Homily for 7th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C 2019
1 Samuel 26:2,7-9,12-13,22-23; 1 Corinthians 15:45-49; Luke 6:27-38
Introduction
"Love your enemies." What a tall order! Loving is difficult by itself, even loving those who are close to us: parents and children, spouses and siblings, family and friends. But now, Jesus is asking us to love our enemies. Is that even possible?
Scripture and Theology
To understand what Jesus is asking of his disciples, we must first go back to the gospel reading of last Sunday about the Beatitudes, where Jesus reversed what the world calls blessings and called them curses, and what the world calls curses and called them blessings. That is why he said: "Blessed are you who are poor . . . But woe to you who are rich." And so, it is in this context of reversing values that Jesus says "Love your enemies." He is teaching something new, something entirely counter-intuitive according to the mind of the world.
And so, what does it mean to love according to Jesus? In our world “to love” means having good feelings towards someone, especially someone who makes us happy. It is this kind of feelings that popular love songs sing about; it is this kind of passion that the magazines write about; it is this kind of delight that we see in movies. This worldly love focuses only on what is in it for us.
But that is not the kind of love that Jesus is talking about, certainly not the kind of love he asks to extend to our enemies. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the smartest theologians that ever lived defined Christian love as "willing the good of the other." Notice something different here; to love is to will the good of the other person. This kind of love has nothing to do with how I feel or what benefit I receive from the interaction; this love focuses on the good of the other person.
But wherever could one ever find such love, such self-less love, that is concerned about others, without expecting anything in return! Isn’t Jesus out of his mind to require such an impossible thing from us?
Well, Jesus does not ask of us what he has not done himself. We see this selfless love of God who created us in love, sharing his life with us, and expecting really nothing from us, except do his will. And even when we failed to do his will, he continued to love us in this selfless manner by sending his Son as our Saviour instead of destroying us like we deserved. And of course we have to look no farther than the Cross, to see what true Christian love means. That is why Jesus can ask the same thing of his followers.
But how do we love our enemies? How do we will the good of our enemies? Jesus gives us three possible ways to do this: "do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." In other words, you can will the good of your enemies by doing something good for them, blessing or wishing them well, and thirdly by praying, interceding for them before God.
And then Jesus gives examples of how one can do this, how he did this:
- “To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well”, exactly what Jesus did during his agony and passion.
- “and from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic,” he was stripped naked during his agony and crucifixion.
- “Give to everyone who asks of you, and from the one who takes what is yours do not demand it back”; on the Cross Jesus gave all of himself.
But there is one more element about loving enemies that Jesus gives his followers. By asking them to love their enemies, Jesus is challenging the disciples to go the extra mile, going above and beyond ordinary expectations.
- He says: “For 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 . . .”
Essentially Jesus is showing that the kind of love expected of his disciples cannot be the common selfish love that you find in the world; it must be greater because Christians have God's grace to help do a little heavier lifting.
That is why the Church teaches that there is a difference between certain virtues that we can develop with discipline and hard work and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love, which need a direct infusion of grace from God. The kind of radical love that Jesus is asking of his followers is a theological virtue. It is only with God's grace that we can even attempt to love our enemies, to treat them better than the ordinary fairness found even among sinners.
And there is something to be gained for going the extra mile. Jesus says: “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." And so, not only can we expect a reward for reaching the higher bar of love, that is becoming God’s children, we also have the example of God to follow, by being merciful as our Father is merciful.
Finally Jesus says: “Stop judging and you will not be judged.” To understand what Jesus means here, we must listen to the next line which says: “Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.” And so, the kind of judging that Jesus asks us not to do, especially to our enemies, is judging interior motivation, and judging the eternal fate of our enemies. We can call out people when they do bad things; in fact, loving them sometimes means doing exactly that. What we cannot do is presume why they did it and most of all consign them to hell. We must leave that to the merciful God, who judges the fate of sinners.
Christian Life and Conclusion
Having seen what love means, willing the good of our enemies, who are these “our enemies”? It is interesting that unlike in this passage, when Jesus teaches about love of neighbour and is asked “who is my neighbour?”, he gives an example of a neighbour, in the story of the Good Samaritan. But the same story can teach us about who our enemies are. For it is not the priest and Levite, fellow Jews, but the Samaritan, that is the foreigner and enemy, who cares for the injured man, who loves his Jewish enemy.
Another example of loving one’s enemy is also found in our first reading from the book of Samuel. There we heard that the relationship between Saul and David was marked by tension, caused by Saul's mistrust of David, who he saw as a threat, of whom he was jealous. Saul pursues David to destroy him, but it is David who gains the upper hand and has the opportunity to kill Saul. And yet David was not consumed with the desire for revenge. David did not harm Saul.
Today our enemy also takes many forms. Like Saul was for David, our enemy can be someone we know: a co-worker who took our promotion, a boss who is not very nice to us, a spouse from whom you are divorced, a sibling you haven't talked to in years perhaps over mom's estate. Jesus is not asking you to have romantic feelings about them, or invite them to your next birthday party; he is asking you to do good to them, to bless them and to pray for them.
Like the Jewish victim was to the Good Samaritan, someone can be our enemy by virtue of belonging to a different group, such as a different race (Black or White), a different religion (Mormon or Muslim), a different nationality (Mexican or American), a different political party (Democrat or Republican). Jesus is not asking you to agree with their culture, religion, ideology. He is simply asking you to do good to them, to bless them and to pray for them.
For when we sin we become God's enemies, but he treats us with mercy and kindness. That is why we too must love our enemies, as God has loved us.
