Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany | 23 February 2025 | Luke 6:27-38 | Paul Bieber |

Luke 6:27-38 Revised Standard Version

²⁷ Jesus said, “I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹ To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from him who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰ Give to every one who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. ³¹ And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

³² “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³ And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴ And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵ But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. ³⁶ Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

³⁷ “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸ give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

also

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42

I Corinthians 15.35-38, 42-50

LOVE WITHOUT LIMIT

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

Just as in the more well-known Sermon on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel, so here in his Sermon on the Plain, Jesus moves immediately from the paradoxical beatitudes—blessing the poor, the hungry, mourners, and the reviled and excluded—to the equally counterintuitive ethics of the kingdom. Jesus preaches that the kingdom is drawing near and calls for repentance. Now, in the heart of his ethical teaching, Jesus shows us what a repentant life in the “kingdom drawing near” looks like. The key to his teaching is perfection in love. The generosity Jesus teaches is an imitation of God himself.

Love your enemies; turn the other cheek; give to everyone who asks, even the shirt off your back—these are counsels of perfection. There is in Jesus’ teaching one concession to the natural law of self-love: the “golden rule”: as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. All too often we twist that maxim into something like, as you fear that others might do to you, do so to them first. Or, as others have done to harm you, do so to them last.

That’s the way the climax of the story of Joseph and his brothers begins. He recognizes them as the ones who sold him into slavery and, having them in his power, he plays cat-and-mouse with them with manipulation, false accusation, and the threat of slavery—the very thing they had done to him. But he repents of that as he comes to recognize that the course of his life has been a paradoxical manifestation of God’s grace to sinners. Joseph looks back on his life and sees the hand of God in his suffering under false accusations, imprisonment, being forgotten by one he had befriended.

So he comes to the scene recounted in our First Reading today, as he reveals himself to his brothers: “I am Joseph”; “I am your brother, Joseph.” And now he becomes a generous giver, merciful as God is merciful, loving without limit or recrimination. Jesus asks, “if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?” But this takes us beyond the realm of the golden rule to the realm of grace. Indeed, the word in St. Luke’s original Greek is cháris, grace. The ethics of the kingdom are the ethics of grace.

Well and good, preacher. But the golden rule is difficult enough, even with its concession to my own self-love as the standard for my action toward others. How can I go beyond the reality of this world to the kingdom of grace and its counsels of perfection? I am tempted to despair.

Indeed. Jesus does contrast his ethic with ‘what sinners (like us) do.’ But just as last week’s beatitudes were not exhortations to become poor, hungry weepers, reviled and excluded, but words of grace to those who find themselves in that status in this world, so Jesus’ ethic is not an exhortation to us sinners to pull ourselves up by our ethical bootstraps and make ourselves like God.

So then how can we come to the realm of grace? Only by grace. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, that we might have a new life in him. Receiving mercy, we are equipped to show mercy. Who gives and forgives first? God. Who loves his enemies? Jesus, on the cross, praying for forgiveness for those who crucify him. Only God’s love can make us lovely. Only God’s mercy can make us merciful. The ethical ideal Jesus sets before us is only possible to the extent the Holy Spirit dwells in us.

Put another way: to the extent that we who bear the image of the first Adam, broken and sinful and destined to return to the dust, come in Holy Baptism to bear the image of the second Adam, who came from heaven so that our dishonor and weakness might be raised in the power of the Spirit. That will happen, ultimately, in the resurrection of the dead, when our bodies catch up with our Baptism.

But it begins to happen even now, while we are in the “physical body,” as our translation has it—“physical body ” is a bad translation for sōma psychikós, a body that is the instrument of the psyche. The first Adam is the source and model of the natural psychic life, which cannot inherit the kingdom. Now, in this broken world, the psyche is turned in on itself; the unredeemed part of humanity cannot inherit the kingdom.

But the crucified and risen Christ, the new Adam, is the source and model of spiritual life. The resurrection body is a sōma pneumatikós, not the instrument of the psyche, but of the Spirit. Even now the baptized share the life of the risen Lord by the action of the indwelling Spirit. As we live the baptized life, we are being transformed ever more into his image: not fretting, not vexed, not angry with others who live by self-love, ordinary saints living an alternative reality—children of God imitating God the giver.

St. John Chrysostom says that to bear either of these images is not so much a matter of our nature as such, as of our choices and behavior. “Flesh and blood” cannot inherit the kingdom; that is, disobedience and willful evil deeds cannot. But in the resurrection, St. Augustine adds, we will no longer have to bear with ourselves as enemies within. This is not our accomplishment, but of God’s love without limit in Jesus Christ, the love that makes us lovely—and loving.

In a week and a half we will hear again the Lenten call to repentance, to turn from lives turned in on ourselves, loving our own appetites, and toward God’s undeserved and unconditional love without limit. Even now in this world we are called to dwell in the realm of grace. The Eucharistic meal is the sacrament of this grace. Even if our brother means to do us evil, even if we have done evil to our brother, God is merciful and loves us. All our meals and all our living are sacraments of the grace to sinners God has manifested in our lives. A heart brimming with gratitude for grace is open to love without limit.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber, STS

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net

All Saints Lutheran Church

San Diego, California, USA