Genesis 45.3-11, 15
Ps 37.1-11, 40-41
1 Corinthians 15.35-50
Luke 6.27-38
Sunday 23 February 2025
©Lauren Martin
On the surface, this Gospel reading – a portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain – may seem simple enough; Love your enemies. Treat others they way you would like to be treated, not the way you have been treated. The Golden Rule, as you may have learnt in Sunday School. But is it really that simple?
Look at the world around us today, the tragedy and bloodshed of conflict. The far-reaching effects of political decisions. Those who have been oppressed and treated unjustly, the victims of violence and abuse.
Then there is our human nature, often we desire to see others ‘get what they deserve.’ If you are mean to me, surely, it’s only fair for me to be mean to you – forming a cycle of violence as we chase our tails in a pattern of tit-for-tat.
Are we being told to just forgive, to be passive. To accept this as the way things are. To accept this as our lot. It is far to easy to see how damaging this passage can be, encouraging victims of abuse, injustice and oppression to stay silent. To accept this as ‘their burden to bear.’ But if we look to the example of Jesus’ ministry, we see that it is not one of passivity and acceptance. It does not encourage the dehumanisation, the oppression and suffering of the other and those who are most vulnerable.
This passage reveals a way of moving through the world. A way that is not about forgetting past wrongs, embodying feelings of a squishy soft type of love, or viewing the world through rose-tinted glasses. This Gospel passage is a call to nonviolent resistance in the face of injustice, oppression, dehumanisation, and making the other less than.
Howard Thurman wrote, “A man faced with nonviolence is forced to deal with himself, finally; every way of escape is ultimately cut off. …The purpose is not merely to change an odious situation, but, further, to make it urgent for a man to face himself in his action” (Disciplines of the Spirit, 115f).
So, what does this type of love look like? If we look at the Greek word used, the love we are talking about is agape love. A love that is not so much based on feelings and sentimentality (the soft squishy stuff), but on behaviour and action.
Agape love is not based on the value or merit of the object of that love, but on the character and nature of the one who loves. This kind of love influences how we react. To love our enemy is not to passively accept bad behaviour and mistreatment. Often it may be the calling out, and shedding light, on this behaviour (providing it is safe to do so). It is this type of love that is needed to end cycles of violence and retribution.
It is this type of agape love that we see acting in the nonviolent resistance to injustice present in the examples that Jesus uses of turning the other cheek, giving your shirt and walking the extra mile, as Walter Wink explains.
In turning the other cheek, the type of strike used would have most likely been some sort of backhand. This strike was done to humiliate, not to cause harm to, someone who is inferior, whereas a fist would be used among peers. Instead of leaving in humiliation after receiving a backhand, by turning the other cheek, you are saying “Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. Your status does not change mine as a human being. You cannot demean me.”
In giving your shirt well as your coat, as collateral for a loan (something only the poorest did), the humiliation and shame are reversed. Instead of the humiliation of not being able to repay the loan, the one lending would bear the humiliation. This was because nakedness was taboo and the shame of this nakedness was on the person who caused it, not the one who was naked.
In the third example, a Roman soldier could enlist the help of locals to carry their pack for one mile. Any more than one mile was forbidden. By going the extra mile, the situation is yet again turned around. Instead of coercing a local to carry his pack, the soldier now must beg to have it back.
All of these examples turn the balance of power on its head. There may be an element of playfulness or cheekiness in the way it is done, but it is in this shifting of balance that disarms and highlights the injustice of the act. This response of the one who is supposed to be humiliated, oppressed and brought down is not violent in nature. There is no give and take. In this abandonment of the pursuit of retribution, there is great liberation.
The goal is not of retribution and making the abuser suffer the same, but a calling out of behaviour, of actions, bringing the darkness into the light. These are not acts of passivity and acceptance. These acts of nonviolent resistance can be seen in throughout history, two examples would be in the Mahatma Ghandi’s resistance to British colonial rule and Martin Luther King Jr. with the American civil rights movement. This resistance did not continue the cycle of violence and vengeance, hate was not returned with hate, instead there was agape love.
A love based on who we are, not on who we love. A love, goodness and mercy that reflects that which we have received from God. There is no keeping score, doing a good act only to expect the same (or better) in return. Afterall, is good really good if the motive for the good is not good?
Part of this agape love, of not keeping score, of breaking the cycle may also necessitate forgiveness. Forgiveness is not easy. How many times have you heard the phrase forgive and forget, as though the offending act can be swept under the carpet, and we can all move on, living our lives as we had before the event. Again, this interpretation of forgiveness can be extremely damaging, encouraging people to put up with abusive behaviour, dismissing, diminishing and ignoring the pain and damage done to victims.
As Louis William Countryman wrote, Forgiveness is not about the past but about the future; and how we engage the future has to do with what we do with our past.
There are no carpets involved. Wounds, pain and suffering do not magically disappear.
In writing about what forgiveness is not, Marjorie Thompson said, forgiveness is not about denying hurt or suppressing pain. It is not resigning ourselves to martyrdom…excusing bad behaviour… forgetting. Forgiveness is simple letting go of resentment and our desire for revenge. This is not saying that there isn’t or shouldn’t be consequences for actions. This is not the same as reconciliation, as that is dependent on the other person, requiring the other person to make some sort of confession and restitution.
Luke’s Sermon on the Plain is not a comfy armchair and well-worn slippers. It is not a place of comfort, reassurance or complacency. These teachings of Jesus are hard. They make us uncomfortable. They unsettle us. They call us to action, into a way of being that does not have temporary, makeshift solutions and easy truces. We are called into a way of deep transformation of our beliefs, our ideals and our actions. A way that, at times, feel opposite to our desire for a give-and-take world of tit-for-tat, vengeance and violence.
We do good because it is good. Not because good, or bad, has been done to us. To love our enemies. To stand against injustice with nonviolent liberating love. To walk the extra mile. To show the mercy God has shown us.
We do good because it is good.