Luke 6:27-38
It’s safe to say, that our gospel before us this morning, given the title in your bulletins, “Love your enemies”, presents us with some of Jesus most challenging words when it comes to how the faithful are called to live.
“To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it.
Help and give without expecting a return. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously…
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults… Don’t condemn those who are down… Be easy on people…Give away your life… Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
Here, Jesus’ message to those who seek to follow him is clear, and at it’s center, as it is with most, if not all of, what Jesus has to say… love… And not just the love that comes easy to us… the love that we have for those people in our lives who are “easy” to love… for those closest to us… for those we care for the most… but the love for those we really don’t want to love… Love for those we even feel unable to love… Love for those we deem as our enemies… those people who live differently, believe differently, act differently, who even bring violence upon us…
With a full schedule this past week, leaving little time for sermon preparation, I came into the office early Monday morning to begin to get some thoughts on paper… As is most often my morning routine, I sat down at my desk to check emails before getting into anything else, and there in my inbox was an article, sent to me from our very own seminary IT specialist and member of our highly esteemed adult choir, Andy Crouse…
The article/sermon, entitled, “A Divine Pat”, written by English actor John Cleese (think Monty Python), offers a reflection on Jesus words on love found in today’s gospel…
As he writes, Cleese reflects on some of those not so good things of history that have been done in the name of religion… For Christians: the Inquisition, the Thirty Year’s War, and the Crusades to name a few… Jews killing Palestinians and Palestinians killing Jews in that geographical location deemed as the Holy Land… The many acts of hatred at the hands of the Taliban… and too, we could add to Cleese’s list, those American hate groups like the Westborough Baptist Church who preach a message that not only never came from the mouth of Jesus, but goes in direct opposition to everything that Jesus was and is…
While Cleese goes on to discuss the many ways that the faithful are called to practice what he deems as “holy behavior”, how we physically live out the faith we claim to have… he eventually ends up where we are this morning by asking the question: “Love your enemy.” Can any of us begin to do this?
When I reflect upon the world in which I have grown up in, if I am being honest, it is one that more often than not, appears to be one set apart rather than one together…. One where we spend far more time creating enemies than we do creating friends… Where we would rather strike back than turn the other cheek… where we would rather curse those who curse us, keep our shirt for ourselves instead of giving to those who are naked, and do unto others as they do unto us instead of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us… Where we would rather love ourselves than love our neighbor… Where practicing this sacrificial love of which Jesus speaks in today’s gospel is more often left to be an afterthought in our lives rather than a focal point…
According to the American SPCC and the CDC, across the United States, 30% of young people admit to bullying others… 70% of young people have witnessed bullying in school… 1 in 3 admit to being bullied themselves, leading to roughly 160,000 kids skipping school each day out of fear… and those young people identified as the most vulnerable (those with disabilities, those with learning differences, and those who identify themselves as LGBTQ to name a few) are at significantly increased risk…
For those who believe that bullying is simply normal childhood behavior, that goes away once mature adulthood is reached, 75% of adults report being affected by bullying in the workplace…
“Love your enemies. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person…”
“Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously…”
“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults… Don’t condemn those who are down… Be easy on people…Give away your life… Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”
Immediately flowing from our gospel from last week in which Jesus radically redefined how we are to understand what it means to be blessed by God, in today’s gospel, Jesus calls those who claim his name to respond to God’s blessing by facing evil with nonretaliatory kindness… to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us… to turn the other cheek, and give of our resources to those in need… not because we expect something in return, but in humble gratitude for all that God has done for us…
To follow Christ is to live a life reflective of such… to live a life of mercy and of sacrificial love of neighbor… To do unto others not as they do unto us or even as we would want them to do unto us, but as God has done unto us…
Some will read today’s Gospel as a word law where the Good News is absent altogether… where the expectations of what it means to follow Christ outweigh and even overshadow His promise… Yet thanks be to God, that God is merciful. That God doesn’t require us to follow the law, but frees us to… that God doesn’t so much care about the law, as God cares so much about us…
As Luther reflects in his 1523 sermon on today’s text;
“Now how is God our heavenly Father merciful? Thus, in that he gives us all things, natural and spiritual, temporal and eternal, gratuitously and out of pure goodness. For should he give unto us out of and according to our merits, he would have to give us only hell-fire and eternal condemnation. Therefore what he gives us in our possessions and honor, is given out of pure mercy. He sees that we are captives of death; but he is merciful and gives us life. He sees that we are the children of hell; but he is merciful and gives us heaven. He sees that we are poor, naked and exposed, hungry and thirsty; but he is merciful, and clothes, feeds and gives us to drink, and satisfies us with all good things. Thus, whatever we have for the body or spirit, he gives us out of mercy, and pours his blessings over us and into us. Therefore Christ says here: Imitate your Father and be also merciful, as he is merciful.”
So, what if this story isn’t about law, but rather one meant to help its hearers trust in the unconditional love of God who knows we will fall short of all God’s best hopes, but loves us enough to say so? Who in the end isn’t so much interested in the “do this” or “don’t do that” as in the “I love you” and “you are to love each other”? Who hopes, that by the love of God in Christ, him crucified and risen from the dead, to challenge us to live lives of sacrificial love ourselves… that through experiencing his mercy, our personal desires would fall to the bottom of the list while our neighbor’s needs would rise to the top…
Now how is God our heavenly Father merciful?
“Then your reward will be great and you will be children of the most high, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”
May you strive to live out your God-created identity in the way our heavenly Father lives toward us… generously and graciously… For God’s Word is the gift of an adoring parent to beloved children, encouraging us to love each other and to love our Father… Thanks be to God. AMEN.
~Pastor Andrew Geib
Sermons at St. James Gettysburg 