Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany – February 23, 2025
Sermon given by The Rev. Nat Johnson on February 23, 2025 at St. Peter's, Seattle, WA.
The Rev. Nat Johnson
Readings: Genesis 45:3-11, 15 | 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50 | Luke 6:27-38 | Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42
Love your enemies: do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, don’t retaliate, and give generously when people beg from you, don’t seek restitution when someone steals from you.
These are hard words to swallow, particularly in our present moment. At best, they seem aspirational and at worst, they seem impossible. Somewhere in between are the various interpretations that misappropriate Jesus’ words and suggest that we ought to just grit our teeth and bear the violence of injustice, of abuse, of toxic relationship. These interpretations suggest that Jesus is advocating for some kind of passive-non-retaliation, a kind of passivism void of any resistance to that which is evil. But if this is true, how are we to be faithful in our baptismal vow to resist evil?
What Luke presents here in Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain is indeed a “hard-hitting gospel,” as Justo Gonzalez asserts in his commentary. Over the centuries, scholars have done a great deal of interpretative gymnastics to smooth out the hard edges of this teaching by distinguishing between the “rank-and-file Christian” and those who are “true disciples” on the path toward perfection. In doing so, they attempt to alleviate the difficulty of Jesus’ admonitions by making them beyond the realm of “normal” people. But Jesus makes no such distinction in our text. He began his sermon by coming down the mountain with his newly chosen apostles among the crowd, healing those who were sick and those who were captive to demonic forces. And while Luke tells us that Jesus lifted his eyes toward his disciples, he was surrounded also by the multitudes that had eagerly come from all over the region to hear him and to be healed by him. As he delivered his sermon, he made no distinction in audience, save for those “who listen.” Clearly, Jesus makes a distinction between the ethics observable in the world in which we exist, and the ethics demanded by the radical vision of God’s people that Jesus lays out for his hearers. But nowhere is it suggested that Jesus is giving his disciples a formula of advanced teaching for the select few or the elite. Jesus words are for those who truly listen, who hear and act on what Jesus teaches and asserts.
So, again, we must ask, what does Jesus mean by “loving our enemies,” especially if this is a teaching that he intends for all those who would follow him to live by? In our present moment, the category of “enemy” proliferates in our social, political, and economic discourses. Our divisions and differences have created real and perceived enemies across the spectrum of our society and world. Socialist and fascist regimes are designated enemies of democracy.
Liberals are the enemies of conservatives, Republicans the enemies of Democrats. Muslims, Jews, People of Color, and immigrants are deemed enemies of White Christian Nationalism.
Trans and non-binary folk, Feminists and those who advocate for reproductive freedom are deemed enemies of those who stand for “family values.” The language of enemy extends far beyond those who would do us harm and encapsulates all who hold opposing ideologies and as we have applied it in such ways, we have essentially equated difference with enemy.
Who, really, are the enemies that Jesus bids us to love? Luke offers us several clues to help us understand this category. First, in the previous chapter, the gospel writer introduced a series of characters who will remain in opposition to Jesus and his ministry throughout the rest of the narrative. The religious and political elite found Jesus’ message to be a threat to their own power and influence. So offended were they that they began to actively plot against Jesus and his disciples. Interestingly, Jesus does not explicitly call them enemies – Luke hints at it, but ultimately, it is the elite and powerful who end up pitting themselves as enemies against Jesus.
But Luke also suggests another category of “the enemy,” one made up of those who fall outside the boundaries of our social circles. Again, in the previous chapter, Luke tells a story about a tax-collector named Levi, who responded to Jesus’ call by getting up, leaving everything, and following him. He then gave a banquet in Jesus’ honor. In attendance were the religious elite who took offense to Jesus’ table companions, complaining that the company of “tax collectors and sinners” in the mix threatened their boundary of religious purity. In this case, the Scribes and the Pharisees designated those who fell outside their “circle of companionship” as the “enemy.”
Is Jesus, then, simply telling us to love those who oppose us and those who fall outside our normal social circles? Or is there something more going on here? Last week, we heard the opening section of the sermon from which our present passage is taken: Blessed are the poor, the hungry, those who weep… Woe to you who are rich, well fed, and who laugh… In his version of the beatitudes, Luke effectively empties the social and political categories of rich and poor, reinvesting them with new meaning. No longer will evidence of divine favor and blessing be tied to social, political, and economic status. The reign of God inaugurated in Jesus’ coming subverts conventional wisdom about such things. And, as Jesus continues his sermon, he asserts the inverted pattern of power, honor, and blessing between the world’s understanding of those categories and how they function in Jesus’ radical vision of a new people; a new people created and sustained not by social convention or personal piety, but by the word and mercy of God. Just as Luke complicated the categories of “poor” and “rich,” then, so too does he complicate the category of enemy. Yes, Jesus’ sermon provides a boundary with which to delineate those who follow Jesus and those who do not. And yet, Luke provides example after example throughout the rest of his gospel and into the book of Acts of those we think we can safely designate into one or the other camp, only to be surprised at their faith and the righteousness attributed to them. In effect, Jesus is telling his disciples and the multitude that the category of “enemy,” much like the category of “poor,” is abolished, made null and void, in the new community of Christ’s followers. All people are to be treated as though they were friends, as though they were family. We are not to use the designation of “enemy” for anyone as we negotiate the social and political structures of our present moment.
It is important to be very clear here, though. Because what I just said could be mistaken as advocating for some kind of passive-non-resistance, a kind of disposition that ignores evil and the violence of injustice while valorizing pain and suffering. But this is not at all what Jesus is saying. He calls those who would listen to a proactive resistance. Jesus is calling his listeners to a radical kind of life and existence that refuses to name anyone an enemy and treats all others as though they were friends and family. And this is exemplified in the verse at the center of our passage today, the so-called “Golden rule,” to treat others as we would have them treat us. Once more, Luke complicates the conventional wisdom. Doing to others as you would have done to you was a widely accepted ethical norm in Jesus’ as well as Luke’s days. But for Jesus, as for Luke, this was not just simply about actions and behaviors begetting similar actions and behaviors. Alone, the golden rule is inadequate. For Jesus, and for Luke, it is wider and deeper, pointing to a reality that transcends personal choice and piety, one that is grounded in Jesus’ vision of God’s people – a people whose boundary is porous and whose existence and identity are contingent on God and God’s mercy. What, then, does it mean to “love our enemies” when we are bound to an ethic that sees the boundary between friend and enemy as elastic and ultimately impermanent?
Jesus explains that loving our enemies means: doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse, praying for those who abuse us. Jesus calls us to an active resistance of evil in love, from a disposition that sees in those who would oppose us, who misunderstand and dislike us, who revile us and actively work against us, someone worthy of mercy and grace. This is no heroic ethic, meant to be mustered up within our frail, human selves. Through his sermon, Jesus is asking his listeners to accept the inverted worldview that he offers and then to act accordingly. Yes, we are called to persevere in resisting evil – we persevere in resisting evil by doing good, by praying, and by blessing. For in doing so, we break the cycle of evil by refusing to answer violence with violence, by refusing to answer wrongdoing with retaliation.
In the most practical way possible, all of this means we don’t play the game of those who deem us the enemy. We do not wish or advocate for harm to those who harm us; we do not fling sticks and stones back to those who fling them at us. Loving our enemies means we don’t mock, discount, dehumanize, or demonize those who stand opposed to us. It is not easy to hold such a line – especially in our present moment when tensions are high, when fear is constant, when threat hangs over so many. Laura reminded us last week that the vision of the beatitudes Jesus offers us is not some utopic vision of a future not yet realized but is rather a vision of an alternative reality, accessible now even in the midst of the crushing weight of oppression – if only we will follow Jesus and walk in the way of Love. In the same way, loving our enemies will not come about by erasing or overcoming our differences – loving our enemies, refusing to judge, forgiving those who wrong us, believing and acting like there is hope for redemption and transformation even for the worst of us – this is an ethic demanded by the perverse ethic of the world if we are to be faithful to the Way of Jesus. It is an ethic that creates a different reality, a reality in which the love and mercy of God is made evident in our very bodies, in every interaction we have with one another, in the ways we accompany and advocate for the poor, the hungry, and the mournful.
Today, may we answer Jesus’ call to love with the same kind of love with which God loves us, to show mercy in the same way that God shows mercy – even to the ungrateful and the wicked. For God’s love and mercy are the only things in the world powerful enough to liberate humankind from our cycles of violence, to free us from our incessant need to proliferate the category of “enemy,” and to transform us into Beloved Community.