I preached this sermon at Emmanuel United Church, Waterloo on February 24, 2019.
Love for Enemies
Luke 6:27-38 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 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. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.[a] Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Judging Others
37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable your sight, O Lord, our strength, and our redeemer.
The scripture today from Luke is dense. Really dense. A preacher could make a full 15-minute sermon about each verse in this section individually – but lucky for all of you, I only have our short time here this morning. I’m going to break this sermon into two parts so that we can pull out as much as we can from this scripture in our limited time. First is talking about love for our enemies, then from verse 37 Jesus talks about judging others. So, everyone buckle-up and get ready for a whirlwind tour of the Golden Rule.
The first section of the reading is a continuation of the sermon which you’ll remember we started to hear last week – Blessed are the poor, Blessed are the hungry, woe to the rich, woe to those who are full. This new section continues with a new mode where Jesus preaches seemingly straightforward instructions to the crowd: “Love your enemies – do good to those who hate you”, “Bless those who curse you”, “Turn the other cheek”, “Give to those who beg from you”, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.
To put it simply, this text is a litany that in some ways boils down to “Be nice to each other and give love to one another as God would love you.” It’s worth spending some time considering what Jesus means in the sentence when he says that we should love our enemies. Some of us in church have probably heard this particular sentence from Jesus hundreds or more times in our lives – love your enemies. It’s so common that it’s almost cliché. But how often do we stop to consider what that really means? Love your enemies – do good to those who hate you.
For whatever reason, I’ve spent a lot of time this past year talking with the youth group and our Wednesday night Bible and Beers group about the different kinds of love that are described in the ancient Greek language used to write the New Testament, so I suppose it’s only right that I share some of that with you all.
For the commandment to “love your enemy” the author of Luke used a particular ancient Greek word for love: “Agape”. English doesn’t have a standalone word that compares to agape, so it helps to compare it with some of the other types of love found in ancient Greek – there are actually seven types, but I’ll just highlight four. Oftentimes in English we think first of love in terms of “eros” – eros is a lustful love; It burns hot and Greeks would say that it causes us to lose our senses – this is the kind of whirlwind love in romance movies. It’s fiery and passionate.
The next love we can consider is “pragma” – pragma is the longstanding stable love of marriage or long romantic relationships – it’s the kind of love where one partner can count on the other partner for life. It doesn’t necessarily have the flames and sparks of eros – though that’s probably a part of what kindled the pragma love, but it’s more like the warm coals that keep the fire going from beneath.
Another type of love is the deep friendship love that is called “philos” – this is a word that can often be translated as brotherly love (hence, Philadelphia – the city of brotherly love). Philos was often used to describe the bond between soldiers who’ve fought in battle together. It’s a friendship that has deep roots.
In Jesus command to love our enemies he doesn’t use any of these love types – eros, pragma, philos… instead Jesus calls us to agape. The biggest difference between agape and all the other types of love is that it’s not choosy. It’s not tied to being reciprocated by the recipient and in a sense it’s not necessarily aimed at a particular person. Instead, agape is a radical love that wants the best for everyone regardless of our emotional relationship. This is Jesus’ love for the world – a radical empathy that means that even though we might not like the person in front of us, in fact we might despise their behaviour, we still want them to be well and are willing to work for that well-being. Agape is difficult for many of us to live out, and I think those who know of its existence and Jesus call to agape love will continue to be challenged by it all their lives. Agape means that despite their flaws, we see our common humanity in others; even despite their actions we care about their well-being. This is the kind of love God has for us, and this is how we should love one another.
How do we put this love into action? If we look at the phrasing in this part of the scripture, it almost feels like we should be acting like pushovers – giving in to the bully in every situation. The Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church says that we should be “fools for Christ”. Probably one of my favourite Pauline sayings – but does it mean we should look like chumps? Well… maybe. If we turn the other cheek, give away not just our coat but our shirt, give to everyone who begs from us without expecting anything in return we might feel foolish, but some scholarsLiquid texture allows using it without canadian generic cialis water. Doctors should also be told abut the medical history to avoid any future price of sildenafil complications. Before choosing the body art form cialis super viagra of your choice, make sure you know the removal process if you require it most. Erectile Dysfunction is a modern epidemic Believe it or not, more than 80 million men in the age of 40 to 70 years and about seven men in the ten suffer from cheap levitra cute-n-tiny.com it above the age of 70. would argue that these actions of active surrender are inverting the power structure – flipping it on its head. By forcing someone to strike you again, or take more than they initially wanted to steal from you, you’re assuming control of the situation and shocking them into seeing the wrongness of their own actions. It’s like a version of Jiu-Jitsu – using an attacker’s own movement to overpower them. When we provide people the opportunity to reconsider their actions consequences we’re in fact doing the loving thing and helping those people to grow. Agape strikes again.
God enacts this power inversion throughout the Gospel: In fact, Jesus is giving these instructions from the perspective of one who is also God. Jesus, the human being who is also fully divine, understood and understands more than anyone what it looks like to give to the ungrateful, to lend without expecting anything in return. God the Creator, gave humankind Jesus – God’s own offspring, and our connection to God – without any expectation that we could possibly repay the debt we owe for our very existence … then humanity crucified Jesus in return for the favour. The resurrection was the ultimate inversion of power – a single human being, unjustly murdered by the state actually overpowers death itself, proving the immeasurable power of God’s love. So when we hear Jesus the Christ asking us to go the extra mile, he knows what he’s talking about – he knows that what he’s asking of us is hard and might seem ludicrous… but so is God’s agape love for us. God’s love is ludicrous, it’s absolutely foolish. So, back to the original question: Are we chumps to follow Jesus’ commandment to love our enemies? Perhaps. But only if you’re going to call God a chump too.
For the second part of the scripture we’re going to discuss the commandment not to judge lest we be judged ourselves. This is one of those verses which has troubled me and caused all kinds of confusion. The text seems pretty straightforward – don’t judge others and you won’t be judged either – what you give will be returned to you and more.
A quick reading of this text might lead us to believe that anything goes as long as we’re not judging other people. This means that we can throw those pesky 10 Commandments out the window because hey, we’re not going to judge those other people if they also start breaking the commandments! Well… no.
Another reading might have us thinking that we can’t make comparisons between anything at all; We aren’t supposed to judge that chocolate is better than strawberry ice cream, or that cats are better than dogs, or that Star Trek is better than Star Wars. Again, while all of those things are true, this isn’t what Jesus was talking about.
Christians are called upon to choose and weigh judgement in all kinds of ways in the world, but we must do so with humility and wisdom. At Emmanuel we know all too well how our economic systems in Canada leave the marginalized at a disadvantage and for some that means losing their homes. As a church community, we’ve made a judgement that this is wrong – sinful – and we’ve created the Bridgeport Cafe and the Waterloo Wayside Centre’s other programs to help alleviate some of this hurt. In addition we advocate for better policies which will take into account those who are being left behind.
We at Emmanuel also made judgement that in the history of Christianity, the LGBT2Q+ community has been wrongly persecuted and so we worked to become an Affirming ministry to welcome people of any sexual orientation who wish to make a connection with God in our community. Speaking for myself and for others in this community, we’ve extended this Affirming mindset to the secular world. When we see the current provincial government making changes to health education which would make LGBT2Q+ kids unsafe we make the judgement that they are wrong and speak out.
No, Jesus wasn’t telling us that we couldn’t make any judgements. In reality, Jesus’ commandment not to judge was a condemnation of stereotyping – categorizing people thoughtlessly without understanding them. For example, judging that because a person is young they must be ignorant of the world, or judging that because someone is old they must hate change or deviation from “tradition”. Jesus’ commandment was a prohibition against ageism, racism, sexism, and all of the other kinds of divisive, dehumanizing discrimination that exist. When we talk about agape love, there’s no room for us to judge others based on the traits they can’t control. With an agape love we must embrace those differences and celebrate them.
When we act out agape love, the judgement we have must be humbly reserved for actions which contribute to division, and hurt in our world. The agape love Jesus demands of us means that we must eliminate our prejudices and see people the way that God sees them – as our siblings whom we can’t just sideline and ignore. If we can view our fellow human beings as co-equal and desire their well-being alongside our own, we’re bound to please God and get one step closer to building God’s Kin-dom here on earth – and that’s Good News.
Amen.
