Radical Love
Chris Bowditch
Luke: The Story of Jesus • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 17:10
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Schoolyard Outrage
Schoolyard Outrage
Working through things Jesus said with a mixture of Christian and non-Christian kids every Friday lunch time in the local state high school.
Access arranged through the local school chaplain.
We get to this bit of the bible. Love your enemies. Reaction = dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Livid. How could anyone live like that?
He wouldn’t have it. It wasn’t fair.
Fascinating response. I wonder how you respond when you hear these words of Jesus?
Outrage? Amazement or Awe at their beauty? Scared cause it’s too hard?
The Ethics of the Kingdom
The Ethics of the Kingdom
These words are part of Jesus’ sermon on the plain in Luke’s gospel.
Up to this point in the gospel, Jesus has been in conflict with the religious leaders of the day.
Luke includes this sermon by Jesus which outlines new standards of behaviour, which have to do with inward character rather than with outward observance.
And a couple of weeks ago we looked at the opening part of this passage which included a series of blessings and woes.
The final pair of blessings and woes in verses 20-26 concern the persecuted…
Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.
‘Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
And if that wasn’t hard enough now Jesus goes further. Not only rejoice and leap for joy when we suffer because we’re following Jesus actually love your enemies.
Love your enemies
Love your enemies
‘But to you who are listening I say: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you.
If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.
Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.
These are the kind of verses that we can nod along to in our heads when the idea is abstract, but they are another thing to put in practice when reality hits homes.
Imagine your mother or daughter has just been violently killed by an Islamic terrorist travelling on a bus to a Christian monastery in Egypt this week. How are Jesus words sounding to you now? Perhaps we can have some sympathy for that kid in my lunch time bible study group now?
It’s actually quite hard to put these words in to practice.
My natural inclination is in fact to wish for righteous payback. In fact some of my favourite movies of all time, Braveheart and Gladiator involve one man’s quest for violent revenge on his enemies who have killed his family.
And yet Jesus says not seek revenge, but love your enemy. In fact he goes on to say that actually living out this command to love the enemy is exactly the evidence that you understand and have been captured by what God has done for us.
‘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 are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.
And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.
But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
How is this possible? Scholar N.T Wright asks the same question:
Luke for Everyone Loving Your Enemies (Luke 6:27–38)
But are they possible? Well, yes and no. Jesus’ point was not to provide his followers with a new rule-book, a list of dos and don’ts that you could tick off one by one, and sit back satisfied at the end of a successful moral day. The point was to inculcate, and illustrate, an attitude of heart, a lightness of spirit in the face of all that the world can throw at you. And at the centre of it is the thing that motivates and gives colour to the whole: you are to be like this because that’s what God is like. God is generous to all people, generous (in the eyes of the stingy) to a fault: he provides good things for all to enjoy, the undeserving as well as the deserving. He is astonishingly merciful (anyone who knows their own heart truly, and still goes on experiencing God’s grace and love, will agree with this); how can we, his forgiven children, be any less? Only when people discover that this is the sort of God they are dealing with will they have any chance of making this way of life their own.
Jesus is simply asking us to reflect his love to the world.
For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!
You see when I conceive of myself as Mel Gibson in Braveheart or Russell Crowe in Gladiator I’ve totally missed the boat. The truth is I’m not some kind of righteous man who is better than someone else. You and me, without Jesus are described as enemies of God. When we understand that, and we realise that in-spite of that God has showered his grace and love upon us, then the command to love our enemies becomes more understandable. It is a call to reflect the love and mercy we have received from God. When we get this right, we realise that those who persecute us because of our faith are God’s enemies, just as we were, whom God desires to shower his love and grace and mercy upon, just as he has upon us.
What about Justice?
What about Justice?
US Pastor Russell Moore says, “When we forgive, whether in the wake of an enormity such as this one or in the more mundane ways we have been hurt, we are not saying vengeance is not due. We are saying that vengeance is God’s, not ours.”
This is the mindset that allows us to practice the kind of radical love Jesus is calling his followers to. We demonstrate love to our enemies in the hope that in doing so they will find the lord Jesus who has paid the price for their evil.
And in fact, there is great freedom in handing justice over to God and seeking to be people of radical love. It frees us from bitterness and hatred and allows us to move forward in love.
Radical Love in action
Radical Love in action
Jesica’s story
It’s not easy, but it is powerful when Christians live like this.
May God continue to grow in each one of us hearts of deep love and forgiveness for our enemies that all may see God’s heart of love for them.