If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, and get back the same amount. But rather, love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6.32-36)
Last week we heard Jesus’ so-called “Sermon on the Plain,” part of which contained Luke’s version of the beatitudes, affixing four woes to the blessings, unlike his counterpart, Matthew. That was the first part of the sermon. It is continued in today’s reading from Chapter 6 of Luke’s gospel wherein Rabbi Jesus spells out in precise terms the radical difference that he expects from his followers in comparison to “sinners,” by whom he intends us to understand everybody else.
If we want a crash course in authentic discipleship, then there is no better place to find it than in this section of the Sermon on the Plain. As stunning as they are mind-shattering, these guidelines that Jesus puts before the crowds offer an entirely new norm for behavior in the world, a norm not based on business as usual, but modeled on the actions of the Most High God.
In other words, so long as we conduct our lives according to the ways and methods of the world, then we are following a rulebook vastly different from the one that Jesus prescribes, in this way telling us that if we want to call ourselves his followers then we will have to get out of the kiddie pool and jump into the deep end of the water.
As Jesus sees it–and he nails it–the world operates according to the model of a transactional system, often defined by the quip, “Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” It’s a tit-for-tat world, where people conduct themselves on the basis of returns. Sometimes it is summed up in the phrase, “What’s in it for me?” It is, for the most part, the norm or the everyday practice of people at large who give with the expectation of seeing a return. It’s the grocery store model. I give you money and you give me my groceries.
Of course, the model translates into thousands of scenarios that fill our world, so ordinary that nobody thinks twice about it. Someone gives us a gift; we give them one back. Someone says something nice about us; we give them a compliment in return. Someone does us a favor; we owe them a favor. We know these are the ground rules for living in the world because there is anger and alienation when the transaction is broken by one side. A failure to comply with the norms ends up with enemies and an enemy’s list.
Jesus enters and sets before us another way of living, one that is not transactional and not governed by reciprocity. In fact, it is the very opposite. This new standard of behavior is not about getting back something. It is about expecting nothing in return. It moves towards gratuitous gift-giving, requiring nothing in return. As we have seen and will continue to see, Luke presents here another form of the great reversal, where the universal and ordinary ways are turned upside down, replaced by a way of living not seen in the world before. With this way, there is no more retaliation, no more retribution, no more requirement of quid pro quo.
In three stark and beautiful examples, Rabbi Jesus puts the challenge before the crowd, telling them there is nothing remarkably good about playing the game as it always has been played. “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” he asked. “Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners.”
In this tripartite question, Jesus goes to the heart of the matter. “What makes you so special,” he asked the crowds, “if you’re doing nothing special?” As he sees it, simply doing what everyone else is doing is unremarkable and unworthy of anyone who wants to become his follower. His way, on the other hand, is different. It is difficult. And it is definitely not run-of-the-mill behavior.
In the next verse, he lays before the people the contrast between the ordinary and the extraordinary, calling on his followers to stand out and to stand apart because they are unlike anything the world sees. “Rather,” he said to them, “love your enemies and do good to them, and lend expecting nothing back; then your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High.” One glance at them, and we can easily conclude these three actions stand in stark contrast to the normal way of being in the world.
No one loves their enemies. No one does good to people they despise. And no one gives without an expectation of a return. And yet, in a world where no one does these foolish and foolhardy things, he tells his followers they should do them, in this way proving themselves cut from a different bolt of material, showing that they are truly children of the Most High God.
In fact, that is the new standard. No longer should we compare ourselves to others, fooling ourselves into believing that so long as we’re doing pretty much the same stuff as everybody else is doing, then we’re alright. Instead, we are to compare ourselves to the Most High God who as Jesus says is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked and merciful to one and all. In many ways, it is the Lucan version of the challenge we hear Jesus make in the Gospel of Matthew when he says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
In some ways, this makes sense, even to us. Athletes know that in order to improve their performance, they must compete with someone who is better skilled than they are. So long as they compete and compare themselves to other athletes with similar skills they will never be challenged to reach deeper and to strive for more. It is only when they go head-to-head with someone better than they are that they improve their own skills.
So, for the followers of Jesus, it is never enough to set our goal as doing what everybody else is doing. We will see no improvement because the bar is set comfortably low. Moral improvement comes when the bar is set much higher, as high as the Most High God as Jesus would have it. Behave and think like our Heavenly Father and then we will improve our game.
We have then a divine measure, not a human measure to guide us, which certainly raises the stakes and requires the sacrifices. Henceforth, we strive for a standard that goes beyond the ordinary and our goal is to do more, not to do as much as others are doing. Why? Because the new norm is doing as God would do things, not as sinners would do them.
In truth, it is mind-blowing and patently absurd, at least on the surface, to expect us mere mortals to rise above our lowly status and to stand toe-to-toe with the Most High God in moral rectitude. And yet, it is exactly what Jesus calls his followers to do. In a few stunning sentences, he sweeps away the moral minimalism that we find so comfortable and replaces it with a moral maximalism the likes of which are only seen in the deeds of the Most High God and occasionally in a handful of heroic figures here and there such as Mother Teresa or Dr. Schweitzer.
To say we have our work cut out for us is to state the obvious. Of course, it should not surprise us. In a short while in Luke’s gospel, we will hear Jesus say, “Strive to enter in through the straight gate,” simply another way of saying don’t take the easy path. And at the end of the same gospel, as Jesus suffered on the cross, nailed there by his enemies, we will hear him say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Here, at the end, he is only doing what he had asked his followers to do. “Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.”
On the cross, he wrote in blood what he had spoken in words. And it is the same that he asked those who want to follow him to do. Our actions should exceed the expected, defy the definition of the ordinary, and surpass the ways of the sinner. So long as we compete with second-string players, we’re not worthy to carry his name on our jersey.
Indisputably, we have plenty of opportunities in these times to show our mettle. We are surrounded by mediocrity, mendacity, and mean-spiritedness. The moral code has found a new low, not a new high. The new morality accepts as normal crassness, cruelty, and cold-heartedness. It is a transactional world on steroids. Bullies are esteemed. Belligerence is endorsed. And bribery is exalted.
To know just how far from Jesus’ way we find ourselves we only have to hear him say again, “To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well, and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back.” There isn’t a tape measure long enough to count up the miles between our world and Jesus’ way.
Given that reality, we truly do not want to ignore the last thing that Jesus tells us today. He says, “For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” In other words, the God who sees all and knows all will not turn a blind eye to our miserly and miserable actions. His judgment upon us will be as fair as it is brutal. The quid-pro-quo that we made our moral code will condemn us to the same quid-pro-quo from the Most High God who asked more of us and to whom we only gave less of ourselves.
We should brace ourselves. Ahead of us in a matter of weeks is Jesus’ story of the poor man Lazarus at the rich man’s gate, Lazarus asking for the scraps off the rich man’s table, but ignored and shunned by someone who feels no compassion and no concern for the forlorn, the foreigner, or the forgotten. When judgment day came, the Most High returned to the rich man the measure with which he had measured out to Lazarus, a measure that didn’t amount to even a drop of water.
It is safe to say we have been told and forewarned.
–Jeremy Myers
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