Loading...Scripture Text: Luke 6:27-38
Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, 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. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 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. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the 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, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back."
Sermon Text
Without love whatever we do is worth nothing, words from the Collect appointed for this 7th Sunday after the Epiphany, a prayer composed for the first Book of Common Prayer of 1549, where it would have been heard next Sunday, the last before Lent, paired with the epistle reading from 1st Corinthians 13, Paul’s great discourse on love, without which, he says, we are a noisy gong and clanging cymbal. In our context the Collect pairs well with the gospel reading, where Jesus declares the same, without love it all amounts to nothing.
In this portion of his message about what it means to be his follower, Jesus speaks of love in terms of our treatment of those with whom we experience conflict and our interior attitude toward others. This text is gospel for the committed, writes Vaughn Crowe-Tipton,
professor at Furman University and faculty member of the Institute of Worship Studies where I am engaged in continuing education (Vaughn Crowe-Tipton, “Homiletical Perspective on Luke 6:27-38,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, ed. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 380–385.)
Jesus prefaces this teaching with, “But I say to you that listen” (Lk. 6:27). Who are the listeners? To find out, we go back to the night before the sermon. In Luke 6:12, Jesus is on a mountain in nightlong prayer.At daybreak he comes to his disciples. A disciple is ‘one who sits at the feet of’ a teacher. The disciples of Jesus were people who left their former lives behind to follow Jesus and learn his way. Gathering disciples began in Luke 5 when Simon Peter, James, and John give up their fishing enterprise to become fishers of men. Then comes Levi the tax man, followed by unnamed others, from among whom Jesus, after that night of prayer, chooses twelve to be his apostles. An apostle is one who is sent, sent under the authority of the sender, with the authority of the sender, bearing the great trust of the sender to speak, think, and act just as the sender.
With these newly appointed twelve, who still have so much to learn, Jesus descends to the level place where the other disciples are assembled, along with a great crowd of people.
When Jesus begins to speak, he speaks to his disciples, those who are already committed.
The crowd is there, too. They can listen and decide. Then Jesus speaks the blessings and woes of the beatitudes we heard last Sunday, and as if those words are not radical enough,
he prepares his hearers for an even more demanding word. “But, I say to you that listen.” If you’re my disciple, this is our standard. If you’re thinking about becoming my disciple, this will be your standard, too.
The standard is love, love that beholds the other with sincere appreciation, high regard and affection.( Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 292. Jesus calls us to love with, as Quell and Stauffer describe in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, an exclusiveness which means that all other commands lead up to it and all righteousness finds in it its norm. (Gottfried Quell and Ethelbert Stauffer, “Ἀγαπάω, Ἀγάπη, Ἀγαπητός,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 46–47.)
The Greek form of the word love in this instance is a present, active, imperative verb. Remember your grammar? Present tense means now. A verb is an action word. The imperative means the action must be done. So, Jesus is telling us we must show love, demonstrate love, and we must do it now.
And who are we to love? “Love your enemies.” Now, we might be thinking, “Wouldn’t it be grand if Russia and Ukraine would take this advice to heart,” but the word used here for enemies is one that brings it much closer to home than geo-political conflict, as Foerster describes it in The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament as applying to, “personal enemies in the various relationships of everyday life.” (Werner Foerster, “Ἐχθρός, Ἔχθρα,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 813.) As much as we may be praying for peace between Russia and Ukraine, this imperative presses us to consider matters that lie within our sphere of influence, perhaps within the family circle, the workplace, at school, a friendship being tested, the driver who cuts you off on the loop, or even the sacred relationship between
brothers and sisters in Christ.
In the fractured, or fractious, relationship, the doing of love, showing of love, holding the other in appreciation, high regard, and affection, is the mandate, and it is not to wait for a sign of decreasing hostility from the other side, but it is to be preemptive love. This, quoting again Quell and Stauffer is, “the attitude of the children of the new people of God to whom the future belongs.” (Quell and Stauffer, “Ἀγαπάω, Ἀγάπη, Ἀγαπητός,” in TDNT, 46-47.) The demonstration of love is a form of resistance, of intercession for this world that is hostile to the kingdom of God.
The manner of showing love to enemies is to refrain from retaliation, to live in assurance of the abundance of life into which we are born in baptism, and to act in a godly manner by showing mercy, all of which empowers us to behave in surprising and grace-filled ways when unfairly treated. St. Cyprian would have us remember the example of St. Stephen, the first martyr, who was stoned to death for his witness to Jesus, and who prayed as stone after stone pelted his body, “O Lord, do not lay this sin against them.” (Cyprian of Carthage, “The Good of Patience,” in The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, vol. III: Luke (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 109.)
Stephen’s forgiving spirit toward his malefactors leads to the next portion of Jesus’ teaching
about our interior attitude toward others. He says, “Do not judge,” using an imperative form
that carries the meaning of, “Stop judging,” a testimony to how easily we fall into judgment’s snare. Just like we can find ourselves at enmity with those with whom we share everyday life, the judgment here happens in the same sphere of life; coming to a conclusion about someone, putting someone in a pigeon-hole, making an irreversible decision to cut off relationship. The command not to judge is not a deprecation of a societal judiciary, which is necessary to the common good. Part of our Anglican tradition is to pray for our government officials to have wisdom and for our judiciary to have sound judgment. Jesus constrains us
from passing judgment on one another. He commands instead that we forgive with the same abundance that we are forgiven, forgiveness that comes from the cross of Christ,
and so is of great worth.
The forgiveness we give, says Jesus, will be given back in great measure, and he uses an image from the harvest. The grain will be pressed down, every bit of chaff shaken out
so that the granary is overflowing with the finest wheat that will be poured into the pocket you make with your tunic and bring home to make the finest flour for the finest bread, the staff of life. How wonderful to consider that image when we come to the altar rail, that from the overflowing abundance of God’s forgiving grace in Christ comes the bread of heaven, our staff of life.
An appealing image, but how ominously challenging is the teaching. Love my enemy? Stop judging? How are we to live in such a way? An answer may be found if we go back a couple chapters in Luke, to the beginning of chapter 4, which tells us what happened after Jesus was baptized. Luke 4:1 - “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. . .” Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit.
It has been said that the primary actor in Luke and its companion volume, Acts, is the Holy Spirit. The prayer book teaches us that the Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity.The Spirit is God at work in the world and in the Church even now, leading us into truth and enabling us to grow in the likeness of Christ. The word spirit also means breath or wind, and we need the breath of God breathing in us in order for the love of Jesus to reside within. We need the wind of God blowing us on course in order for the love of Jesus to be the animating force of our thoughts, words, and deeds.
As the breath of God the Holy Spirit breathes in us, we become more and more aware of the abundance of grace that comes to us every day. As the wind of God the Holy Spirit blows upon us, we become more and more aware of the power of forgiveness that comes to us from the cross of Christ, a forgiveness that covers every offense in mercy. Inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we find the Jesus way, the way of love, the way that acts peaceably toward all, the way that uses mercy as the standard of judgment, as the way to live as children of the Most High.
Matthew Rowe+
