Love your enemies

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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.”

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Enduring Mercy

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If you’ve been following the posts about the daily readings from Genesis we have covered the creation story, the rebellion in the Garden of Eden, Cain’s murder of Abel, and the first part of the story of the Great Flood. Along the way I have speculated about our ideas of original sin, rebellion from the authority of God, the biblical account, and their interface with science – specifically with the idea of human evolution, something that Pope Pius XII allowed theologians to consider in his 1950 Papal Encyclical Humani Generis. In that encyclical while many things were discussed, there were two points germain to this ongoing reflection: (a) theologians must always hold to the revealed doctrine that God alone created the human soul and (b) theologians were obliged to offer insight on how evil/sin/rebellion entered the world.

In a previous post I offered: In a faith discussion that accepts evolution one has to wonder if natural selection would have conferred on our evolutionary ancestors tendencies for behaviors that favored passing on of their genes. Competition for resources and breeding opportunities would have led to behaviors that, for moral agents, would be sinful.  When they were first somehow made aware of God and God’s will for them, a call to trust and obey God would have been in tension with their instincts. It seems instincts won and the rebellion spreads.

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A golden rule

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This coming Sunday is the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time and our gospel is the second part of Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. “A great crowd of his disciples and a large number of the people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon.” (v.17) The description certainly points to a Jewish and Gentile audience and thus raises the question of how “wide is the circle of relationships.” Consider this bit of wisdom from Sirach 12:1–7 (ca. 180 BCE) 

1 If you do good, know for whom you are doing it, and your kindness will have its effect.2 Do good to the just man and reward will be yours, if not from him, from the LORD.3 No good comes to him who gives comfort to the wicked, nor is it an act of mercy that he does.4 Give to the good man, refuse the sinner; refresh the downtrodden, give nothing to the proud man.5 No arms for combat should you give him, lest he use them against yourself;6 With twofold evil you will meet for every good deed you do for him.7 The Most High himself hates sinners, and upon the wicked he takes vengeance. 

Is this the wisdom that was active among the Jewish listeners? It certainly seems to point to limits on acts of mercy and forgiveness.

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Divine Regrets

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Yesterday’s post was a bit of speculation about our ideas of original sin, rebellion from the authority of God, the biblical account, and their interface with science – specifically genetics. The post offered:

In a faith discussion that accepts evolution one has to wonder if natural selection would have conferred on them tendencies for behaviors that favored passing on of their genes. Competition for resources and breeding opportunities would have led to behaviors that, for moral agents, would be sinful.  When they were first somehow made aware of God and God’s will for them, a call to trust and obey God would have been in tension with their instincts. It seems instincts won and the rebellion spreads. 

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The Principle of the New Covenant

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This coming Sunday is the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Lectionary Cycle C. Previously we considered the background and verses leading up to this gospel scene, here in the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The gospel for the 7th Sunday marks a second part of the “Sermon on the Plain.”

27 “But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

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The Rebellion Spreads

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Last Friday the first reading, from Genesis, recounted the story of “original sin.” It is an event known by various monikers, among which are: “the fall of man,” “the fall from grace,” “paradise lost,” and “eating of the forbidden fruit.” In a post from that day I offered an alternative to our traditional monikers. I suggested that Adam and Eve’s action was  not merely a moral failing but an act of defiance against God’s command. They  consciously chose to disobey God’s explicit instruction not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was no sinful mistake but an act of rebellion in which their desire to define good and evil for themselves was a rejection of God’s authority.

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A note about the 7th Sunday

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 The Ordinary Time readings for the period between the Baptism of the Lord and Ash Wednesday can be very few or quite a few. It all depends on the date established for Easter. In 2025 Easter falls a little later and so this is one of those years when we celebrate the 7th Sunday (…and the 8th!). The last time we celebrated the 7th Sunday was in 2019!

Image credit: Sermon on the Mount | Carl Block, 1887 | Museum of Natural History at Frederlksborg Castle – Hillerod, Denmark | PD-US

Leading up to the 7th Sunday Gospel

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This coming Sunday is the 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time in Lectionary Cycle C. In the 3rd and 4th weeks in the lectionary cycle, Jesus has been in Nazareth engaging the citizens of his own hometown (4:14-30). But as Jesus noted, no prophet is accepted in his own native place (v.24). And so leaving Nazareth, Jesus moved on to Capernaum. Again, he amazed people while teaching in the synagogue on the Sabbath. During that same visit, there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon (v.33). Jesus casts the demon from the man, again astounding the people: For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.”(v.36) Also while in Capernaum, Jesus cured Simon’s mother-in-law (vv.38-39) and all manner of people sick with various diseases (v.40) and chased out other demons (v.41). 

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On that day

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Across time and place, the mountains are the place where revolutions begin and from where they emerge to overthrow kingdoms. Just consider the last 100 years: the Communist Chinese movement began in the Jing’gang Mountains; the Cuban revolution descended from the Sierra Maestra mountains; the Afghan Mujahideen’s power base was always in the Hindu Kush mountains – and other examples are plentiful. In today’s gospel, another revolutionary, Jesus of Nazareth, comes down from the mountain to a “stretch of level ground.” A divine revolutionary whose goal was to overturn a kingdom.

One way to look at kingdoms is to understand their patterns of values, power, and product. When Herb Brooks took over the US Olympic Hockey Team before the 1980 Olympics he brought a new set of values to the team. He knew that the Russians were the most skilled hockey players in the world and were essentially paid professionals in an amateur world. Coach Brooks brought the value of conditioning, he trained his players in the power to outskate the Russians, and the product was the Miracle on Ice gold medal. Kingdoms can be understood by their patterns of values, power, and product.  Old kingdoms are overthrown with new values, new power, and new results.

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A Final Thought

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The gospel for this coming Sunday, the 6th Sunday, Year C is St. Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain.” The following come from Walter Pilgrim (Good News to the Poor: Wealth and Poverty in Luke-Acts).

The clear social distinctions drawn here are between the haves and the have-nots, the possessors and the impoverished, those favored by society and those despised. The new and surprising element is the way in which the norms and values of society are turned upside down. The promised blessings belong to the suffering poor, while the coming woes are pronounced upon the contented rich. According to one commentator, this marks the first time in Jewish religious literature that the poor are directly called the blessed (Hengel Property). [p. 76]

…we have argued that the Lukan beatitudes are addressed to people who are literally poor and persecuted. Yet their poverty is blessed within the context of their response to the ministry of Jesus and the call to the kingdom of God. Thus it is not just poverty or riches per se that is blessed or condemned, but poverty in the context of trust in God and riches in the context of rejection of God. The two go hand in hand for Luke. [p. 77]

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