Caring
(based on Luke 6:27-38)
After
teaching the disciples and the crowd about who is blessed and who will receive
woes, Jesus continues his teaching about what the people of God do and how the
people of God act. What Jesus is telling
us to do in this sermon is called the hardest commandment.
It is
a command that sometimes seems beyond our ability to attain. Jesus calls us to love and care for our
enemies. After selecting his these
twelve disciples, Jesus teaches them what it means to follow him. Jesus pronounces four blessings. His disciples would endure poverty, hunger,
sorrow, and persecution, but in their suffering they would know his blessing. Jesus also pronounced four woes against
self-satisfied people who were living for the pleasures of the moment and
thought they could do without God.
A
natural response against the latter group of people would be for us to hate
them and hurt them. Afterall, this was the
philosophy of the world at the time. Lysias,
a Greek speech writer for the courts of law in 400 BC wrote, “I consider it
established that one should do harm to one’s enemies and be of service to one’s
friends.” I don’t think we’ve changed
much in 2,500 years. The world has pretty
much the same philosophy today. Unfortunately,
Christians have adopted that attitude, as well. But God has clearly condemned this attitude in
the scriptures. As far back as the
establishment of the Law of Moses, it is written in Leviticus 19:18;
You
shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
Many
rabbis, however, taught that this verse only applied to relationships within
Israel. They taught that there were
limits to brotherly love. This is the
thinking that Jesus is teaching against when he gives these instructions. Jesus commands us to love our enemies, not
just our family and friends. Thankfully,
Jesus does not leave the command there, but goes on to help explain what loving
our enemies looks like.
First, do good to those who hate you. Loving our enemies is not just simply a lack
of retaliation. Loving our enemies does
not mean that I do not punch them in the face. Loving our enemies does not mean that we do
not treat them how they treat us. Jesus
is, instead, calling for a positive action toward our enemies. Do good to those who hate you. There is no excuse for not treating a person
well. We might want to justify our
harmful response against those we see and view as enemies, but we are never
excused from this command. There is no,
“Yeah, but he did such and such to me.” In
God’s eyes are never justified in not treating people well.
You
see why this is the hardest commandment!
Oh,
but it gets better.
Second, bless those who curse you. Not only are our actions to be positive toward
our enemies, but our words are also to be positive. The idea of blessing is to invoke God’s favor
on another’s behalf or at least appeal to God for that person. We talked about being a blessing to someone
last week. Now, image being a blessing
to an enemy, not just a friend or family member. It’s difficult to respond with words of grace
and kindness when someone is cursing us. We usually respond with the same fury and
intensity that we are encountering at that moment. But, Jesus is calling for us to have an
unnatural response.
Third, pray for those who mistreat
you. Do not mistreat those who mistreat you. Do good for them, speak graciously of them,
and pray to God for them. Our initial
response might be to pray to God for them to have a horrible day or for them to
catch a case of Montezuma’s Revenge or some other terrible illness. But no.
Pray to God for the opposite things.
Pray that they be blessed by God.
Pray that they have a wonderful day and find the joy in living. Pray that they have a change of heart or that
their lives become one that is God filled and spirit led. Pray for God to enter into their lives and
touch their hearts. Pray on the behalf
of those that mistreat us.
Jesus
then lists some examples of actions. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the
other also. This illustration has
unfortunately been used to teach that a person needs to get the tar beat out of
them if someone comes up to them in a physical altercation. It is always important that we do not miss the
cultural and religious context of the teachings that we read in the scriptures.
The slap in the face is idiomatic for an
insult. That idiom continued until not
that long ago, where we have pictures of a prim and proper person slapping
another in the cheek with a white glove. This is not a fist fight, but an insult. This explanation also fits Luke 6:22 where
Jesus warned that we would be insulted for the sake of the Son of Man. When insulted, do not retaliate. Do not respond in kind.
If someone takes your coat, do not
withhold your shirt. Jesus illustrates that we give, even to those
who mistreat us. We are to have concern
for the other person. We are to be more
concerned for the person than for the protection of our property. Even if people mistreat us, we must give them
above and beyond what they need, to the point of making a real sacrifice. We have a hard enough time giving above and
beyond to people that we like.
Give to everyone who asks you, and
if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Not only should we give above and beyond, but
we should give without demanding anything in return. Our concern for possessions should be so
minimal that we will not care that other people use our possessions and do not
return them.
Do to others as you would have them
do to you. Finally, the overarching principle to guide
how we are to love our enemies is to do to others as we want them to do to us. However, when we think about this principle, we
typically think of this in the negative.
We think in terms of NOT
doing something to others that we would NOT
want done to us. I don’t want people to
be mean, so I will not be mean. But Jesus is teaching us to be positive and proactive.
DO to others what you would want them to
do to you. If everyone only did to
others what they would have done to themselves, it would change the world. Loving our enemies is at the very heart of
being a disciple of Jesus.
Jesus
goes on in his teaching.
If
you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to
you, what credit is that to you? Even
sinners do that. And if you lend to
those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners
lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. If you only love people who
love you, you have done nothing. Everyone
loves those who love them. If you only
do good to those who do good things for you, you have done nothing because
everyone in the world does that. If you
lend expecting to be repaid, you have done nothing because even banks expect to
be repaid. I hope we see the point. We think we are doing something great when we
love those who love us, do good to those who do good to us, and lend to those
who we think can repay! Jesus says that
we have done nothing because everyone does that. We are not acting like Christ. We are acting
like natural humans. We are acting like
sinners, not like the holy people of God. We are not being godly. We are being worldly. Stop thinking that you are doing anything
special when you love those that love you and do good for those that do good
for you. What becomes special and unique
and Christian is when we love our enemies. If we do not love our enemies, then we are acting
just like the rest of the world.
Love
your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get
anything back. Why should we do this?
Jesus
tells us that our reward will be great, and we will be called children of God. Jesus reminds us to be merciful, just as your
Father is merciful. Our Old Testament
story of Joseph stands as a stark reminder of how to do it. Joseph’s own brothers hated him. They were jealous of him. So much so that they sold him into slavery in
Egypt. Joseph endured years of hardship
in prison, but realized that even in that, there was divine intervention, there
was a divine purpose. He gave up his
retaliatory hatred and loved his brothers regardless of what they had done to
him. He was merciful to them. They begged for food and he gave them riches.
What
he received in return wasn’t some reward waiting for him in the afterlife, in
heaven, but a reward right now. He
received their admiration, redemption, and love. This is what being a real Christian is all
about.
Yes,
it is difficult to do good to our enemies, to care for them and not to
retaliate. Afterall, this is the
hardest commandment, but a commandment towards a reward, nonetheless.
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