Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany Luke 6:27-38 February 23, 2025
In last week’s Gospel, Jesus taught us about our identity in Him, who we are on account of Christ, that we are truly blessed because He became a curse for us. This week we take what we’ve learned and now answer the question, “what do we do.”
The Gospel today gives us several answers to the question, “What do we do,” several things our Lord says a Christian does. What are they? Love, do good, bless, pray, turn the other cheek, give even the shirt off your back, don’t demand repayment, lend, be merciful and compassionate, do not wrongly judge, do not condemn, but forgive.
Now, we should all know the 5th commandment. I bet if I asked you to, right now, recite the 5th commandment and its meaning, you’d all boldly say it. But I won’t put you on the spot. The 5th commandment is, “You shall not murder,” and the meaning is, “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt nor harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.” This commandment might be described as the “Golden rule” commandment, “As you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
This isn’t a “one religion is as good as the next” rule. Some people like to think that, as long as we love our neighbor and do good, that we can follow any religion we’d like and it’s fine, it all leads to God in the end. Nothing could be further from the truth, for there is only one God and Father and one Lord and Savior through whom all people might have access to the Father by faith. All other religions worship gods that do not exist and a nonexistent god can’t save anyone.
No, the “golden rule” isn’t about being accepting of all religions and beliefs; the “golden rule” is about how to treat others who mistreat you. In fact, the “golden rule” isn’t even about how to talk to Christians who abide by different theological persuasions than you. Love isn’t permissive of wrong beliefs about God, and our Lord’s teaching today in our Gospel is not to be used as an excuse to not confess the faith. You are to defend the faith and strive for sound doctrine out of love for God and neighbor.
But today, Jesus is teaching you how to treat others who mistreat you, how to deal with others’ who fail you or sin against you. How to love people in spite of the fact that all people fall short of what it means to love.
Now, the default way of grappling with this text – not to mention the whole sermon on the mount or sermon on the plain – is to take the legalistic approach. We could look at these words and say to our neighbor who falls short of our expectations, “You’re not loving enough, you’re not forgiving enough, you’re not merciful enough, you must try harder to be loving, forgiving, and merciful.” But in doing so we end up condemning ourselves because who of us remotely lives up to our Lord’s moral and godly standards?
We could also be selective with who we love and who we do good to, who we forgive. This makes us a law unto ourselves where we judge others based on our own standards or what best serves our needs. But again, this is self-defeating because our standards are anything but godly.
Jesus offers us another way, a better way, and we call it intercession.
Rather than taking offense, rather than holding grudges, rather than creating conflict or using conflict to pursue our own desires, rather than using the sins of others for selfish gain and want, the failures and mistakes of others to try and control them or destroy them, we learn to intercede. The natural, human approach to dealing with those who hate you or mistreat you or speak ill of you is to go on the offense and, with your thoughts, words, and deeds, strike back.
But in a Christian community, intercession must rule. The sins of other Christians, the failures and mistakes, the conflicts and tensions that seem to bubble up every so often, these are all opportunities for you to intercede. When people hate you or mistreat you, rather than going on offense, rather than fueling the hate or mistreatment with your own hate or mistreatment toward those people, do good to them, pray for them, intercede. No, it’s not the human way, it’s not the world’s way, it’s not the popular way, but it is the Christian way.
In fact, if you think about it, where a church is not praying and members are not praying for one another, what happens? Conflict, criticism, anger, hate, malice, it all bubbles up. Compassion and grace diminishes, churches are torn apart. A spirit of condemnation and insult, of slander and gossip is like a sliver in the finger. It sucks the joy and peace and tranquility away in the church.
So, if you want to show love for your enemies, if you want to help your less than perfect neighbors, if you want to do good to those who hate you, start by praying for them. It seems to help; it seems that God works to bring His will about among His people when His people bring their needs to Him in prayer.
In fact, your mission in life as a Christian, as a baptized child of God, is to pray for all people and seek to do good, not evil, to your enemies. Pray for yourself that you would learn contentment and godliness, but pray all the more for that unruly neighbor, that relative, that old friend who turned on you, anyone who causes you harm and trouble, who seeks to take your peace and joy away, and who hates you or wants nothing to do with you.
But Satan will be in the midst of it all, and the path of godliness isn’t going to be an easy one. He will try to enliven in you the spirit of criticism and condemnation. Satan will use our sins against us in the church, in the family, in the community. Churches suffer great harm when he convinces an individual to go on a comicazi mission and, because of pride or arrogance or stubbornness, take out a whole church with the incendiary of gossip or slander or unbridled anger and wrath. Jesus says, “intercede by praying and by showing mercy.”
Now, sometimes we might have to make decisions that, on the surface, seem to be unloving or unmerciful or judgmental. Take Closed Communion, for example. Knowing that receiving the body and blood of our Lord for the wrong reasons or if there is no repentance, that such brings God’s judgment as we read in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, we show our love and mercy toward others by saying, “no” or “not yet,” just as a parent shows love and mercy to a child by telling him “no” or “not yet” in dangerous or improper situations. It doesn’t matter how much the 3-year-old child screams and yells, we don’t let him play on the street or drive the car or ride his bicycle down Hwy 169 out of love. Even if he says, “You don’t love me,” parents know the truth. With the Lord’s Supper, if received without knowing what it is that the person is receiving, or if received without repentance or an acknowledgment of sin, God says that person eats and drinks judgment on himself. As God’s church, we are not in the business of serving judgment on anyone.
So, our life is in Christ, He is our identity, He is who we are. We are no longer children of this dark world who live a dog-eat-dog, first in line, beat the competition, destroy the enemy people, my way or the highway. Let the world have their destructive politicking and endless desire for power and possession, we are no longer of the world.
We are of Christ and Christ is of God, and God is a God of mercy and compassion. He is kind even to those who hate Him. Paul writes, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” It’s the whole point.
The whole point of this life we live is to learn, every day, that our heavenly Father is not like us. That because of sin and evil which corrupts us to our very DNA, our natural way of thinking and doing and speaking is so very contrary to God. We want justice, we want resolution, we want our enemies to suffer for how they mistreat us. But God wants mercy, God wants intercession, God wants His enemies to be forgiven and given the gift of peace and eternal life with Him.
“WHILE we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” you see? He didn’t wait for us to figure it out. Jesus didn’t wait for us to learn how to love Him or learn how to be kind to others before He gave His life. He gave His life for us in the midst of our most severe sinning, when we were in the dark places where we didn’t want anyone else to see or know what we were doing, there on the darkest day, the cross of our Lord beamed high and the blood of God flowed down for us all.
Jesus cannot love you any more perfectly than He does, because He loves you to the full. Jesus cannot show you anymore mercy because He is the mercy of God in flesh. Jesus cannot forgive you anymore than He does because He forgives you entirely for every sin of thought, word or deed, even those sins you don’t know you’ve committed, His forgiveness covers them all. Jesus cannot pray to His heavenly Father anymore than He does for you because He now stands as your mediator and intercedes for you 24/7, bearing upon Himself your anger and wrath and judgments and slanderous words that you’ve used against others.
Jesus has come, not to potentially forgive you, but to forgive you because this is the nature of God, to forgive, to set free, to give and give all the more, and to bring the dead to life.
Will there be a judgment on the Last Day? Yes, and every man, woman, and child will be judged, and many will be judged and condemned because of their unwillingness to repent and believe. And since they refused to abide in Christ who became a curse for them, since they rejected His gift and His mercy, they will be accursed for every sin of thought, word, and deed, and it will all be exposed, even that which was done in the dark.
But for we, the baptized who believe and stand in Christ, there is no, and never will be condemnation, because in Him we have been set free. And since we are now free and we have received the Spirit of Christ in our hearts, live your lives now according to His Spirit. Be merciful, forgive, and pray for all. Amen.
