--by the Rev. Leslie Barnes Scoopmire
Readings:
A couple of weeks ago Bill and I started seeing ads for a new show being prepared for daytime TV—it’s a new soap opera called “Beyond the Gates”—the first new daytime soap since 1999.
Are you kidding me? In a world that has about a hundred different versions of Real Housewives of every town with a population over 5000 people, they think we need more daytime drama?
In fact, if you want to experience soap opera tales, you don’t even have to go to TV. All you have to do is turn to the first books of the Bible—they are chock-a-block full of the stuff of soap operas. Jealousy. Betrayal. Cruelty. Rivalries. Even murders and attempted murders. Our first reading reminds us of one of those scriptural soap operas— jealous brothers turning on daddy’s favorite, selling him into slavery and thinking he was as good as dead. And yet when that betrayed brother has the chance to get his payback, what does he do? He ends us saving his entire family from famine, and forgiving the whole lot of them.
That’s why this is a good story to open up our gospel passage.
Hear again Jesus’s words:
“I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
This week and the last we have been hearing the core of Jesus’s ethical principles in the 6th chapter of Luke’s gospel, corresponding to the 5th chapter of Matthew’s. Last week we heard Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which is notable for its juxtaposition of specific and personal blessings and woes, instead of Matthew’s more general list of blessings.
In the first part of our gospel this week. Jesus will list seven rules for how to deal with those whom we perceive to oppose us:
Love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give, and it will be given back to you.
Of these seven rules, the ones most of us have probably heard the most are numbers 5 and 6. The fifth rule is also known as the Golden Rule—and what’s interesting is that a version of that rule exists in nearly every religion and ethical structure across the globe, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the Sikh faith, Taoism, Homer (representing Greek philosophy), Philo, Confucius, and even the Code of Hammurabi. The sixth one should be familiar to all of us—because we pray to live by that rule that every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.
And that whole first sentence: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Just right there that one sentence, there’s a lot to unpack. Like what does the word “love” actually mean in this instance? Who exactly are our enemies? How do we do good to those who hate us and still protect ourselves from being victims of repeated victimization? How do we bless those who curse us and how do we pray for those who abuse us?
You know, part of the problem right now in this world is that that word “enemy” gets thrown around way too much. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not make them your enemy. Just because somebody is from a different state, or supports a different team, or supports a different political party, does not make them our enemies. Enemies are people who want nothing but our own destruction. Opponents and people who disagree with us are not necessarily our enemies.
Would it sweeten the pot if I told you, that, in the times I have seen this actually attempted, this loving of enemies and praying for those who abuse us, it has actually driven the person who has done the hurting absolutely nuts? I mean, it’s like pouring salt and lemon juice into a paper cut. I once saw this play out once when I joined a counter-protest against Westboro Baptist Church when they were in town picketing the J. There they were, saying their horrible things, and we counter-protesters got together. What was something we could yell back that would defeat their messages of hate? We came up with this: all together, we screamed out, “WE’RE PRAYING FOR YOU!!!!!” And once they figured out what we were saying, you could just see it get under their skin. Everyone expects that when you’re punched, you punch back. But when someone shows the worst of themselves and gets back crickets, it tends to expose their wrongness even more vividly.
It was awesome. And then some of us really did pray for them. Now it's true that sometimes the prayer we pray for them is Psalm 52. Do you know what Psalm 52 is? It starts with, “You tyrant why do boast of wickedness against the godly all day long? You plot ruin; your tongue is like a sharpened razor, O worker of deception.” I recommend it highly for times when you're in front of somebody who is just absolutely opposed to your flourishing.
The power of our gospel reading today is in its promise of abundance at the very end: if we live a generous life toward others, we ourselves will find an abundance beyond measure, so much that it spills out of our cupped hands and into our laps.
Jesus’s teaching here It is filled with active verbs that instruct us in what we are called to do to live as disciples of Jesus. We hear repeated positive commands:
Love. Do good. Bless. Give. Lend. Forgive.
We also hear prohibitions:
Do not judge. Do not condemn.
But even these are couched in our own self-interest:
Don’t judge—so that you won’t be judged.
Don’t condemn—so that you won’t be condemned.
Jesus here calls us to remember the grace we receive FIRST, a gift freely given though we may not deserve it. And in the same breath, he calls those who follow him to embody grace for ourselves, and then live out that grace in our interactions with others. To make God visible in this world, embody God’s values first and foremost: love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, as Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea from a month ago reminds us all. One of my teachers once explained it to me this way: “Just because we can get away with something, or think we have the right to, does not mean that we should. One person’s right to swing their arms around ends at the tips of the noses of the people around them.”
Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer. Give. Do.
In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.
When Luke combines blessings with woes, it brings us up short. Because if we believe that those who are spit upon are blessed, we also have to understand the spiritual peril in being those who spit upon others—especially the poor and the hungry and those borne down by weeping, pain, or trauma. We are called to stand against those who dream up new ways to treat supplicants with contempt rather than mercy. It's like the San Francisco cathedral I read about a few years ago who, when they were frustrated with the homeless who were sleeping in some of their sheltered doorways, used an overhead sprinkler system to spray them with water several times during the night. Maybe they were afraid there wasn't enough to go around, I don't know.
I do know that our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. It’s a culture based on fear. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. But that’s not the culture of the Beatitudes.
But, although we Episcopalians tend to be very judicious in the use of his word, it is very clear that there is such a thing as evil in this world. We renounce it in our Baptismal Covenant every time we repeat it.
Furthermore, we see it all around us.
In delighting in cruelty and the dehumanization of others.
In trying to prevent the development of kindness and compassion in the education of our children.
In the mocking of marginalized groups, such as the disabled, the poor, the refugee.
In the denial of health care to those who most desperately need it in order to make a profit on the pain and suffering of others.
In the lack of concern for a livable wage for workers, or of safe water to drink, or in the ignoring of climate shifts that are making huge swaths of this planet inhabitable for human or beast.
In the short-sighted denial of the blessings of science in saving lives through the miracle of vaccines.
The message we receive today in Luke’s gospel starts from a place of gentleness and compassion—that amazingly generous gift known as grace which is better than riches or vengeance. Jesus doesn’t give us the easy news, here, but it IS the “good news” of transformation and reconciliation that leads to justice based on true healing.
We are absolutely called to resistance. We are called to opposition of evil with every fiber of our being, and to oppose the normalization of hatred and cruelty. But Jesus never advocated shortcuts or rationalized returning evil for evil. Jesus stood for the dangerous idea that love will conquer hate, and that unity will always overcome division. He believed in it so much, he died so that we could all learn this lesson.
The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the kingdom of God—one where we don’t sit on fluffy cloud playing harps in the hereafter, but instead joyously set about doing the work to prepare the fields of the kingdom by sowing love and reconciliation. We have to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made.
Being a Christian is NOT just about labels. It is not about saying “I believe in Jesus as MY Savior” and then carrying on with placing our own interests above the suffering of others. Jesus is NOT a personal possession.
Being a Christian means embodying the light of Christ in every way we can. It means celebrating that we are Beloved and made in the image of God—while then tempering our ability to do whatever we want to whomever we want because we understand that our perceived “enemies” are just as beloved and made in God’s image as we are. It is a challenge for us as Americans, in 2025 especially, to realize that might does NOT make right.
So I want to challenge us all today to take heed to Jesus's urging-- to pray for our enemies and to love them, yes-- but also to embody the light of Christ bravely. There is an alternative to the culture of greed and fear and othering and scarcity. There is an alternative and it is love: love that is not an emotion, but love that is an act of will. May we ever try to embody that love starting now.
Amen.