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 range of meaning of one’s enemies, the most subtle of meanings pointed, not to oppressors or opponents, but to those not in your circle of friends and acquaintances. Or put another way, outside your sphere of the demands of patronage. 

As previously mentioned, the world often (mostly?) operates on a system of patronage. The hallmarks of which are consistency and reciprocity: act in such-and-such a way so that you will be treated the same. And depending on where you are in the social or economic strata, you can establish obligations and dependence by others (or to others). It seems to describe lives marked by the calculations of balanced reciprocity—that is, by a circle of exchange that turns gifts into debts that must be repaid. To that worldly equilibrium, Jesus says: