Sermon: Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, Luke 6:27-38

February 23, 2025 
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

It goes without saying that we live in troubled and divided times. Partisan politics, cities vs. rural areas, those with college degrees vs. those without, the super-rich vs. everyone else. All of this is amplified in a social media environment where algorithms further pit us against each other such that the powers that be can more effectively divide and conquer us. All of this us compels us to see other people as friends or enemies. You’re either with us or against us. Needless to say, this dynamic is extraordinarily destructive to whatever it is that binds us together as a nation. 

But thanks be to God, Jesus Christ gives us a holy alternative to the friends vs. enemies bitterness tearing apart our country. Listen again to Jesus’ words from Luke’s gospel: “But I say to you, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” That ain’t what we’re experiencing right now….

Jesus’ teaching to love enemies is certainly judgment of those who hate and those who curse and those who abuse others. But Jesus’ words are also a judgment against us when we respond to hatred with our own hatred, and when we curse others who curse us, and when we are tempted also to abuse those who abuse us. 

Indeed, it’s human nature to want to respond in kind, treating others the way they treat us. Human nature says, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Sinful human nature turns the Golden Rule upside down: do to other as they do to you. 

But Jesus introduces a new ethic that has no room for revenge, vengeance, retaliation, or retribution. Here’s the Golden Rule in fact as Jesus taught it: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Jesus Christ gives us difficult work to do, countercultural work that goes completely against the grain of human nature. Thus, it’s virtually impossible for us on our own, without help, to love our enemies and to do good to those who hate us and to bless those who curse us and pray for those who abuse us. 

How can we resist the impulses of our human nature to become lovingly Christ-like in our treatment of others? The simple, but profound answer, is that we can love only because God first loved us (cf. 1 John 4:19). And it’s not just that Jesus Christ provides us with his good example to follow. No, it’s much more powerful than that and goes much deeper. 

Our capacity to love enemies starts in the waters of baptism. When we are baptized into Christ, we die to our sin and we are raised to new life in Christ receiving his power in us through the Holy Spirit. 

We thus live the reality that the apostle Paul describes in today’s second reading: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Corinthians 15:49)

In other words, in baptism, we come to bear the image of Christ which overpowers the claims of the man of dust, our mortal, sinful nature of the old Adam. Bearing the image of Christ in the Spirit enables us to love others as Christ loved us. And we have the image of Christ inscribed on our foreheads in baptism in the sign of the cross.

Then, too, beyond baptism, when we hear the stories of Jesus in the holy scriptures, the Holy Spirit also enters into our hearts and minds to strengthen and deepen and embolden our faith and to give us the power to live in a more loving, Christ-like way, praying for those who abuse us even as Christ forgave those who crucified him: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

Moreover, when we come to this sacramental table to receive Christ’s body and blood in the bread and the wine, the power of Christ enters us, and we become what we eat, and receive the Spirit’s power to become Christ-like to others. That is, we are fed with God’s love in the real presence of Christ to go out and feed others, even our enemies, with that same love. 

In short, only in Christ and in the power of his Holy Spirit working through word and sacraments, can we even begin to try to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us and bless those who curse us and pray for those who abuse us. 

And with the Spirit of the living Christ at work in us, with the opened eyes of faith, we begin to see how and what God sees. We begin to see higher sacred purposes through the higher powers of the Holy Spirit.

We see this dynamic of God’s greater purposes at play in the magnificent story of reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers featured in today’s first reading from Genesis. Out of jealousy, Joseph’s brothers left him for dead. But God had other plans. Joesph ended up a leader in Egypt where the brothers fled during a famine and happened to meet again their brother, a meeting which made the difference between starvation and being fed. But more importantly, it’s a story of loving reconciliation inspired by God that made possible future generations of God’s people. 

Here's how Joseph understood it as we heard in Genesis: “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharoah, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt….” And so it was that Joseph then in the power of God’s grace-full loving plan “kissed all his brothers and wept upon them…” (cf. Genesis 45:4-11, 15)

It's one of the most profound, touching stories of grace in the bible. And the power of this story enters us too with the Holy Spirit’s inspiration motivating us to love those who do us wrong, seeing God’s hand amidst and beyond current dismaying circumstances to the greater, gracious plan of God. 

And our God still has plans full of grace for us, God’s children, even now. In faith, I trust that God is up to good things on the edges of the horrific and frightening things happening in and to our country. I don’t yet have a sense of what those loving plans may be, but I suspect it has something to do with our hitting rock bottom like addicts to begin a road to healing and recovery. 

Trusting in God’s higher purposes, we are thus sent by the living Christ in the power of his Spirit and that of the Father to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, and bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us. 

And the power of Christ’s love working in us can defuse the power of those who want to remain our enemies. Our effort to do good to those who hate us diminishes the power of that hatred. A word of blessing is more powerful than a curse. And praying for those who abuse us is a way through which the Holy Spirit can begin to heal those traumatized, troubled souls who lash out at others in abusive, hurtful ways. 

Turning the other cheek is not surrendering in passivity. No. It is rather an assertive act to undermine hostility, to de-escalate conflict in the way of non-violence. To make the point, I turn to the wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr. who wrote about loving enemies. Here’s what Dr. King said: “To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you…. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.’”

Then Dr. King concludes: “Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in humankind’s quest for peace and security…. Jesus is eternally right.” (MLK, Jr. quoted in Tyson, Invitation to Christian Spirituality: An Ecumenical Anthology, p. 430)

May this enduring, powerful, long-suffering love of God in Christ be evident in all that we say and do here at Faith-La Fe Evangelical Lutheran Church. 

And may that love of Christ working in us help to heal our broken nation and world, making friends with those who insist on having enemies. God in Christ help us. God in Christ save us. Amen.