Year C
Luke 6:27-38
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
The Ethic of Swimming Upstream
The gospel lesson this morning continues Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, known as Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain. Immediately before this passage today, is the blessing and woes’ section of the sermon where Jesus tells the crowd what faithful living looks like. In today’s verses, Jesus tells us if you want to deserve the blessings, rather than the woes, this is what you have to do. It’s plain talk, tough talk, certainly hard to listen, talk. These verses are some of the most difficult teachings of Jesus. Here is what sets apart the Christian faith from all other religious perspectives and even from what we might say is common sense. And yet, at the end of the day, it defines the core of Christian ethics. Several years ago, I saw someone wearing a t-shirt featuring the traditional symbol of the fish that Christians have used to identify themselves since the days of persecution in the Roman Empire. Our young people learned about the importance of the fish symbol last week in Sunday school.
The fish, on the t-shirt, was not alone. There were a great many other fish—including some rather menacing looking ones—all swimming in one direction, while this lone Christian fish was swimming in the other direction. That’s a pretty good depiction of life in this world for the person who would follow Jesus. Perhaps we do not always have to swim alone. But we are surly called to swim upstream. This Christian ethic of going against the flow is not just for the sake of being contrary. No, we swim in the opposite direction from much of the rest of the world simply because we are swimming toward a particular destination. And you can’t reach that destination which is the kingdom of God, by living or swimming in the same direction as the sinful world. We are to live like our destination. “Love your enemies,” Jesus says. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
Can we really love our enemies or do good to those who hate us? If not, why did Jesus lay on us this impossible demand? If the teaching troubles many of us, fear not, we are not the first to back away from this bit of divine fire. Christians have always had a rough time figuring out, or crawling out from under, the Lord’s demand that we love our enemies. Albert Schweitzer, a Christian theologian, writer and philosopher, wrote that Luke, or the early church which recorded the teaching today, never intended that we could live like that—at least not for very long. Schweitzer said that the early church believed Jesus was going to return soon—in a few years at most, and that the command to love one’s enemies was a temporary edict; which was called an interim ethic. It was like holding your breath. You can only do it for a little while. But Jesus did not immediately return, as we know, and the church was stuck with an ethical command that no one can live up to.
Paul, who had probably heard the saying even though he wrote most of his letters before the gospels were completed, puts an interesting twist on it. In his letter to the Romans, he quotes from the book of Proverbs, he says “If your enemy is hungry feed him, if he is thirsty give him drink, for by so doing you heap burning coals upon his head.” For Paul, it seems, loving you enemy, is just another way to do him in. I doubt if that is what Jesus had in mind. We can kick and squirm and reinterpret the Lord’s words, but when all is said and done we have to conclude that Jesus meant what he said. We are to love those who despise us and bless those who curse us. It is indeed at this point the Christian ethic is most vividly seen out in a violent, pagan, brutal world filled with hate and bitterness; a world just like ours today.
What Jesus is suggesting is a change in ground rules. Don’t do it the way everybody else does it, do it God’s way instead. Swim in the opposite direction. God loves all that God has made, even if it doesn’t love him. Jesus is, of course the living-and dying-proof of that. And when Jesus accepts the violence done to him on the cross, without retaliation, he creates a completely new situation, in which all hostility to God, all separation from God, is forgiven and reconciled. We have done our worst, and it didn’t change God’s feelings about us, so now we have to admit that God’s love is stronger than any hate we can muster. Yet, here is the dilemma. How do we move from the natural instinct to match blow for blow and word for word? Putting it another way, how do we live our lives responding with grace and kindness, instead of reacting with words or actions that seek to answer hurt with more hurt?
According to Luke, Jesus indicates that followers of him remember how God responds to us. “Be merciful,” Jesus states, “just as the Father is merciful.” In Jesus, we see that the very nature of God is to be merciful. As you wish that people would do to you, do so to them—the golden rule. The secret is in the doing. I may not be able to control my feelings, not can I pretend to feel differently than I do. But I can control my actions and change my behavior. By doing so, that may just turn an enemy into a friend. In my opinion and you may feel differently and that’s ok, I don’t believe we will ever resolve international issues by sending our military in or threatening someone with a bomb. That may temporarily keep the peace, but it usually doesn’t solve the problem. There may be hope when we learn to treat our enemies differently. As James said to the early church, “Let us not love in word and speech, but in deed and truth.” In the kingdom of God you deal with enemies by loving them.
This is exactly what Joseph did in the OT story today with his unexpected response to his brothers who had tried to get rid of him by selling him to their enemies. They expect retaliation and instead Joseph tells them that their betrayal of him had wonderful results. He was able to save the lives of many Egyptians during the famine, and is now going to be able to save them too. Because of Joseph’s actions, the brothers are able to accept forgiveness and become a family again. And as Paul reminds us today, we bear the image of Adam but also the image of Christ. We put on Christ and are conformed to the body of his glory. The early church never claimed we could live by absolute love, at least not for long. Nevertheless, that is our goal.
The sayings of Jesus in this Sermon on the Plain are not a diagram of how things work in the world, but a picture of how things work in God’s kingdom. That is what Jesus came to bring, and that is what the church is in the world to show. We are to show there is another way, a way the world for most part does not understand. We don’t have to be ruled by the ethic of revenge and violence. We can live and work by faith, giving ourselves in service to the one whose kingdom is both in our midst and on the way. We pray for the coming of that kingdom, waiting for that day when it is real on earth as it is in heaven. Can we love our enemies? By the rules of the world probably not, but by the grace of God we can swim upstream.