READINGS

Luke 6:27-38 - Love Your Enemies, Do Not Judge

HOMILY

We were at the beginning of what is called in Luke's Gospel the Sermon on the Plain, as opposed to Matthew's account where we notice the Sermon on the Mount.

I brought out last week something very peculiar about this, that it's deliberate coming down from the mountain and then Jesus being lower than his disciples, looking up at them and then speaking.

Meaning: this is not an exercise in communication from on high, but it's an exercise in communication from beneath that has to be spread by people repeating it.

In the Aramaic version, they are clearly mnemonics - they're clearly designed to be easy to remember and so as to be repeated and to have word links with other passages, so they can be remembered.

27 “But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

When Jesus starts by saying: but I say to you that listen - it's not merely a grand way of saying I'm speaking and you're listening to me.

It's more like: you who are listening, when you hear these words, when you hear this, it is me who is speaking.

What they are going to be passed on to them is the words, and it's in those words that He is speaking that there's a special divine imprint.

They're utterly remembered and they won't pass away forever. That's part of the mnemonic teaching technique.

One of the phrases that we know is absolutely central to Jesus's Gospel is *love your enemies, do good to those that hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Notice that apparently the Aramaic word behind the word for abuse is rather stronger than the abuse.

It's a word for the whole mechanism for persecution starting from the thought "I need to get rid of that person" to the accusation, the thought of accusation, the calumny, "this is what that person has done, so we need to get rid of them", to the action "we all going up and we get rid of them".

It's the whole of the lynch mentality, that's what's being referred to here.

Is Jesus saying: allow yourself to be walked all over by people? No.

As in Matthew's Gospel, which has a slightly different version, He's saying:

1. the first step is: don't let the bastards get to you;

2. then let them run you, but start to turn the whole way you are towards them, so that you're not reactive to them, but on the contrary becoming good towards them, because that's how God is.

This is the instruction about turning our whole way of being around in the face of hostility so as to be towards those hostile to us as God is to us when we're hostile to Him.

It's very strictly related to the power of the Creator: us finding ourselves on the inside of the power of the Creator, which works in an entirely different way.

This is why He's speaking from underneath. He's giving things that can be remembered, because these are things which we can learn practically.

29 If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also. And if anyone takes away your coat, don’t hold back your shirt either.

This is also referring to how Jesus was profited at his crucifixion.

But here Luke doesn't give Matthew's little tales of the 'cheek', the 'running the second mile', 'the tunic', where the way in which each one works as a turning the situation rather cleverly in some way against the person who's doing the hostility, though in a way that favors them.

Here Luke's not particularly interested in that.

Don't become reactive to anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt, don't go into reactivity against them, give to everyone who begs from you and if anyone TAKES AWAY your goods don't ask for them again.

It doesn't say STEAL. It's quite a delicate word here the TAKING AWAY, because it refers to accidental things.

I mean the guy who's sailed into your parking place not aware that you'd been waiting there patiently for it to open up the position simply took it.

This is the single mnemonic which is at the centre of this passage.

It's the golden rule: it's the positive version of "not do to others what they would do to you". It's the positive one: "'do to others as you would have them do to you".

The golden rule is becoming creative of a new space for others regardless of what they're up to.

Luke makes absolutely clear that this is a completely mimetic, because our normal understanding of these words is governed by reciprocity: if you love those who love you, what credit (or blessing) is it to you?

It's actually how does that build you up as being a blessing.

32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.

Even sinners love those who love them. The mafia treats his own well.

If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?

So you pay them back nicely, because they treated you nicely. But the threat is that: if they would treat you nastily, likewise you would treat them nastily?

So there's always the threat again of violence. That's how reciprocity works. We're being told we've got to break reciprocity, because it's our mimetic nature's trapped.

Luke doesn't use publicans and prostitutes, which Matthew uses. Luke just uses sinners in general.

34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full.

It's all part of a give and take system that ultimately is guaranteed by violence.

So turn from being people who are run by their hatred of you into people who are towards them as God is.

Do good and lend to them.

35 But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. For he is gracious to the ungrateful and evil.

And here the Aramaic says expecting nothing in return, but it seems the Aramaic version is more delicate than what we have in the Greek.

It means something much closer to don't deceive the hope of those to whom you lend.

If I lend someone something and think in my heart: well you know, this is a hopeless person... he or she will never be able to pay me back, so I'm going to write it off in my heart; I'll write off the debt in my heart, because I know that they're no good, they'll never do it, so I'm being kind, because I'm like God, but they'll be no good at all.

The Aramaic version is much subtler. Don't deceive their hope that they would be able to give it back to you.

So lend in such a way that you have skin in the game, that you're creating a relationship with them, that you will be proud of what they're able to do, to give something back to you.

It's not an exercise in humiliating people, it's an exercise in building people up because that's how God acts towards us.

God's got skin in the game.

The generosity of God is not supposed to make us feel little and wicked and hopeless, but to think you know I can become someone thanks to all this help I'm being given.

I actually can become someone and I will be able to give something back.

There's a delight in this, so your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High.

It looks like being a person who is creating blessing opening up generosity even in the midst of hostility.

How do we know this is the Most High? For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked and this is one of the things which Luke's Gospel gives us time and time again.

Luke understands that all of us are ungrateful and wicked and that God's generosity traverses our hostility.

It breaks through our hostility and being like God is like breaking through other people's hostility.

We have had our own hostility broken through by God, now let's break through the hostility of others.

36 Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

Apparently the Greek term, which says merciful, but the Aramaic term is a very emotive form of mercifulness: be warmly compassionately sweet as your father is merciful.

37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

This is completely mimetic in as far as you judge, you are judged.

The judge here means setting up the process of trying to find out whether someone has done something right or wrong and then thinking you know that they are good or bad, because of the judgment.

That's what it means in Aramaic, and we're told not to do it;

38 Give, and it will be given to you; a good measure - pressed down, shaken together, and running over - will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

Then this wonderful sense of the ludicrous, excessive, hyperbolic generosity of God give and it will be given to you a good measure.

It says press down so that's the suggestion that it's a vast amount of oil shaken together, and each of these words, shaken together, running over, poured into your lap.

Each of them indicates something really over the top: shaken together so that, for instance, a huge amount of grain, because it's shaken, it'll mean that it will settle down into an even bigger a pile.

Running over will be put into your lap.

Into your lap may seem a bit of a surprise, but remember that people at the time would wear very long robes, so the idea was that you held up a piece of your ropes, as people to receive the generosity that's brought into you.

That would work in case of grain, but slightly problematic in the case of oil.

So we can imagine that basically this is for solid goods, the modern equivalent will be an apron, because we don't wear long ropes, but the point again is the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

The suggestion behind this is what Jesus is whispering out from underneath: this immeasurable generosity that we are being asked to allow ourselves to become part of towards others, however apparently hostile, evil and wicked, just in the same sense that has been pushed through our hostility and wickedness, to break the mimetic forms of reciprocity that are mutual protections against violence, and actually open up the possibility of constructing a new world together in which people are not frightened of each other.

This is the promise of the circle of the Sermon on the Plain.