Ridiculous Generosity

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Let us pray.

Prepare our hearts, O God, to hear your Word and obey your will. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Luke 6:27–38 NIV

“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 mistreat 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. “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. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

L: This is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ!

P: Praise to you, O Christ!

Context of the Text

Our text this morning comes near the beginning of the Sermon on the Plain. Many of us are probably familiar with the more famous Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 5-7, but Luke has a similar collection of Jesus’ teachings given not on a mountain, but on some sort of flat spot. Hence the name, the Sermon on the Plain.

Last week, we saw the revolutionary nature of this sermon as Jesus not only pronounced blessings on the poor and hungry and mourning, but also cursed the rich, well fed, and those laughing.

In Luke, we see perhaps more clearly than in any other gospel the profoundly political, economic and world view shattering vision of life Jesus says his kingdom will bring. The whole way we view the world is being flipped on its head. Not only are those on the bottom of society going to be lifted up, but those on top are going to be brought low.

This is what God is going to do on the day when Christ returns and sets all things right, but we are right to wonder, what should we be doing right now to prepare for and to anticipate that coming day?

Jesus has a really simple answer in our text today: be ridiculously, irrationally, prodigiously generous.

Our Generosity

Jesus identifies three different groups of people with whom we should be generous.

Enemies

First, we are to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless people who curse us, and pray for those who mistreat us — even those who violently assault or deeply offend us. There was almost nothing more offensive than to slap someone on the cheek. It conveyed disdain and clearly communicated you were less than the other person.

Now just imagine for a moment what the world would be like if everyone actually lived this way. I know living this way seems entirely impractical, but imagine for just a moment a world where nations tried to outdo one another in loving their enemies. War in Ukraine would be unimaginable. Ukraine and Russia would be spending their time looking for way to help the other thrive. Russia wouldn’t feel threatened by the EU or a growing NATO, but would welcome even more love and support from an expanding Western Europe. Oppression of the Uighurs in China wouldn’t even be a thought because China would be focused on how to welcome and cause the Uighur culture and people to thrive and they would be trying to be the biggest blessing to China they could be. Democrats and Republicans would each be focused on how to help the other achieve their goals, wanting to compromise and find common ground, and see the whole country prosper.

Of course, we know this is not the way the world works. Nations spend more money building weapons and training soldiers to defend themselves than investing in helping poor countries grow and develop. Politicians are rewarded for fighting for power, not finding common ground. As just one simple example, the US spent 29 times more on our military in 2020 than we did on helping poorer countries become more economically viable. Our bias is towards conflict and winners and losers rather than loving our enemies.

Now, I know some of us may be struggling with thinking about nations this way because it is just plain crazy. Nations don’t act that way and never will. But I want us as much as possible to resist the temptation to make this just a person command to love our enemies. Jesus is talking about how people in his kingdom live. If every individual lives this way and Jesus is the king and he lives this way then this is the way his nation will live both individually and collectively. The kingdom of God is nothing like the kingdoms of this world.

We are going to focus our attention on caring for the less fortunate in just a moment, but I do want to push us to think a little about what it would look like for us to love our personal enemies, too. While we are not living as an occupied nation as Jesus disciples were. They could see the soldiers of their enemies every where they looked. But, we do live in a world that is quick to draw battle lines and divide people up into us versus them, good guys and bad guys.

So, what would it look like for you to be the kind of person who can disagree with people and still be friends. What if we were the kind of people who did not escalate disagreements into battles for the soul of a nation or issues of heresy and being saved?

What if we were the ones in conversations who could say, “That’s a good point. I’ll have to think about that some more.” Or, “I think you are wrong, but I know your intentions are good.” Rather than casting out and condemning those with other views as somehow being bad or evil or lacking in moral character in some way?

I wonder how our world would be different if Christians led the way in having charity and grace for the opinions and experiences of others.

Less Fortunate

Second, in Jesus kingdom, his people will be generous with those who are less fortunate.

There is some debate about the situation Jesus is trying to address in the next line about someone taking your coat. It could be he is speaking to soldiers or a creditor taking your coat by force and then giving them your shirt, which would have been your underwear too could be seen as a nonviolent protest of their abuse. But given nothing else in this passage points to the idea of non-violent resistance that seems a less than ideal interpretation to me.

For those who know the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew well, the context of this line is different and then Jesus does seem to be teaching some form of nonviolent resistance.

But in Luke, I think it is best to put this line together with the command to give to anyone who asks you and to do to others as they would do to you. Jesus seems to be pointing to a default perspective of compassion toward those in need or those who are less fortunate.

It’s is hard to imagine what it would mean to give your one set of clothes away in a world where many people have closets and dressers full of clothes and every year we buy more clothes to stay in fashion and give our old clothes away. Almost all of us here could clothe entire families and still have clothes left over for ourselves.

But imagine if we took this attitude to heart that all we have can be given to those with less. To do to others what we would want done to us. What would you want people to do for you if you were homeless? I would want them to let me sleep in their warm house!

For the Jewish people, they believed the land of Israel was God’s land entrusted to them to live out God’s values for the world to see. And so, when God told them to leave the edge of their field to the poor, they did so because they knew it was really God’s land to begin with. When God said to welcome the foreigner and stranger in the land, they did because it was God’s choice who got to live on his land. And so. They saw everything as belonging first to God and only entrusted to them to use as God would use it.

What if we saw our possessions that way? In Kent and Ottawa County roughly 9,000 people experienced homeless for at least part of 2020. What if every Christian in our community was committed to make sure everyone had affordable and accessible housing so no one was homeless. What if we refused to build bigger homes or build second homes or remodel our homes or add on to our homes until we had ensured every homeless person had a place to live? Not just sleep for a night, but a place to call their home.

I know some people are homeless or poor because of their own foolish choices. But it also true many people are poor or homeless because they have been dealt a rough hand in life. They may have been born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Or born into a home where they suffered malnutrition or whose parents were not able to help them in school or give them a stable home. Maybe there experienced abuse. Maybe their family went through a divorce or some other emotional traumas in a key developmental time of life and it messed them up. Or maybe they struggle with bipolar disorder or have a chronic health issue that keeps them from supporting themselves well. There could be thousands of reasons someone struggles to keep life together having nothing to do with moral failings or lack of effort. Sometimes life is just hard.

What if Christians were known as the ones who led with compassion, seeing the struggles of others and then responded as they would want to be treated if they had the same struggles.

Those Not Like Us or Indifferent to Us

And then finally, Jesus turns to people who are indifferent or unknown to us. They are not enemies. They are not out to get us. We just don’t know them very well or they us. They may not look like us or think like us. What if we were generous in caring for everyone? Everywhere?

Communal Generosity

In the world, roughly 2.4 billion of the almost 8 billion people claim to be Christian. Imagine how our world would be different if Christians lived this way. And here we need to be careful in our reading. This is not an individual command, but a communal one. Who could possibly restructure their life to live this way without a whole group of people joining in that effort, helping figure out how to make these changes, and holding each other accountable?

This is not a call to individual generosity, but to become a ridiculously generous community. We know this because Jesus doesn’t say that if we live this way we will be a child of God, but children of God. The “you” all the way through is plural. This is a call for a generous church to train up a generous community.

The Ridiculous Generosity of God

Tim Keller makes an important point as he reflects on this passage abut our motivation for this generosity. We should not be generous in order to earn the love of God or to please God, but because we are children of God. The english translation is really hard, but I think important. The idea is that by being generous we are demonstrating that we are already children of God because we are acting like God. We look like our Father in heaven when we are generous toward others.

Whose generosity is our motivation to be generous ourselves.

Think about it for a moment, as Paul tells us, while we were enemies of God, actively opposed to the will of God, God gave up the most precious thing imaginable: himself. he willingly set aside all the glory and power of heaven to become human and ultimately die on the cross so that people who had rejected God, opposed his will, damaged his good creation could be reconciled with God and be made his children. While we were enemies, Christ died for us.

Of course, it is not just that we were enemies of God, we were also slaves to sin. We were unable to free ourselves from the power of sin in our lives. We were captive. Rather than rejecting us, God had compassion on us and paid the ransom to set us free from the power of sin and make us alive to the power of God and his righteousness again.

We were not just enemies of God or slaves to sin, we were also strangers to God, Over and over in scripture, we do not see people desperately seeking to know God, but God reaching out to be known by people. It is God who comes to Abraham. God who meets Jacob in a dream. God who calls Moses from the burning bush. God who speaks through his prophets. And God who takes on human flesh so that we might come to know him and his love.

When we reflect on all God has done for us, thinking about his suffering and our sin, considering all the ways we have been trapped in our sin and his willingness to give everything up to reach you and me, there is only one proper response: to be as generous with others as our God has been to us.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. amen.