Today’s Gospel reading continues the “Sermon on the Plain” we heard from last weekend. Earlier in this chapter in Luke, Jesus had just chosen his twelve disciples - those set apart to follow and learn from him and eventually to be sent out to share the message with others. As they come down the mountain, they’re met by crowds of people from all over, coming to Jesus for healing from ailments and release from demon possession. It’s here that Jesus begins to teach them, describing the reversals inherent to the kingdom of God. Unlike the way of the world, where the wealthy, powerful, and connected are understood to be blessed by God, in the Kingdom of God it is the poor, hurting, and hungry, who are called blessed, while the rich and powerful and those who seem to have no need for God are offered a warning about what is to come. Those were the blessings and the woes we heard about last week.
This is where today’s reading picks up, as Jesus continues with instructions for living as God’s people. This, too, is upside down and backwards from what the world values and expects. Don’t just love those who love you, Jesus says - anyone can do that! – but you, the people who follow me, the people who live I the reign, the kingdom of God are called to love even your enemies. Don’t just do good to those who have been good to you, but do good even to those who hate you. Don’t just give to those who will pay you back, but give lavishly, generously, with no expectations of repayment. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Don’t respond in kind, but respond with how you would like to be treated. These teachings are simple, perhaps, but easy? No, they’re certainly not easy.
I think all of us are used to living within a system of tracking what’s owed and deserved, trying to remember who is on our side, and who doesn’t make the cut. Trying to keep track of what ought to be coming to us, and where we are in line to get it. This way of interacting, of being is all around us, and yet isn’t it so exhausting? So exhausting, and also dangerous, as we’ve seen the way this spiral of retaliation and responding in kind just keeps going, keeps escalating, into something dangerous, and violent. Don’t we have better things to do than keep track of the people who owe us and who we owe? Better uses for our time and energy than hauling around the burden of hatred? Don’t we want to live, truly live?
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| Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash |
I think in many ways Jesus’ instructions here are more about us than they are about our enemies. Because hatred and resentment and anger are heavy burdens, and they are not borne by the people who are mean to us, but it’s a burden that we carry. Hatred and resentment and anger have the power to twist us into something unrecognizable, turning us inward, turning us away from God, turning us away from each another, focused only on ourselves.
What freedom, what grace it is, then, to be released from the need to retaliate; to be released from making distinctions; to be released from keeping track of who is worthy of our love, and our care, and our prayers. I think we’ve been tricked into thinking that things like love, and prayer, and blessings are finite resources – there’s only so much to go around. But we know that that is not true. Love and prayers and blessing? These gifts of God are infinite. There’s no danger of wasting them or squandering them on people who are unrepentant or undeserving.
Yes, love and prayer and blessing are abundant and unending, gifts from God that multiply even further as we share them. It’s true that our acts of love are good for our neighbors, whether friend or enemy - but they’re also good for us. That love has the power to transform not only the people we are loving, but also to transform us. To transform us to embrace lives of connection and love and joy. That’s what God intends for each of us, and for all creation. And when we live that way, we flourish.
As we hear again and again, life in the kingdom of God is different - unexpected, upside-down from how the world operates. And I think that’s because life in the kingdom of God is shaped by who God is and how God is - loving, generous, gracious, merciful, kind, slow to anger, abounding in grace.
And so we - who have been made in God’s image, who have been redeemed by the powerful love of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit - how can we be anything different, shaped as we are by this loving, generous, gracious, merciful God.
The kind of life that Jesus calls his followers to live is not easy. How, then, can we manage this challenging work? I think there are two things we see in this text that help us along the way.
First, we are reminded that it is always God who first demonstrates exactly this kind of love, exactly this kind of extravagant generosity that Jesus describes. We know that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. Before we did anything to earn or deserve or merit that, God’s grace came to us. God loves us even when we are enemies, when we act in ways that oppose God’s desires for creation. God draws close to us even when we try to hide or separate ourselves. God blesses us even when through our words and actions we curse God and God’s beloved creation. God shows us mercy and grace that we can never deserve, freeing us for a life of love in relationship with God and with one another. This promise of life renewed, this reality of what God has done, this is the thing we draw on when we are asked to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us.
The second reminder from this text is that we do not do this work alone. In my study this week, I was reminded that the “yous” in this text are plural – all y’all, yinz guys, all of you! Jesus’ instructions are less about one individual’s actions and more about the kind of work we are called to together as a community of Christ-followers. In this kind of community, we can do things like love our enemies and do good to those who hate us, because even when we receive hatred and evil from the world, we have people around us who fill us with encouragement, and goodness, and love.
When we’re in a community, we can come together to protect and care for those who are most vulnerable among us. If there’s someone who’s really hurting, who can’t do the work of loving an enemy, who can’t do good to someone who has poured hatred onto them, we do the work on their behalf, until they are strengthened, and healed, and ready to try again. When we gather as part of a community, we can afford to be extravagantly generous, because we know that we are surrounded by people who will support and care for us. We can give away our cloak and our shirt as well, because we know that others will come alongside us to clothe us again. The biggest gift of community, though, is that in a gathering of imperfect people, we are given countless opportunities to practice this kind of life, this kind of love that Jesus calls us to - a life of forgiveness, and generosity, and love.
We know that we live in the midst of division and discord. And so we pray for God’s love to work in us. We pray that God’s love would work in us, releasing us from cycles of retaliation. We pray for God’s love to work in us and free us from the burden of hatred. We pray for God’s love to work in us and transform us, so that we look out at the world and see not enemies, but neighbors - beloved by God, just as we are.
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