Luke 6:27-38
“Love Budget”
February 20, 2022
We strive for things to add up, to be easily explained and most of all to be fair.
We want to be paid appropriately for the work we do.
We Americans do almost all of our shopping in places where there is a set price for every item and it doesn’t matter if I’m a millionaire or digging in the bottom of my purse for every last penny, we will all be charged the same price at Stewart’s for a quart of milk or 10 gallons of gas.
We pride ourselves on a criminal justice system that in theory according to our Constitution and federal and state laws is supposed to assume innocence until guilt is proven.
We probably all know people who will bend over backwards to be considered fair.
My mom immediately comes to mind as she packed our school lunches and always made sure that each of us got a sandwich, a piece of fruit and 2 cookies – not one for the little ones and 3 for we older ones – but 2 cookies for each of the 7 of us. Orange juice in our color-coded glasses set out the night before was always poured to the same level. At the time I never really explored with my mom whether she really thought we should all get the same regardless of age or activity level. I just assumed then that she was looking to avoid one more outburst with an accusation that one brother or sister was getting more or better or preferential treatment in a house that already was filled with chaos.
Most of us strive to have more love and less hate in our lives.
We think of love as mutual.
Just as we offer love, we want to receive love.
But what happens when that is not possible?
We are, right now, not just not loved but hated and viewed as an enemy by someone, probably many someones.
The Bible is filled with stories of people hating another and viewing them as the enemy.
Abel was hated by his brother Cain because God looked with favor on Abel’s offering of a first sheep and didn’t have anything to say about Cain’s offering and so Cain murdered his brother.
David was hated by King Saul because he had a way of winning over the people. This led to King Saul trying multiple times to kill David.
Before his conversion, Saul of Tarsus hated Jesus followers because he thought them heretics and was a key part of the effort to round them up and kill them as he did with the stoning of Stephen.
These were enemies that were right there in these haters faces.
We rarely have to look directly at those who hate us in person.
With the rise of technology and social media we may see people who consider us enemies but they often are so far away as to not feel like an immediate threat.
The breakdown in the equation comes with Jesus’ command to love our enemies.
As followers of Jesus, we are not supposed to give what we get.
We’re not supposed to engage in payback.
We are not to hate because they hate.
We should love abundantly, do good, and then expect nothing in return.
The forgiveness of those who treated you like an enemy was shown to us back in the fall of 2006 in the Amish communities around Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania where 10 girls were shot in their one-room schoolhouse and five of them died.
The sociologist Donald Kraybill wrote about this in his book Amish Grace when he offered:
“I think the most powerful demonstration of the depth of Amish forgiveness was when members of the Amish community went to the killer’s burial service at the cemetery…Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer’s family.” (www.npr.org)
Within today’s passage we hear of examples of how people may abuse others by hating, cursing, stealing, abusing, striking.
What seems to be assumed by Jesus is that all of those who hear these words are victims and not the perpetrators.
It could be that it is assumed that those striving to be followers would never do those things themselves.
Even though Jesus followers may be the target and victim they are not to dwell in that role.
Instead, those who have been wronged are not to react but act in love, where Luke offers up his take on the Golden Rule as found in Matthew and a host of other traditions.
Jesus is not looking for a love that is “fair” as we’ve come to think of fair.
Jesus has no use for thinking of love in terms of getting a return on our investment.
It is true, real, and life-giving love that does not deal in reciprocity.
This unfair love that Jesus is promoting is one that doesn’t benefit us but the one who is against us.
Living this way, as the offspring of our God of Grace, means we don’t condemn others because God does not condemn us.
We are forgivers of those who hurt us because God is constantly forgiving us.
We don’t do this because we will get some fair payback from God but because we are living out the image of God.
We get to join God in the healing of the world.
As one writer puts it, maybe we are to live less by a Golden Rule and more by a Golden Love: a love “expecting nothing in return,” a love beyond fairness, beyond exchange; an extravagant love of grace and mercy; the love we were born for, children of the Most High.” (Grace in Action: SALT’s Lectionary Commentary for Epiphany Week Seven (saltproject.org)
We cannot have or give too much love.
Love knows no bounds.
Let us pray:
O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (day1.org)