Love your Enemy- Luke 6

 

Genesis 45: 3-11, 15; Luke 6: 27-38

These teachings of Jesus are among 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” (Luke 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. … Is it even possible? What do we mean by “love” in relation to an enemy? (Theologically, love is to will the good of the other.)…. We hear Jesus say to turn the other cheek when struck and we wonder if Jesus wants us to be abused. … We hear Jesus saying give to everyone who asks, and we suspect we could go broke pretty quick following that command. … Our reasons for not wanting to follow these teachings seems to be 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. … 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, 

“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 knocks out your tooth, 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 knocked out your tooth, 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. That is sort of the system we use. You do damage to me, or my property, then the law says you need to fairly compensate for that damage, and it also says I can’t seek revenge in a way that exceeds the crime done to me.

If you take away the context, however, and you just think about the act of taking a person’s eye, or tooth, or killing someone, we see that it is an act of destruction. One anonymous Early Church commentator 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 need 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 that do not have a place in 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. … When we use fire to fight fire, we are likely to have a bigger fire. We need water, not more fire. We need a different way of responding to evil as citizens of the kingdom of God.

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 that they struck you with the back of their hand. This was not only a violent act, but it was also insulting. It was an action that declared you were an inferior. What Jesus says isn’t “run away”. He doesn’t say “hit back”. Jesus says to face them and turn to them the other cheek. To hit you on the other cheek means suddenly the person has to treat you as an equal, rather than as an inferior. It is a call to courage. It’s not about running away, and it’s not about adding more violence to the world. It is about the courage to live the way of the kingdom.

Bishop N.T. 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. These instructions have a fresh, springlike quality. They are all about new life bursting out energetically, like flowers growing through concrete and startling everyone with their colour and vigour.”

This is Kingdom living. This is the way of the Heavenly Father, who showers blessings on the deserving and the undeserving. …

I don’t think Jesus meant his words to be laws to blindly follow. They are wisdom. … The Early Church also understood the complexity of these teachings. … St. Theodore of Heraclea (355ad) says, 

“he does not command to give to everyone who asks without exception, even if one has nothing to give, for that is impossible. Nor does he instruct us, if we have plenty, to give to someone who asks with a bad motive. For the donation then goes for evil things. … For why is it said [in Acts 4:35] concerning the apostles that ‘distribution was made to each as any had need’? This tells us that they gave not so much to those who simply asked but that they provided for others on the basis of need.” 

So, the early church understood that these were complicated issues, and that giving should be guided by love, wisdom, and discernment.

The Kingdom way of Jesus is also about healing our own soul. … 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 early church commentator I mentioned above 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]

Dallas Willard, once commented that if we think loving our enemy seems impractical, we should look at the lives of those who hate their enemies. … There’s no shortage of examples in our world right now. … Then we can ask ourselves which way of living seems more practical- hating our enemies or loving them?

Speaking about this Gospel passage, Father Josiah Trenham says, 

“The kind of love that we must be done with and separated from is the love that expects to be loved in return. Or, the contentment, rather, to love the lovely. [That] has nothing to do with Christianity. If you love those who love you, you have no credit. Zero, Jesus says. Zero. Who wouldn't? I mean, you have to be a monster- a monster- not to love those who are loving you. You don't love your mom? I mean, you've got something wrong.”

“How about doing good? If you do good to those who do good to you, Jesus also says, ‘zero credit’. Big deal. I mean that's normal, and in that sense it's good. But, there's no reward for us to do good to those who are doing good to us. But, rather, we have to be separate from these things. As a matter of fact the best way- the best way- to do a good deed is to have it completely unacknowledged, and not to be bothered by it. Matter of fact, not even to notice that it was unacknowledged. … Pretty tough, huh? You know what that's called? … Christianity.”

Father Josiah has a way of teaching that is very sharp and direct.

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

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[1] Anonymous, Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 13- pg 56:702.