Reading: Luke 6:27-38
Jesus has become well-known throughout the province of Judea and beyond, as a teacher of God’s kingdom and a healer of God’s people. His actions and words have stirred the hope that God is starting to set the world right, by raising up and strengthening the people of God as a guiding light for all others. Having attracted the attention of a large crowd, he begins what we call “The Sermon on the Plain,” in which he describes the kind of life God calls and enables people to live, to be a light to all the world.
“To you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without
expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be
children of the Most High, because God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Meditation
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and do not judge.”
I think I have to agree with Trish Stefanik at the Overlook Retreat House of the Dayspring Community in Maryland, who writes: “My first read of the gospel this week had my stomach in knots. To those who are listening, Jesus is saying … to include in our circle of prayer and kindness and generosity those people especially whom we consider undeserving. We are to have an open heart for those whose attitudes and behaviour we despise or who despise us. We are to love and do good and give and lend with no expectation of anything in return. Sometimes it feels like Jesus is asking too much from my little human head and heart…”
It’s been more than I’ve been able to do well. Often, needing to defend and stand up for myself, and not knowing or having learned how to set boundaries in a good way or how to confront others in a constructive way, I’ve let hurt over some slight or personal injury just sit there and then over time harden into grievance and resentment until it becomes wall and a barrier to helpful relationship.
Or maybe you've seen some of the Facebook posts I share sometimes. The really judgemental ones, that as soon as I have posted it, or someone replies asking how I could share something so critically and harshly judgemental -- I have to ask myself, too: how could I, why did I do that?
Or out of love and care for someone else, at times I’ve taken up the fight against others on their behalf for some harm suffered, haven’t known when to stop, and in the process have turned potential friends and family into enemies, In ways that are hard to undo.
And it’s not like we don’t have enough enemies without making more. Today in our social-media-driven tribalism with each tribe fearfully seeking power to exert its will, it seems the enemy is anyone who disagrees with you, who holds to different values, listens to different voices, is simply “the other.”
This week on a CBC Radio phone-in show people were asked how “the Freedom Convoy” has affected relationships. Caller after caller said it has been the final straw that’s broken the back of two years of increasingly strained COVID conversation with some family and friends. The convoy has pushed it to a new, unmanageable level and they’re just “done.” They no longer have interest or energy to keep trying to talk with one another. And it’s not that they “agree to disagree.” What they agree to is to walk away and have nothing to do with one another.
Love your enemies? Do good to those who hate you, or whose position you hate? And judge not?
We’re tempted to think it’s just not possible. That it’s too much for us.
But we know it can be done, even in the most critical life-threatening situations. Just think of what we’ve seen and known in our own time.
For decades now in the midst of conflict in the Middle East, there has been an ongoing movement of low-level, organized, sustained conversations between Palestinian and Israeli households. A continuing seires of up-close and personal occasions of getting to know one another aside from political posturing and positions, and of learning to understand the other more simply as fellow human beings.
In South Africa, all the world was amazed and instructed by their experience of truth-telling and reconciliation after decades of violent, evil apartheid. It didn’t solve everything; nothing ever does. But it was a ray of bright light that helped them see one another and themselves in new ways, and the rest of the world is still trying to learn it.
We all also know stories of deep, transformative forgiveness – like that of Wilma Derksen, a woman in Winnipeg whose teenage daughter over forty years ago was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered. Because of what her Mennonite faith taught her, she chose right from the start to walk a path of forgiveness whatever that meant, and has spent the last forty years learning and growing her way into it.
We know about First Nations’ healing circles, and the way of restorative rather than retributive justice, for the restoration of relationship and the healing of community for all after harm has been done.
So, we know it can be done. Human beings are capable of this.
Not that it’s easy. It wasn’t easy for Jesus. There was probably good reason he went on retreat as often as he did for solitary prayer with God, to be renewed and restored in the right direction. And we know where it led him in the end. Lent and the journey to Good Friday begin in a few weeks.
But he knew this over and over again as the way of new and true life, of abiding joy and fulfilment. It’s the way of God in the world, and the way of living in God in our own living that he wants us to know and be part of.
What is this way, though? What does it look like, and not look like? What does it demand of us, and not demand?
One thing Jesus does not demand is that we deny the reality and fact of enemies. The reality and the fact of people in our own lives who are so hurtful or spiritually unhelpful to us, and who we have a hard time being with, that we need clear boundaries as well as help and support in maintaining them. The reality and the fact of beliefs, actions, values, policies and patterns of behaviour that are wrong, that are hurtful and oppressive of others, and thsat in the economy of God must and will be dealt with.
But what Jesus talks about is us, like God, loving the enemy when the encounter is upon ypu and it is personal and up-close, and there is the opportunity to act beyond tribal identity and party line, to step beyond political power-seeking and fear of the other, and to be open to the other as a real person, and thereby open and accountable to God.
For instance, he says, when your master strikes you on the cheek – as masters do, slapping the face of a slave with the back of their right hand (as it was traditional at the time – a tried and true way of putting a slave in his or her place), hitting the right cheek of the slave in the process – after your master does that, Jesus says, offer your left cheek as well. It will show him you can take it; it will also mean he will have to slap you with the palm of his right hand – something he would normally do only in a moment of anger or pique with an equal, not a slave. In other words, you break through the distance between you and him, and invite him to relate to you as an equal.
And when a Roman soldier confronts you and makes you give him your outer garment – as Roman soldiers will do, give him your inner garment as well. It will leave you naked and exposed, and it will make clear to him and all around just how wrong his action has been. His own choice will be evidence against him of his way of relationship with you, others and God. And he will be invited into a space of choosing what to do about that.
There’s no guarantee, of course, what will come of this. Neither we nor God know whether the other will choose to remain an enemy or become a friend, stay a tribal member or be an authentic human being. But with God and like God, we can act towards the other in such a way that they are invited to choose.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist teacher who died just a month ago at the age of 95, once wrote about four mantras that can help us to act this way, and to open a door for ourselves and others to move beyond fear and towards love.
He says that in approaching an enemy – someone you are afraid of, and who is probably also afraid of you, the first mantra is “Dear one, I am here for you.” In other words, I am showing up in person, as risky as that is, face to face and heart to heart, apart from my own tribal-identity and group-think, just to be here with you.
The second is “Dear one, I know you are there, and I am so happy.” I know that somewhere beyond your place in the world, behind your tribe and your learned ideology, there is a real human being called you, and I am happy for this chance to meet you, and for both of us maybe to get to know you.
The third is “Dear one, I know you are suffering; that is why I am here for you.” I do not agree with all you do, and demand, and act out. But I know you have been hurt, you feel afraid, and I care about that. That’s why I am here.
And the fourth – riskiest of all he says, is “Dear one, I am suffering, please help.” I, too, have been hurt and am afraid of many things. And I do not have all the answers, anymore than anyone else or even the person in front of you. So, can you help with the real hurt and real fear that I feel?
Each of these four could take a sermon to unpack. Together, they probably take more than a single lifetime to act out.
But I wonder, is this at all the way of loving an enemy that Jesus wants to teach us?
Is this at all part of the pathway to heal the world by love one life at a time – beginning with our own, as God does?
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