“But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat 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 asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back 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 expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. Instead, 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 himself 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.”
-Luke 6:27-38 (1)
“We ought to pay attention to the various states we pass through, because the states themselves usually affect our perception. This is something we can examine in ourselves but not in others, because the Lord alone knows the aim of every desire. That is why the Lord said, “Don’t judge anyone, or you will be judged; don’t condemn anyone, or you will be condemned” (Luke 6:37). A thousand people can seem to have the same desire for truth and goodness when in reality each has a desire with a different origin, or a different aim.
The reason the aim determines whether a desire is real, feigned, or deceitful is that our purpose is our very life. What we live for—in other words, what we love—is what we hold as our goal. When the welfare of our neighbor, the larger community, the church, and the Lord’s kingdom forms our goal, our soul dwells in the Lord’s kingdom and therefore in the Lord. The Lord’s kingdom is nothing other than a kingdom of purposes and usefulness seeking the good of the whole human race.”
-Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven §3796 (2)
The readings today are part of what is sometimes called Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. Jesus has just delievered Luke’s version of The Beatitudes, proclaiming the blessedness of the poor, the hungry, the grieving, and the excluded, and issuing a warning to those who are rich, satiated and praised. Now, Jesus continues his sermon, telling his hearers to love their enemies, to be generous, and to refrain from judging.
These statements are among some of the most famous of Jesus’ teachings. After all, this passage contains what is known as The Golden Rule: “do to others as you would have them do to you.” There is so much deeply grounded common sense to be found in that one phrase. Likewise, “love your enemies” is well known to encapsulate much of Jesus’ worldview.
How are we to hold this teaching? How are we to hold it today, in our context, as we note the powers-that-be scapegoating trans people, axing and outlawing diversity, equity and inclusion programs, gutting aid to the most vulnerable, and doing so without attention to the rule of law, or basic norms of diligence and accountability?
For Luke, he was writing to an early Christian community that was in conflict with both the greater Roman empire, and with the communities of faith from which they arose, and occasionally, because they were human, with each other. All the more astonishing then, that Jesus was not only saying that we should love those with whom we simply disagree, however painfully or vehemently, Jesus was saying we should love those who oppress us, those who actively work to diminish our humanity, our thriving, our happiness. Well, that sucks. This request hardly seems fair, or doable. How can God really ask this of us?
Well, simply, because this is how the kingdom comes. This is how the New Jerusalem descends. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we say “on earth as it is in heaven.” How else do we imagine that is going to happen? When we hear “love your enemies” and understand it superficially, we forget the stakes. The stakes are heaven on earth, the stakes are the universe coming to reflect and embody the divine love that created it.
Yet, even as we raise the stakes, we also have to recognize that the Bible is not a rule book. We can’t take this list of examples from this text and think that if we check them off exactly as it says then everything will be okay. There is more to it than that. Jesus was talking about a certain quality of relationship, the redemptive quality that belongs to the connection between human beings when they actually see each other, when they allow the kingdom to break through, when they break the cycle of violence and judgment. Jesus used the particular examples from the text because they spoke to the community that was hearing them. He spoke of being generous without thought of repayment, because that ancient society was built upon the patron/client social system, where all relationship was governed by a complex hierarchy. Yet, Jesus asked that the generosity of the early Christians be decoupled from that kind of social calculation, that it be viewed as a good in and of itself.
Further, these early Christians knew what it was to be oppressed. Both in their context as Jews and their new faith as Christians, it would have been easy to get caught up in conflict every single day. The chances of Roman soldiers abusing them in some way was relatively high. Yet, Jesus counsels them that they should unhook from the eye-for-an-eye mindset, from dreams of vengeance or comeuppance, because a heart consumed with revenge has no room for the kingdom. He calls them toward a kingdom view that is overflowing…“Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you.” This is not an easy path; this kind of discipleship really asks something of us. There is a cost to it.
But let’s continue to be careful here, because if we are still treating the Bible like a rule book, we can become easily confused about what this all means. Jesus’ whole deal here is not about submission but instead about contextualization, about grounding our experiences in shared humanity. God is asking us to see each other.
To turn the other cheek to someone who has struck you means to stand your ground without retaliation, to turn your face so that the perpetrator must look into your eyes. Turning the other cheek is not only about breaking a cycle of violence but it is also about defying objectification. Likewise, the commands about generosity and refraining from judgment are about breaking a cycle of stereotyping and therefore defying categorization.
Defying these two ways of thinking are key. We human beings justify our bad behavior towards each other by dehumanizing and stereotyping each other. The less similar we are to each other, the less our empathy is activated, the more distance we can put between us. And isn’t it so much easier that way? Don’t we feel so much more powerful when we are convinced of our rightness by way of objectifying and categorizing others?
But this is what Jesus is asking us to relinquish, and it is how the kingdom of God becomes real. We open up our minds to seeing each other, to people who are different, we connect with them in some way and the circle is widened. This is painfully slow, painstaking work…who has time for this, we might protest? And can it really be enough? In times of urgency, can it really be enough? Certainly there must be limits? Well, of course there are. Context always matters.
We must always remember to never become legalistic about what Jesus was saying here. There are very reasonable objections to the idea of loving our enemies, encapsulated by the famous quote from the author Robert James Jr.: “We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” (3)
Because it matters who is saying it to who. When the church is the oppressor and tells its adherents to love their enemies, this is an abuse of power. When society is the oppressor and tells the oppressed to “love their country” and “be good citizens,” this is an abuse of power. James Baldwin has said: “Ignorance allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” (4)
When those who would dehumanize others gain power, it is not a good thing, in Jesus’ time or now. The exhortation to “love your enemy” is not an excuse to allow those who would oppress to continue oppressing; “love your enemy” was not Jesus’ way of telling early Christians to get on board with the empire of Rome. Instead, “love your enemy” is about intentionally opting out of the cycle of dehumanization. “Ignorance allied with power” cannot function without dehumanization and categorization, likewise empire, hatred, oppression, cannot function without dehumanization and categorization. Our text continues with Jesus saying: “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit?” So we need to opt out, someone needs to opt out, and Jesus wants it to be us.
Jesus is asking someone (anyone!) to see and uphold the concept of shared and connective humanity. Doing so is not about martyrdom, but about refusing to participate in the dehumanization of ourselves and others. When we turn the other cheek, we demand to be seen as a person, and also we must see the oppressor as one as well. We prevent them from perpetrating harm, as needed, and often. But in love, we see them clearly, wholly, hopefully, and in context. And this is such hard work.
Which has prompted Rev. Nadia Boltz Weber to proclaim, echoing all of us: “I hate that this is God’s economy. That the salvation of my enemy is tied up in my own. Which is why I sometimes say that the Gospel is like, the worst good news I’ve ever heard in my life.”(5)
Preached as it is on a level place, a plain, we find that “love your enemy” is not a platitude. It has real stakes, in real life. The practice of it involves seeing the humanity in each other, recognizing that we were born to be face to face with each other. The practice of it involves deep empathy for context, recognizing that we all carry burdens. The practice of it involves expecting more than excuses from each other, recognizing a shared hope that the kingdom will come, but that its path runs though our hearts, and they must be cleared of ego and fear. “Love your enemy” is not about maintaining a false equivalency but a recognition of the limits of equivalency at all. Each person is a universe unto themselves, and beloved of God. We are asked not to submit to power, but to surrender to the reach of God’s love. “For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
We must always continue to measure by the rule of love, so that the rule of love becomes the shape of our souls. Even as we act to protect, uphold, resist, and exist, may we believe in that overflowing, good measure. It’s the only way.
Amen.
(1) New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
(2) Swedenborg, Emanuel. Secrets of Heaven. West Chester: Swedenborg Foundation, 2022.
(3) ‘Robert Jones, Jr.’ Robert Jones, Jr., https://www.sonofbaldwin.com. Accessed 14 June 2024.
(4) Baldwin, James. No Name in the Street. United States: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2007.
(5) Bolz-Weber, Nadia. Shameless: A Sexual Reformation. United States: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent, 2019.
Rev. Shada Sullivan is a graduate of United Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia and The Center for Swedenborgian Studies in Berkeley, CA. She grew up in Australia, and came to the United States in 1994 to attend Bryn Athyn College, a small Swedenborgian liberal arts college outside of Philadelphia. She has spent time as a chaplain as a stay-at-home Mom, and as leader of the sermon writing team at NewChurch Live (newchurchlive.tv). She now lives in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two children and serves the Church of the Holy City in Wilmington, Delaware as Pastor.