Genesis 45:2-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38
“Love your enemies,” Jesus says. Not once, but twice. And in our first reading we are given the example of Joseph, who loved and forgave his brothers for selling him into slavery. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who abuse you.” As if it as easy as that.
These words come to us as the Pope concludes an emergency summit at the Vatican to address the thousands of cases of priests abusing those in their care, cases that the Catholic Church has worked to erase and forget. They come to us as the same scandal rocks the Southern Baptist Convention, where hundreds of church leaders betrayed the trust of their congregation members and committed acts of sexual and spiritual abuse. In the Catholic Church, in the Baptist Church, in every denomination and every congregation where this happens, even here in the ELCIC, the victims have been told these very words, “love your enemies, do not judge, and you will not be judged, forgive and you will be forgiven.” These words come to me as this year my oldest child, who is gender-fluid, was put in a headlock at school, and called a “transgender (word that starts with a W and rhymes with floor).”
Love your enemies. Love your child’s enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who abuse you. Forgive.
How can we understand these words, how can we follow these words of Jesus, the one whom we are committed to following, when we stand in solidarity with victims of abuse, when we are abused, when we also believe that God is on the side of the oppressed, when we know that the victims are children of God, made in the image of God? How can we reconcile the tension between Jesus’ words and our conviction that God calls us to protect those who are being abused, especially when those people are children or even ourselves?
Well, the first thing I am going to say, is that I am not going to give you a solution in the next ten minutes. To do that, we would need to talk about the complicated dynamics of power, of what forgiveness means and does, of how God acts in the world in the face of evil, of the relationship between mercy and justice. I’m not sure I could give you a solution in the next ten years. Frankly, I’m not convinced there is a solution this side of the heavenly gates; I don’t think we can ever reconcile this tension until we are fully in the presence of God after we die.
That being said, there are a few things that might offer us some guidance. The first brings us back to Paul’s words a few weeks ago, in 1 Corinthians 13, when he talks about love. Or, to be more specific, agape. And he said, if we do not have agape, we are nothing. And I had said that agape love is living for the sake of others, for the well-being of others. Now “well-being” is a complex word, but it mainly points to the ways in which life is about more than just living and breathing; it’s about being whole. It’ about physical and emotional and mental and spiritual wholeness. To have agape love for someone is to commit to their wholeness, physically of course, but also to commit to their emotional and spiritual wholeness. And agape is the word Jesus uses when he says, “Love your enemies.” Jesus is telling us to commit ourselves to the well-being, the thriving of our enemies.
But why on earth would we do that? Our enemies are, after all, less than committed to our well-being. In fact, we might define “enemy” as someone who wants to destroy our own well-being, who does not see us as even worthy of life. Our enemy is anyone who sees us as infinitely less than them, and who works to keep it that way. Why on earth would we want to work for their well-being when they don’t care about ours?
Well, because we do not live in isolation. We live in community, we live in relationship. We were created this way, and we thrive this way. My well-being is connected to the well-being of those with whom I am in relationship. Your well-being is connected to the well-being of your community. If your community is not whole, if it suffers emotionally or mentally or spiritually, then so do you. And likewise, if you suffer physically or emotionally or mentally or spiritually, then so does your community.
And it is the same in our relationship with our enemy. Oh yes, we have a relationship with our enemies, and with those who abuse us or abuse those we love, even though it is a destructive one. We are tied to them and they to us; clearly, when a person suffers from fractures in their emotional and mental and spiritual wholeness, then so does the one they lash out against.
And so Jesus calls us to work for the well-being of our enemy, because as long as our enemy is unwell, so is the community, and so are we. Jesus wants you to be whole and to experience new life, and Jesus wants this for the community, and therefore for our enemies.
And so Jesus tells us that if your enemy slaps you across the cheek, you should offer the other as well. And this has often been interpreted to mean that if your enemy hits you, you should just let them, and don’t stand up for yourself, and don’t hit them back. Accept the reduction of your humanity because we are all lowly humble sinners anyway.
But that is not what Jesus is saying. You see, when a slave or servant was hit in Jesus’ day, they were expected to take it and slink away. To scurry off and disappear from sight. They were not expected to stand up again, to raise their face to the one in power, and to insist that the one in power recognize that they are still there. To turn the other cheek is to draw attention to the fact that someone was hit in the first place. Instead of going away quietly––instead of disappearing––remaining and turning the other cheek, “making a scene,” as it were, makes visible that something wrong just happened. It makes visible the abuse.
The same applies to Jesus’ words to forgive those who abuse you. You see, implied in these words is that the one being forgiven did something that requires forgiveness. The unspoken first step in all of this is to make plain that a sin was committed, to acknowledge that abuse took place, that a child of God was victimized. To bless those who curse you is to expose that they cursed you in the first place. “Do not judge” implies there is something to be judged. “Do not condemn” implies there is something to be condemned. This is the step too often missed. Jesus does not call us to slink away and accept what has happened, and then to forgive in some quiet corner somewhere. Jesus calls us first to stand up, to speak to what has happened, and only then do we move to forgiveness. Joseph in Egypt did not forget what his brothers did to him, or pretend it never happened. Before he did anything, before he kissed them and wept upon them, he said, “I am your brother whom you sold into Egypt.” Joseph names the abuse, the injustice, the condemnable act that was committed.
Because to allow sin or abuse or violence to go unnamed is to allow it to continue. And to allow it to continue is to allow both those who are victimized and those who victimize others to suffer. Abuse, whether it is physical or emotional or spiritual, damages not just the victim, but also the abuser. It demeans the one who receives the abuse and the one who perpetrates it and all those who are in relationship with these people. Abuse is a sin against the community because it fractures the well-being of the community, a community that includes both you and your enemy. And so, to love, to agape your enemy is to expose the abuse they are committing, because their abuse damages not just their victims but themselves. To do good to those who hate you is not to forget what they did, to erase it or to hide it. That does not lead to their well-being or to their spiritual wholeness because it does not lead to yours.
Having said all this, it might sound like I am still telling you that Jesus wants you to put the needs of others above your own, to once again put your enemy first. And if this is what it sounds like, then I am sorry, because that is not my intention. That would not be the Good News of the Gospel that gives life to you today. In our Gospel reading, Jesus ends by saying, “the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” It sounds a little bit like divine karma: you get from the world what you put into it. But I think that what Jesus is getting at is we become like those with whom we are in relationship. When we diminish others, we become diminished. When we treat others as less than human, we become less human. On the flip side, when we work for others’ wholeness, we ourselves become whole. When we seek life for others, even that of our enemies, we ourselves receive new life. When we seek to make others our equal, whether by putting them down or by lifting them up, we become equal to them. Working for healing for our enemy is working for healing for ourselves.
But to do that we are first called to be honest about when well-being is threatened, when wholeness is fractured, whether it is our own or someone else’s. This honesty is part of agape, it is part of how Jesus calls us to love our enemies and part of how we protect those who are abused. It is the truth that sets us all free, and it is the gift of new life for us through Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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