do as you would want done’ is not the ultimate norm here, but rather, ‘do as God would do’.”
In this sermon, Jesus preaches on how we should live as people of the Divine in this world. Nothing is more counter-cultural. “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27).
How does that look in practice? : “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,” and offer those who are cruel, not revenge or retaliation but instead this startling form of flipping-the-script: Here’s my other cheek, not just the first one; Here’s my shirt, not just my coat (and remember: most people in Jesus’ audience wore just those two garments, a coat and a shirt – so you give both those, and you’re wandering around naked. Here’s what you stole from me – keep it, it’s yours (Luke 6:29-30). Summing up, Jesus puts it this way: “love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35).
MLK Jr- Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.
Enemies. Latin. In Amicus. Not a friend. We so easily think of enemies.
MAGA hat wearers. White supremacists. ISIS.
Love your enemy. I haven’t always been able to do this and especially lately, as our national conversation has devolved into name calling and dismissiveness,
And it is easy to forget that these enemies are people.
Some of them are pretty bad people. But hating them doesn’t make the world better. It just puts more hate in the world. A never ending cycle of hate.
We’ve seen that in history. The Balkans. Ireland. Middle East. Destruction and hatred pass down through generations.
It takes something radical to break free from that burden of hate. And Jesus was radical.
It’s easier to agape someone you dislike (or who dislikes you) when you pray for them. Because when you pray for them, God often opens your heart to seeing people the way that God sees them, rather than the way you see them. And you can often have pity for people who may be filled with anger toward you.
What does it mean to pray for our enemies? It doesn’t mean that we have to agree with them. We do not have to pray for their success. But we can remember that they are human. We can pray for their wellness, their wholeness. For them to feel that love of God and compassion also. We can have compassion for whatever horror and pain and anger and fear twists their hearts and fills them with darkness.
This last idea, “expecting nothing in return,” is the keyword in the list. Jesus challenges his listeners to love, radical love, not as quid pro quo or a strategy for gain. Because there was no quid pro quo with the Roman soldiers far from home in a dusty backwater, where brutality was encouraged and who had little entertainment but abusing Jews.
Even today, this nothing in return idea is revolutionary . We expect relationships to be relatively equal. The world as we know it is relentlessly return-oriented. Mostly we treat one another with kindness or respect – only so long as it’s reciprocated. It’s a market economy. I’ll treat you well, but I expect the same in return. If you love me, I’ll love you; if you do good to me, I’ll do good to you; if you’ll repay me later, I’ll give to you now. You do the dishes. I’ll take out the trash.
But Jesus insists that even this idea of a “fair exchange,” reduces love. If it’s only a quid pro quo then love is a commodity. That isn’t love. That’s exchange. Love is so far beyond fairness. This kind of love is grace.
We hear that God offers grace. No condition. No reciprocity. The gift of love.
And this is the love Jesus preaches here in this sermon- “to human beings who are loved and love. Who are forgiven just as we forgive. “Be merciful, just as God is merciful” (Luke 6:35-6). God is love. We are made in the image and likeness of love. We are called to love this way.
A few weeks ago, I spoke of agape love, a love that longs for shalom, for the flourishing and wellbeing of all.
Jesus tells us here that we are supposed to agape our enemies. Jesus is asking us to agape people no matter what they do to us, no matter how they treat us, no matter how they insult us or harm us. No matter their actions, we are not to allow bitterness against them to invade our hearts. This is not even for their sake, so much as for our own. Because we will not be transformed, the world will not be transformed, by returning hate for hate.
This agape love doesn’t mean that we have to love our enemies the same way that we fall in love or the way we love our family. It simply means we keep our open our hearts to them.
The Greek word for “grace” is charis (pronounced, “HAR-riss,” with a guttural “h”), charity- love. The translation doesn’t make it clear, but the word is repeated throughout.
When Jesus builds his rhetorical crescendo criticizing reciprocal love (even sinners do that!), the word the NRSV translates as “credit” is charis: “If you love those who love you, what “credit” grace [charis] have you?”, or “what grace is there in that?” (Luke 6:32-4). And he repeats the word over and over. Jesus was an effective speaker- and/ or Luke was an effective writer. Repetition means emphasis. Jesus repeats the word three times: What grace/love is there in that? What grace/love is there in that? What grace/love is there in that? His point is clear: We are made for grace, for gracious love, to practice charis- just as God is Charis.
This isn’t fair. “fair” is precisely what true love is not. True love goes above-and-beyond reciprocity. In this sense, Jesus is recommending an “unfair” kind of love, an extravagance that benefits not the one who benefits you, but the one who opposes you; or indeed, that gives more to a thief than the thief takes in the first place!
And when we live this way, as children of the God of Grace, everything fits. We don’t condemn others; God doesn’t condemn us; we live in the image of the God of love.
N.T. Wright’s reflection on this text cautions us against seeking a “a new rule-book, a list of dos and don’ts that you could tick off one by one, and sit back satisfied at the end of a successful moral day.”
Instead, Jesus offers “an attitude of heart, a lightness of spirit in the face of all that the world can throw at you. And at the center of it is the thing that motivates and gives colour to the whole: you are to be like this” because that’s what God is like – again, because you are reflecting the image of a loving, merciful, abundantly forgiving God. Loving. And joyful. And even funny because these are silly, subversive images.
There’s a playful spirit in these ideas, as if they’re designed to evoke a kind of absurd, ecstatic state of generosity, a state of pure mercy, a state of grace. It’s hyperbole. This love is a playful, beautiful, graceful way of life.
Wright recognizes “that large sections of Christianity down the years seem to have known little or nothing of the God Jesus was talking about. Much that has called itself by the name of Jesus seems to have believed instead in a gloomy God, a penny-pinching God, a God whose only concern is to make life difficult, and salvation nearly impossible.”
The good news Jesus preaches is that God is not like that! And if we, and all around us, knew and loved the God of grace and love and tender mercy, and if we all strove to embody that same kind of love, rejecting violence, refusing to count wrongs, not participating in cycles of hatred, sharing generously all that we have, taking care of one another – imagine how that world would be.
The Hebrew word is Rahum- compassionate. Womb-like. Mother’s love for child she carries. Greek word used by Luke in describing God as “merciful” is “closely akin to the Hebrew word meaning ‘compassionate’ (rahûm), the attitude of loving attachment a mother has for the child of her womb” (Preaching the New Lectionary Year C).
24.2.2019