According to St. Paul, we should “have that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5). In today’s Gospel according to St. Luke, our Lord manifests his mind to us, and asks us to imitate it. Love your enemies, he says, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you (6:27). Through all this list of commandments, Jesus is painting for us a self portrait, and indeed sketching out for us his own autobiography.
Love your enemies, says Jesus. He did this when as God he stepped down from heaven, to enter the world of men, the world of sin. St. Paul insists that all of us, because of our sin, were enemies of God (Rm 5:9). As such, we were for Paul “children of wrath” - or as Knox translates: we had “God’s displeasure for our birthright” (Eph 2:3). But, “because of the great love with which he loved us” (Eph 2:4), God in Christ did good to us who hated him, blessed us who had cursed him, prayed for us who treated him badly. According to St. John’s Prologue, Jesus was the light, who entered our world of darkness. He did not do this to leave us as we were, but to change us. He came among us, not just to reveal himself to us, but to make us like himself, in order that we might have life: his own life; new life, better life, risen life, divine life. Coming into our world, then, Christ bore with him the blessings of heaven. In his own Person he implanted or established heaven here on earth, with all its savour, and atmosphere, and fragrance, and delight: and he invited us to enter it. We find it all set forth here, in this Sermon of Jesus given on the Plain, according to St. Luke. Jesus tells us here some of the characteristics of heaven: invincible love; goodness so strong that it cannot be deflected or compromised; generosity beyond measure: apparently even beyond reason. Giving, giving, giving. No taking. No anger, no resentment, no enmity, no bitterness, no sadness, no self pity.
Let all this be put to the most extreme test possible. Let the one who teaches these things be hated, derided, slapped and punched on the cheek, stripped naked, mocked, judged, condemned. Finally, let him be crucified, and killed. And then: let him rejoice in his victory, and in the promised reward. Let him receive all authority in heaven and on earth. Let him receive a Name which is above all names. Let him be given a new title, or many new titles: King and Lord and Christ; the first born from the dead; Alpha and Omega, the Almighty. And let him rejoice in the fruit and trophy of his victory: a world re-made; a people redeemed; salvation unleashed.
There is a secular version of all this, but it doesn’t work. The attempt has been made, is still being made, to keep the beauty of this teaching while abandoning the claim of Jesus to divine Sonship. Some people, actually not a few, want to remove, or at least reduce God’s presence from today’s Gospel, because for them it’s an embarrassment. So they reinterpret the words of Jesus simply as a call to universal brotherhood, in a world of peace, harmony and love. But this attempt always crumbles away into dust. It takes no account of the reality of the human condition. It presumes a degree of self-denying altruism that can have no rational motivation. It ignores the power of sin. So what sounds at first like noble idealism is soon exposed as either madness or insincerity. In either case it’s definitely dangerous.
Whereas: taking the words of Jesus on their own terms, and in their obvious sense, without addition or subtraction, what we encounter is perfect, supreme wisdom; a blue-print for holiness and happiness; an exposition of divinely revealed law. We listen to every word of today’s Gospel with great care and attention, because in all of it we find life, and truth, and blessing.
Unlike our secularist friends, we watch Jesus very closely, as he speaks. We notice that all he says comes directly out of his relationship with his Father, and with the Holy Spirit. We note too that nobody else ever spoke like this in human history, because no one else ever had the authority to do so. But Jesus does have that authority, because of who he is. He is God’s eternal Son, and he has the power to underwrite his message. Those, then, who are united with him, and who follow his way, will always be able to rely on divine grace, and divine Providence. In addition: they can trust his promise of abundant reward, because he is always faithful.
Sam Gamgee remarked once to Frodo that those who are in stories don’t at the time know what the ending is going to be. So in the midst of our life we can’t immediately see the promised reward, or the happy ending. But we do pick up all sorts of hints, or echoes of it, on our way. Good things happen to us, all unexpectedly. We encounter good people who warm our hearts. Those we thought thoroughly bad turn out to be not nearly so bad as we thought. We are touched and lifted up in moments of prayer. We gain life-enhancing insights from our reading or our listening. We have moments when we know without question that we are loved, or forgiven, or redeemed, or renewed.
Already then we understand that there is no greater blessing possible in this life than to be conformed to Christ Jesus our Lord. When he speaks to us of loving our enemies, we don’t think of this as an externally imposed command, or a new system of moral imperatives. Rather, it’s simply a description of how the world looks for those who are in Christ.
Love your enemies, he says. This is not impossible, nor is it foolish. Those who turn aside from Christ’s command here land up as big-time losers. They may think they are looking well after Number One, but in truth they are doing the opposite. Whereas: those who follow this advice, who live it, who grow in it, who ever contemplate its source - for them there is superabundant reward. Joy and happiness beyond our imagination, and forever: poured out, pressed down, shaken together and running over.