This coming Sunday is the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time and our gospel is the second part of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. In a previous post we noted the radicalness of Jesus’ preaching – perhaps not to our ears – but certainly to the listeners in the first century whose norm was lex talionis or “law of retaliation,” a familiar ethic from the Old Testament or at least how it was understood. In our reading Jesus is commanding a different ethic: “But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27)

Culpepper [147] notes that the “imperative to love one’s enemies an have a range of meanings, depending on its context: Win over your opponent by kindness; take the moral high road; shame our enemy by your superior goodness; deflect hostility or prevent further abuse by offering no resistance; rise above pettiness; or demonstrate a Christ-like character as a Christian witness. These interpretations are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, but they do suggest the range of means the command can have. Especially when taken individually, the exhortations in this section can be applied widely and virtually indiscriminately. The problems for interpretation concern the source of these teachings, their settings in the ministry of Jesus and in Luke, and the determination of contemporary contexts in which their application would be appropriate.”