In Nomine etc..
“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” (Luke 6:27)
In today’s homily, I go back and forth between Luke’s version, and Matthew’s version, of Jesus’s teaching about love for enemies. Luke leaves out bits of, and Matthew adds to, Jesus’s remarks. Luke has a fuller, longer version of the teaching, but Matthew comes to an apparently more challenging conclusion. But when we put the two versions together, we are closer to what Jesus is getting at.
We have in the two Gospels what may be the most impossible of Jesus’s teachings. From not resisting evil, to not fighting back, to settling for more than we were sued for, to going farther than is requested of us, to giving to everyone who begs of us, to lending to everyone who wants to borrow from us, to loving our enemies, and finally, to the demand, on top of all that, according to Matthew, that we be perfect, as perfect as God, we have a list of requirements that probably no human being except Jesus himself has ever achieved, or even attempted. Even the saints were, are, likely not capable of all of these, not all at the same time anyway. What are we going to do with this list of impossible requirements?
The least we can do is understand what Jesus is saying here, what Jesus is describing, what situation we are in from Jesus’s point of view. He is describing the Kingdom, and what personal relations would be like there. And he’s describing what would be the state of mind, the consciousness, the psychology of the individual and the group, in the Kingdom, what it takes to get there, and what it takes to stay in it.
According to Matthew, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.” In Luke, Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Jesus is here renouncing violence of any kind. In Jesus’s earthly life, this meant, among other things, renouncing violence against the Roman power. One commentator suggests that this may have been why Judas abandoned Jesus; it is possible that Judas wanted Jesus to be the nationalist Messiah that many hoped for, and was disappointed when Jesus would not accept the role and its inevitable violence. Paul the Apostle affirms this teaching of Jesus when he writes in his Letter to the Romans, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.”
And this means renouncing economic violence as well. Jesus teaches us to be generous, and more than generous, when he says (in Matthew) that we should settle for more than we are sued for, and give to those who beg from us, and lend to those who want to borrow. The core idea here is freedom from selfishness and abuse and exploitation and financial manipulation of others. The core idea, in other words, is an economy not at all like the economies that we know about. The cure for this is the free generosity which Jesus is advocating. His teaching in its literal meaning is very radical, of course. And we need to be reminded, frequently, just how radical Jesus’s teaching really is. In our current economy it is hard, maybe even impossible, to be so radical, but it is possible to turn ourselves in the direction of the free generosity which will bring us closer to the Kingdom.
In Matthew, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In Luke he says, “do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Well, here it is again, another radical injunction from Our Lord. This is another declaration, another version, of Jesus’s renunciation of violence, a variation on his command not to resist an evildoer.
What is Jesus quoting when he says, in Matthew, “You have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye” and so on? This is not an exact quotation of anything in the Scriptures, although there are lines in Psalm 139 and in the Book of Sirach, which mention hatred of enemies without actually exhorting us to imitate the state of mind of the writers. But Jesus is referring to something that evidently his hearers were familiar with, an idea common to the time and place. And we are familiar with it too. Hatred of enemies is a common attitude, a dangerous, deadly one, in tribal cultures past and present. We see the murderous effects of this attitude in many places in the world today. And it is this tribal consciousness, or rather, tribal unconsciousness, that Jesus is calling us to leave behind. The “eye for an eye” mentality, the selfishness which motivates so much economic activity, and mindless hatred of the other, the so-called ‘enemy,’ are all typical of a primitive, not fully conscious tribal state of mind which we are being called to leave behind. Jesus is calling us to a new state of being, to a new life free of these ancient limitations, a new life in God. And this life we call the Kingdom.
In Matthew, Jesus says, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good.” In Luke, he says, “the Most High...is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Here Jesus acknowledges that ancient and perplexing problem, the problem of evil. Why does God allow evil to exist? Jesus’s response to the problem of evil is to admit its reality, and to say, “Don’t add to it. Don’t perpetuate it. Choose the good, even in the face of evil.” Jesus is putting this choice before us, a choice that is always available to us. Choice, in other words, a choice to free ourselves from the primitive tribal instinct to hate the enemy, is always available. The choice to step out of tribal unconsciousness is always available to us. I know that there are hard cases, and our world is full of them, in which choice appears to be between one evil and another. But God “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” In other words, God’s grace is always present, even in the most difficult of situations. The call out of unconsciousness is a call to free choice, to act in a way that brings the Kingdom a little closer.
Matthew’s Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Luke tones it down when he writes “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” One commentator describes this text, the “Be perfect” text, as the most abused text, at least in English-speaking countries, in the whole of the New Testament. The problem, as we know, is that little word “perfect.” It conjures up for us a connotation of rectitude and righteousness which are impossible to achieve. We have met people, I’m sure, who attempt this, or, worse, people who think that they have achieved it. We all know how inhuman, how lacking in realism, empathy, such an attitude can be. There is a lot of it in many places today. In the end, it can get a lot of people killed, and damage the survivors. This is not the perfection that our text is talking about.
The Greek word behind this erroneous translation means something like “brought to completion” or “brought to the end state.” The Greek root is “telos,” “end.” We’ve all heard the word “teleological,” referring to the end state, the destiny, of the world. When Our Lord tells us to be, like God, “teleios,” he is telling us to be open to the end for which we are made, which is life in the Kingdom. This life is typified by freedom, the freedom to be generous, the freedom from an unconscious tribal mentality, freedom to love, freedom to choose the good. That is the perfection to which we are called, for which we are made. “Be merciful,” Luke says; mercy is one facet of the perfection, the completion, the end, the goal, that Jesus is talking about.
So these impossible teachings of Our Lord are descriptions, pointers to the end state, pointers to the Kingdom. We begin to live in the Kingdom, we bring it a little closer, when we choose the freedom in God which Our Lord is putting before us. We are not to stay in, or revert to, the old morality, but are to choose the morality of love, of freedom, of life, in the Kingdom.
“But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
In Nomine etc.. (23-24.II.19 Adv.)
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