Luke 6:27–36
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 13th June 2021
Everyone has enemies. You may not have any at the present moment, but sooner or later you will. Certainly you will, if you become a follower of Jesus. In our reading today Jesus tells us how to handle enemies.
He is starting to attract attention. There are crowds of enthusiastic listeners, but also an increasing number of critics. It has got beyond where he can handle it alone. He has just spent a night in prayer on a mountain and chosen as full-time helpers twelve men from a larger group of supporters. Further down the mountain he runs into a big crowd, and begins to tell them about his kingdom. The effect of his words is to divide the audience into those who want the kingdom he is talking about, and those who are happy with the world as it is. He addresses the former group: “But I say to you who hear …” Some are listening, some just haven’t got it. Some here this morning will be listening, others not. It is the way things go.
Jesus tells his disciples—the ones who are hearing—how to respond to opposition; anyone who joins his mission will have plenty of it: “Love your enemies,” he says. This sounds crazy. I suppose there is no part of Jesus’ teaching that is better known, and none that is less practiced. Yet let me say, he himself lived by it and died by it. It was altogether practical for him, even if it proved to be beyond his followers.
We need to start by asking ourselves what love means, because it appears to mean so many things. Recently Australia made its decision on same-sex marriage. The knock down argument we heard from one politician was: “If two men love one another, why should I be against their getting married?” I heard something similar the day before yesterday. Love is good, right? Then anything that goes with love must also be good. But Jesus certainly wasn’t suggesting we have sex with our enemies. What was he saying?
The Greeks had four different words to distinguish four different loves. Actually, they had more, but in his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis explores these four main ideas. Philia is friendship-love, the bond between two people—a man and a man, a woman with a woman, or a woman with a man—who have a deep affection for one another, but not sexual. We all know this friendship and value it. The second word is storge, family-love, the love of a mother for her child, the love of two sisters, a child and a grandmother. The media constantly talks about “our loved ones”, reminding us that this kind of love is precious. The third love is eros, sexual-love, falling in love, a man with a woman. Falling in love is one of the greatest experiences of life. One of the saddest is the breakdown of such a love. Frequent reports of domestic violence remind us it often does. The fourth love is agape (pronounced a-gár-pay). You come across a homeless man in the street. He’s not a relation or friend. You don’t even recognize him. But he is needy and you feel sorry for him and want to do something to help. Maybe you buy him a meal, or get him into some accommodation, or just give him a few dollars. That’s agape love. It used to be translated as “charity” until charity got a bad name for being heartless and uninvolved.
What these four have in common, which makes them all “love”, is the desire of one person to do good for someone else. What motivates that love is different: friends are drawn together by common interests, similar ideas about things, mutual support; family by blood; lovers by admiration, sex, the desire for children; agape by another’s need. Lewis points out that in the first three loves there is something good about the person we love that motivates us. A man sees beauty in a woman, and wants to give her things. But he also wants her for himself. She wants to give him things. That is the magic of eros. Or with storge a parent loves a child—because its been wanted for a long time; it is ours, we dream about its future. With philia my friend understands me. We think the same. We enjoy the same. We like to be together. Not to have a friend can mean awful loneliness. There is something we give and something we receive in return.
The fourth love is different. Agape was not as common in Greek thinking as the other three. With agape there is nothing in the person I am loving to attract my love except their need. Agape is love where there is nothing interesting, no previous relationship, no beauty, nothing that would make me want to help—”love of the unlovable,” we sometimes say. Lewis’s surprising argument is that without this fourth kind of love, the others eventually fail. The woman I love may not continue to be lovely. Your husband may become ill and a burden to you. Family members may cheat you out of your inheritance. A friend may betray you. How do you feel towards the person who was once a friend or lover who now hates you? Our newspapers and magazines are full of stories where hatred has replaced love.
I had a friend who did marriage counselling. He would ask the couple to think back to when they fell in love. The liked giving each other things. Then he asked them when things changed. Because now you want for yourself, but do not want for the other. There comes a point where if agape does not kick in, and you start doing good because it is good, and not because you feel starry-eyed, or because you will be repaid somehow, then your relationship will start to die. Agape is the love Jesus says we should have even for enemies. It is the love God has for us.
But why? The wisdom of his day said, “Love your neighbor, and hate your enemy.” This is natural—it is what the world practices. There is a clue in verse 29: “To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other cheek also.” This is weird; who does this? Jesus did! But so did one other character in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 50:6 “the Servant of the Lord” says, “I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.” This “Servant of the Lord” is the same one who in Isaiah 53 is wounded for our sins and gives up his life as a sin offering. He is none other than the promised Saviour-King who will die that his people may live. What Jesus is asking of his followers—those who believe in the kingdom—is that they join him and share the mission of the Suffering Servant.
Once we understand this, the Sermon on the Mount begins to make sense. Why is Jesus requiring such counter-intuitive behaviour on the part of his followers? Because he is on a mission to reconcile the world to God—we are called to be part of that mission.
What helped me understand this was when a member of my church went as a social worker to a large town in Western Australia’s wheat belt. Months later he came home to visit. He was very discouraged. “The aborigines in this town have been terribly hurt,” he said. They cannot take it out on the whites who have hurt them, so they turn against each other. But when someone is hurt, they hurt in return, and it seems the violence goes round and round forever.” I heard him wondering how he should respond as a Christian. “I would have to go and live with them,” he said. “When they hurt me—and they would— I would have to take it without hitting back. But I couldn’t take my family into that.” I remember thinking, “That’s what Jesus did.” He came into the world and spoke for God, and when they hurt him, he refused to hit back. He even prayed for those who were driving metal spikes through his wrists. Eventually his suffering spoke to them: :God is not against you as you think (as everyone thinks). He loves you, and wants only the best for you.” That has always been the effect of the message of the cross.
So I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.
Jesus is not telling legislators how to make laws. Nor is he inventing a new law code for Christian. Nor is he teaching wisdom for a happy or successful life; his wisdom was directed to achieving his kingdom. No, he is giving examples of the sort of behaviour that will be exhibited by those who share with him in his mission by joining in the ministry of the suffering Servant of the Lord. How you will respond in any particular situation will depend on the situation but here are examples of how a Christian might behave.
A modern example which comes to my mind is that of Jim and Elizabeth Elliot. In 1956 in the Amazon jungles of Eastern Ecuador Jim and his friends were speared by Indians he was trying to befriend for Jesus. Elizabeth later learned their language and returned to live with them and teach them the Christian faith. A night that stands out in my memory: an ex-convict had been given a van and helped into a handyman business by a church member. Someone who knew of his past didn’t want him in the community, and threw a petrol bomb into his van one night. I was awakened by the phone at 2am. “They’ve bombed my car!” He was living less than a hundred meters from the church. When I got there, he was ready to go and burn down the house of the people he thought had done it. I had to convince him that Satan would be the only winner if he did.
Does Jesus mean we should never defend ourselves—always let anyone take from us anything they want—never put a lock on our door? What makes me think this cannot be the case is that on several occasions he escaped from dangerous situations. Once he warned his disciples that in the future they would sometimes need to carry a weapon. There were occasions when his later disciples stood up to their opponents and accepted the help of the law. Paul once demanded an apology from the authorities for beating him unlawfully. Butt other times they accepted unjust treatment. Always they refused to seek revenge. How did they know what each situation required? Uppermost always in their minds was the kingdom. And that meant the welfare of the people they wanted to see reconciled to God. They would do anything for the kingdom, and therefore they loved. This must be the way of every true missionary, every true minister, every true Christian. When we deliberately hurt someone we betray the Lord Jesus and hinder the kingdom he is building.
That is why Jesus goes on to give us a rule of thumb:
Whatever you wish that people should do to you, do so to them…
And he continues:
If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.
Here Jesus goes beyond how we deal with our enemies. He is telling us how to deal with the people out there. Most of us don’t have any difficulty helping a family member or a friend. If the down-and-outer in the street turned out to be a relation we would help him at once. But beyond that we draw a line. “No,” says Jesus, “don’t let the mindset of the world rule you. Be big-hearted, be generous.” Some people are generous by nature. But most of us tend to be tight-fisted, to be quick to find a reason why we cannot help. We need to examine ourselves—train ourselves in generosity. Does he mean we should just be there to give everything away to everyone—that we should never accept the repayment of a loan? I doubt it. Once more we will need to judge what is appropriate for each situation, but Jesus gives us examples of how we should act; generosity should be our default response, even with enemies.
“After all, you are children of the Father God, and look how he acts. He gives the rain and the sunshine, as well to the wicked as he does to his own people. Be like him! You are his children.”
Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
The Jewish rabbis said it was a good thing to give a gift to a poor person. It was even better to make a loan. Best was to help them into a business. A loan better than a gift because it preserves the self-respect of the poor person. Jesus counsels that when we make such a loan, we don’t count on getting it back, and we certainly don’t pursue it. If it is repaid, well and good; if not, it is really just another way of giving.
I will leave it here. Jesus speaks to those who are listening. He calls us to join him in building the kingdom of God. The kingdom cannot come without opposition. Kingdom-builders embrace their opponents, meeting hatred with love, and doing good to all. We are invited into God’s family, and need to imitate the character of our Father—most especially in his outgoing generosity to all, especially his enemies. The final result—we may not see it in this world, but when the kingdom of the future is before us— the kingdom for which Christ died, and for which his followers have laboured, it will take our breath away by its beauty, and make all our efforts seem as nothing.