Loving Your Enemies at the Beginning of Lent, 2025
2025: We live in difficult times, to be sure, and when we see damage being done to our civic society, to our communities, and to the most vulnerable among us — violence multiplied a thousand times and more around the world — we are naturally roused, to fight back, taking back what has been stolen from the poor, chasing away the bullies with too much power over us. We know that we cannot be passive, or simply let “them” have their way. So it is particularly disruptive then to hear the contrary words and wisdom of the Gospel for the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time, from St. Luke, Chapter 6. (I preached on this text last Sunday, February 23.) It was part of St. Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain”, his version of St. Matthew’s more well-known “Sermon on the Mount”. Most striking are the “commands” (as I will call them here) made by Jesus through this powerful passage:
1. Love your enemies,
2. Do good to those who hate you,
3. Bless those who curse you,
4. Pray for those who abuse you,
5. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also,
6. From anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt,
7. Give to everyone who begs from you,
8. If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.
A ninth stands forth on its own, the “Golden Rule”:
9. Do to others as you would have them do to you. (6.27-31)
Jesus knows very well that his instruction does not mesh well with the way “the world really is”. The way of the world is sinful and there are many sinners, but we do not need to act as they do:
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.
Rather, be contrary:
10. Love your enemies, do good, lend, expecting nothing in return. (6.32-35)
The last part of the Gospel passage declares the new dispensation, seeing the world within the Kingdom, where God’s perspective reigns, now offering five more commands, that echo the ten just given:
11. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful,
12. Do not judge, and you will not be judged,
13. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned,
14. Forgive, and you will be forgiven,
15. Give, and it will be given to you.
A promise concludes the passage:
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. (6.36-38)
An abundance – of peace, forgiveness, justice, love — comes upon those who obey and try to live out the fifteen commandments.
All that I have just written thus far is well-known and been commented on abundantly. Many a credible witness to nonviolence (more credible than me, certainly) in the most difficult situations have shown by words and deeds both the outrageousness and the urgency of Jesus’ challenge.
All I could add, implicitly in my homily last Sunday but now more directly in this written text, is a certain instinct about right now. An ungodly mix of arrogance, power, and cruelty is darkening our country and harming the whole world, and it dares even to cloak itself in the language of a restoration of Christianity to the center of our culture. If only! It is so important right now to be American and Christian at the same time — seeing America, our government, and our faith from the perspective of Jesus’ kingdom of God, rather than judging Jesus’ commandments from a worldly perspective that has no room for his truth-telling and truth-living.
How to go deeper into the truth and power of Jesus’ words in this Gospel, to make a difference now? As Lent approaches (March 5) we are entering a time for prayer and meditation, for spiritual exercises to renew our lives and enable us to walk more intimately with Jesus, for the good of our neighbors. Perhaps it would be best to start simple — to ponder this Gospel passage over and over, taking up one of its fifteen commandments each day in the first two weeks, perhaps, This in turn would allow them one and then all to sink in early in the day, so as to shed light and not shadow on the waking hours that follow. If in Lent we become better able to see the world as Jesus saw it, we may well make more of a difference than we can imagine.