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Sunday, February 24, 2019 | 8:00 a.m.

To You That Listen

Matt Helms
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Luke 6:27–45

The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman


At this point in our year, we have begun to enter a sort of liminal, transitional space between our church liturgical seasons, shifting from the time after the Epiphany to the beginning of the season of Lent. (If only there was such a transition in our weather season, but I digress.) The season after Epiphany ends next week with the mystery and wonder of Transfiguration Sunday, but today’s scripture lessons are the final exploration of the early stages of Jesus’ ministry in and around Judea, covering the second half of the Sermon on the Plain that Vicky preached on last week. Luke’s Sermon on the Plain is more condensed then the Gospel of Matthew’s multi-chapter Sermon on the Mount, but we see similar themes in both that Jesus uses to define—or more often redefine—what it will mean to be one of his followers.
               
Throughout the early chapters of the Gospels, Jesus’ teachings turn the conventional wisdom of his day (and frankly of our day) on their head. Last week, Jesus addressed the crowd by stating, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” In today’s verses, we hear Jesus continuing that sort of radical reversal: “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.” Wow.

It’s always tempting to try to play linguistic gymnastics to try to avoid feeling convicted by Jesus’ words. I know because I’ve done it plenty of times. “I don’t know anyone whom I’d necessarily consider an enemy,” I’ve told myself. “Sure, there’s people that I may dislike, but if I’m somewhere between nice and neutral when we have to interact, then surely I’m doing enough.” Unfortunately, the Greek behind “love your enemies” makes it clear that Jesus has a bit more in mind. Many of us have likely heard that there were six words used for love in Koine Greek, with the most common being philia, best known from Philadelphia’s motto as the “city of brotherly love.” There was also eros, or romantic love. There was storgḗ, which was the type of love that a parent has for a child. And then there was agape, a sort of divine, unconditional love that represented love at its best. Paul’s famous 1 Corinthians 13 passage of “Love is patient, love is kind” uses agape throughout. It’s the type of love that we bring up at weddings and almost nowhere else.

If you had asked me what type of love lay behind the phrase “love your enemies,” I would have assumed that Luke had used philia, brotherly love. But you already know where this is going. The word that Jesus used wasn’t brotherly love; it was unconditional, agape love. And the word for enemy—echthros—refers to anyone whom you hate or dislike. Pretty tough for us to wiggle out of that one. What makes it even more remarkable is that Jesus delivered this command to anyone who was listening, even if they hadn’t decided to follow him. Jesus’ words were meant to be a radical reordering of how we treat one another, extending not just kindness but the love of God to people whom we would much rather avoid at all costs.

Now before I go any further, I do want to make it clear that the verses that follow are important to understand in context. After saying that we should love our enemies, Jesus asks those present to “bless those who curse you, to pray for those who abuse you, and if anyone strikes you on the other cheek, to offer the other also.” These verses have inspired many nonviolent resistance movements and powerful acts of forgiveness over the years, but they have also tragically been used by perpetrators of violence and even some members of the clergy to cover up issues of domestic abuse, in both verbal and physical forms, and to emphasize forgiveness for the abusers rather than the welfare and safety of the abused. Nothing, I believe, could be further from the truth of the gospel.

Much of the misinterpretation has come from the “turn the other cheek” phrase used by both Matthew and Luke, but Jesus was not asking his followers to passively accept violence. Scholars have noted that turning the other cheek in the ancient world was a nonviolent strategy to shame the person striking someone into stopping. Likewise, showing God’s love to someone who is causing you physical or emotional harm does not mean that you must passively receive their hate. You should take time to pray for their well-being as Jesus states, but you should also remember your own worth and value as a child of God. Sometimes true love, agape love, means removing yourself from the hate, because ultimately that hate is harmful to everyone involved.

Indeed, this sort of proactive, preemptive approach to practicing agape love is at the heart of Jesus’ message—encapsulated in one of the best-known verses in the New Testament, often described as the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule pops up in religions and cultures across the globe, such as an early version that appeared in ancient Egypt: “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.” Jesus’ formulation, however, is a bit different, drawing on a similar form from the book of Leviticus: he tells the crowd to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” At first blush this obviously sounds very similar, but in the negative version of the Golden Rule, the change in the person’s behavior stems from experiencing it first. In Jesus’ version, we are to proactively treat others in the manner that we wish to be treated. There is a sort of aspirational quality that elevates this response beyond merely being reactionary.

This aspirational quality continues as Jesus commands all of his potential followers to not judge or condemn but instead to forgive and give. Using the hyperbolic example of not noticing the log in our own eye as we comment on the speck in our neighbor’s eye, Jesus undercuts our seemingly innate aversion to self-examination, as we instead prefer to comfortably judge others from afar. Jesus says this not only to create a sense of grace among us, I think, but also to emphasize how often the first step we must take in learning to love others isn’t really about others. It’s about ourselves. Later in Luke, Jesus teaches that we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, which means that we must each first have a strong sense of our own identity as God’s beloved children.

Now, if you’re starting to become exhausted by the long, running list of things that Jesus is asking of his followers—to unconditionally love those who hate you, to do to others as you would have them do to you, to not judge or condemn, to refrain from hypocrisy, and to have all that rooted in a deep sense of how we are loved and belong to God—if that list is starting to exhaust you, good! This sermon on the plain is meant to challenge us, to stretch us beyond what we would even think possible for ourselves, because Jesus is asking us to be in pursuit of holiness.

We know that we won’t be perfect at it. That’s part of why we confess our individual and collective sin in worship each Sunday and I think why Jesus continues to reference God’s grace, forgiveness, and mercy throughout his teachings and sermons. There is nothing easy about being a disciple. It asks more of us than we sometimes feel as though we have to give. But when Jesus speaks to those who would listen, it is in aspiring to something greater, in holding ourselves to a higher standard of love, that we begin to catch glimpses of God’s eventual reign all around us. We may not always be able to live our lives in the way that Jesus is speaking of, but in striving to make God’s unconditional agape love part of our shared reality, our lives can still be transformed.

In a little over a week, we will begin our journey through the season of Lent on Ash Wednesday, a forty-day journey of self-examination and introspection and a season that invites us into a deeper understanding of not only ourselves but where we as disciples are called to be a part of building God’s kingdom here on earth. In speaking with the kids during Children’s Chapel, I often refer to Lent as a time when I try to be the Christian that I wish I was year-round. Despite my best intentions, I often fall short of being the person that God has called me to be. But Lent is an invitation to try again. We often hear about giving up or taking up practices during this season, but what’s behind those practices is an invitation to consider how our daily living is bearing fruit, and it invites us to cultivate the goodness of God’s love in our lives.

This idea of bearing fruit comes from the final words of Jesus’ sermon on the plain that we read today: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit.” Although our Reformed Presbyterian ears may be buzzing to push back against trying to earn God’s grace through our actions, that’s not what Jesus is saying at all. If we have listened to everything that he has said—if we have allowed it to take root deep within our hearts—than our lives and our world will invariably be transformed for the good. Whenever we show unconditional love in the face of hate, whenever we swallow our judgment because we realize we don’t know the full story, whenever we make the first move towards goodness, doing for others what we wish would be done for us—whenever we do these things, we are participating in God’s transformation of this world. “From the good treasure of the heart comes good,” Jesus reminds us, so as we begin to enter this liminal season of our church year, transitioning from hearing Jesus’ teachings once more in this season after the Epiphany to practicing these words in Lent, may our hearts be shaped ever nearer to Christ’s example. Thanks be to God for extending that challenging invitation to us once more. Alleluia and Amen!