Love my enemies? Luke 6
At the moment, our society is full of opportunities for conflict. … Some see the truckers’ protest as a heroic stand to release the country from increasingly unnecessary government mandates, while others see it as an expression of systemic white supremacy. … Some see every interaction within our society as being marked by subtle racist, sexist, ableist, and other kinds of xenophobic powerplays that create a hierarchy of the privileged and oppressed. Others balk at the suggestion that things are so bad as an expression of ingratitude for the technology, medicine, and democracy that we all enjoy. They ask us to consider what time and place we would rather live in- where would we find more prosperity and justice. … Some express the need to move to greener technologies to lessen the destructive human footprint on the planet, and others speak about supporting jobs in the oilfield as a way of creating well paying jobs for multitudes of people while there is still a consumer demand for the product. … Those on the liberal end of the spectrum focus on improvements that can be made to our society and want to tear down societal structures and build up new structures to create a more just society. Those on the conservative end of the spectrum see the society that we live in as a very fragile ecosystem that is very unusual in terms of human history, a history that has been largely marked by tyranny, and they worry that messing with it too much will bring it all crashing down like a house of cards.
It sometimes feels like people we are very close to physically are a world away in their thinking. … All of this very complicated thinking finds expression on incredibly *helpful* and constructive formats like Twitter and Facebook, a format that has been amplified since it has become more difficult to meet face to face.
Things weren’t all that different in Jesus’ day. There were the Romans who were colonizers and believed they were spreading civilization. They created roads and aqueducts and their armies kept the peace in their territories. … The Sadducees were mainly concerned with Temple worship and wanted to not cause waves with Rome. They believed that you had to have flexibility in order to be able to survive. … The Pharisees thought they had to encourage everyone to strictly follow the law so that God would send the Messiah to bring them into a new golden age. They believed that those who refused to strictly follow the law were why God was holding back. … The Essenes believed that the whole lot was corrupt and set up a kind of monastic community in the wilderness near the shores of the Dead Sea. … The Zealots believed that they had to show their faith and courage by engaging in violence against Rome, in the way that David might have done against the Philistines. The Romans would have considered them terrorists. Others might have seen them as freedom fighters. … So, there is no shortage of reasons to clash with those around you. This is the context Jesus was in. These are the people he was speaking to when he spoke some of the most challenging words he ever spoke.
He says,
"… 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. Do to others as you would have them do to you” (6:27-31).
I suspect many of us hear those words, and recognize them as strangely beautiful, but then quietly reject them as not livable. … So, what many Christians do is politely and quietly put these teachings away as sweet words, but don’t seriously consider them realistic and livable.
Now “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” we get. That is the rule we find in Exodus 21:24. There we read
Now “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” we get. That is the rule we find in Exodus 21:24. There we read
“if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe” (Exodus 21:23-24).
We get that. Someone harms you so that you lose an eye, well you can’t kill them, but you can take their eye. … The Old Testament is often about limiting the damage of sin. So, someone punches you and destroys your eye, you can’t get revenge by killing the person. Otherwise, one sin could turn into many more. If you escalate the situation by killing the person who destroyed your eye, then their family retaliates against you and soon we have a feud that could last for generations. “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth” was meant to put limits on retaliation. It limits the effects of sin. We get that. You do damage to me or my property and the law says you need to compensate for that damage, and it also says I can’t seek revenge in a way that exceeds the crime done to me.
However, if you take away the context and you just think about the act of taking a person’s eye, or tooth, we see that it is an act of destruction. If we had to pick if such an act was a good action or a bad action, apart from the context, we would probably say it is a bad action. … One anonymous Church Father said,
However, if you take away the context and you just think about the act of taking a person’s eye, or tooth, we see that it is an act of destruction. If we had to pick if such an act was a good action or a bad action, apart from the context, we would probably say it is a bad action. … One anonymous Church Father said,
“If therefore we begin … to return evil for evil to everyone, we are all made evil”.
Jesus wants us to live in the Kingdom … right now. He wants us to behave as citizens of the Kingdom, now. … So, in everything we do we are to ask ourselves, is this the kind of act that we would find in God’s kingdom? Is a person who lives in the Kingdom of God the kind of person that can gouge out a person’s eye? … Destructive actions like taking a person’s eye out do not have a place in that kingdom. Those acts of destruction belong outside the kingdom, so participating in them does something to us and our ability to live in the Kingdom Jesus speaks about. We are suddenly acting like people of the fallen world, rather than people of the Kingdom.
Jesus knew that when we use fire to fight fire we are likely to have a bigger, more out of control fire that will probably burn us and others. How can we be the kind of people that break the chain of hatred and violence? We need a different way of responding to evil as citizens of the kingdom of God. We need water, not more fire. … What Jesus is teaching is wisdom, not law.
Some, like Bishop N.T. Wright, believe that there is strategy behind Jesus’ words. If someone were to strike you on your right cheek it probably meant they struck you with the back of their hand. This was not only a violent act, but it was insulting as well. It was an action that declared you were an inferior. What Jesus says isn’t “run away”, nor is it “hit back”. Jesus says to face them and turn to them the other cheek. To hit you on the other cheek with their right hand means suddenly the person has to treat you as an equal, rather than as an inferior. …
Bishop Wright says,
Jesus knew that when we use fire to fight fire we are likely to have a bigger, more out of control fire that will probably burn us and others. How can we be the kind of people that break the chain of hatred and violence? We need a different way of responding to evil as citizens of the kingdom of God. We need water, not more fire. … What Jesus is teaching is wisdom, not law.
Some, like Bishop N.T. Wright, believe that there is strategy behind Jesus’ words. If someone were to strike you on your right cheek it probably meant they struck you with the back of their hand. This was not only a violent act, but it was insulting as well. It was an action that declared you were an inferior. What Jesus says isn’t “run away”, nor is it “hit back”. Jesus says to face them and turn to them the other cheek. To hit you on the other cheek with their right hand means suddenly the person has to treat you as an equal, rather than as an inferior. …
Bishop Wright says,
“The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity. Think of the best thing you can do for the worst person, and go ahead and do it. Think of what you’d really like someone to do for you, and do it for them. Think of the people to whom you are tempted to be nasty, and lavish generosity on them instead.”
Our reasons for not wanting to follow these teachings seem to have to do with fear. We fear that if we don’t hit back, then our enemy wins. We fear that if we give to everyone who asks that we won’t have enough for ourselves. … To follow through on these teachings we have to really believe that our hope is in another kingdom. Our hope is not found in our earthly safety because we will all die. Our hope is not found in our possessions, because they can be easily stolen from us. Justice will only ultimately be found in the Kingdom. To live in the way of Jesus requires us to put our hope in God, and feel that deep in our bones. All other idols that promise safety and security have to be exposed as liars, not just intellectually, but deep in our being.
The kingdom way that Jesus describes is also about our own spiritual health. Loving our enemy benefits our enemy, but it also benefits us. If we sit in our hatred of our enemy we are hurting ourselves. The same anonymous church father I quoted earlier said,
“I think that Christ ordered these things not so much for our enemies as for us: not because enemies are fit to be loved by others but because we are not fit to hate anyone. For hatred is the prodigy of dark places. Wherever it resides, it sullies the beauty of sound sense. Therefore not only does Christ order us to love our enemies for the sake of cherishing them but also for the sake of driving away from ourselves what is bad for us. … If you merely hate [your enemy], you have hurt yourself more in the spirit than you have hurt him in the flesh. Perhaps you don’t harm him at all by hating him. But you surely tear yourself apart. If then you are benevolent to an enemy, you have rather spared yourself than him”.[1]
One of my favorite teachers, Dallas Willard, once commented that if we think loving our enemies seems impossible, we should look at the lives of those who hate their enemy. Then we can ask ourselves which way of living seems more desirable- hating our enemies or loving them?
We should also remember that Jesus is not asking us to do anything he himself didn’t do. Jesus lived the kingdom life. Bishop Wright says,
“When they mocked him, he didn’t respond. When they challenged him, he told quizzical, sometimes humorous, stories that forced them to think differently. When they struck him, he took the pain. When they put the worst bit of Roman equipment on his back- the heavy cross- the piece on which he would be killed- he carried it out of the city to the place of his own execution. When they nailed him to the cross, he prayed for them”.
Jesus asks his followers to live the way he did. And he promises that it will lead where it led him- to resurrection and eternal life. AMEN
[1] Anonymous, Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 13- pg 56:702.
[1] Anonymous, Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 13- pg 56:702.
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