To You That Listen
Luke 6:27-38
February 20, 2022
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://youtu.be/ZaxD8Z57G7A
Last week, we heard the first part of this extended teaching called the Sermon on the Plain. We heard Jesus bless the poor and warn the rich and single out for a special blessing those who would suffer persecution for following him. Today, the teaching continues, but now Jesus addresses “you who will listen.”
To those who will listen, Jesus says “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” This is one of Jesus’ hardest teachings. No doubt about it.
To you that listen today, I offer two stories.
The first one comes from the Rev. Fred Craddock. Dr. Craddock was a world-renowned preacher. He was a professor of preaching from 1979-1994 at Chandler School of Theology in Atlanta. I had the good fortune of hearing him lecture when he came to my seminary shortly before his retirement. When he retired from being a professor, he planted a church in an area of great poverty in northern Georgia.
Cherry Log Christian Church was formed on Easter Sunday, 1997. Everyone seemed to have a good time that day, Craddock said, except one man. That man had an objection to register. Craddock asked him what it was and he said, “The Scripture you read. That was a bad choice.”
Craddock said, “Well, those were the words of Jesus.”
And the man said, “Well, there are a lot of words in the Bible that are out of keeping with the spirit of our time. It’s just out of touch. What people expect of the church now-a-days is not a lot of talk about cross-bearing and loving enemies, they want to come to church to feel better, be part of a group that will help them be successful. In a case or two, maybe some therapy, but otherwise, we get together to mutually enjoy each other, so knock off the ‘ought’ and ‘must’ and ‘should.”
Craddock said, “Why?’
The man said, “It sets the bar too high. If you keep doing it, you’ll never have a church. . .. Don’t be out of touch with the spirit of the time.”[1]
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.”
This is incredibly hard work. Those of us who read Stride Toward Freedom last month were reminded of the enormous, sustained discipline it took for the black residents of Montgomery to continue to love their enemies. That love was evidenced in the way they framed the issue. The goal was never to humiliate or defeat white people (their identified enemy), but to defeat the unjust practices in the bus system. It was demonstrated when there was no retaliation for the bombings of several leader’s homes, and again, when the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s segregation on buses was unconstitutional. When they had won, they did not gloat. Instead, they lovingly prepared to resume riding the buses with care to extend courtesy to white passengers and drivers, the courtesy that had never been extended to them.
“Love your enemies” is probably Jesus’ hardest teaching. It is important that we understand what Jesus is actually saying. He is not suggesting that people should overlook the harm done by our enemies and pretend that it doesn’t matter in the name of just loving them. His examples of turning the other cheek and walking the second mile – these are actions which highlight the insult and injury, the lack of human dignity being inflicted upon the oppressed person. If you treat someone who is your enemy like that, if you hold up a mirror to them, they might not like what they see and they may take it out on you even more. This is a risky, radical kind of love.
It is not the kind of love that can be exercised by someone who is being abused and cannot escape. Turning the other cheek has been used to justify putting up with violence in the name of love. That is absolutely not what Jesus means here. If that is something you question, please, please talk with me about it.
We have one word for love in English. We might love pizza or a pet or a spouse or a child or a best friend. The same word ‘love’ is used to describe the bond with chocolate cake and a life partner. Greek, on the other hand, has at least three words for love. One is eros, which has come to mean erotic or romantic love. When Jesus says, “love your enemies”, he does not say “seduce your enemies; start up a romantic relationship with them”.
Another love is philia, like the city Philadelphia. It means affection between personal friends. It is a love that is reciprocated. Jesus does not say “become friends with your enemies.” What he says is “agape your enemies”. Agape is sometimes called unconditional love. Agape is the overwhelming love of God in John 3:16, the love which compels God to send the Beloved One into the world.
Martin Luther King said this about agape, “Agape . . .is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart. Agape is disinterested love. It is a love in which individuals seek not their own good, but the good of their neighbors Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes.”[2]
You do not love your enemies in order to get them to stop hurting you. You do not love them to convert them into being your friends. You love them while they are hostile. You love them, Jesus says, because you are children of the Most High and God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. “Love your enemies and do good to them because that’s the way God treats enemies. God loves and does good to those who hate and curse and abuse God.”[3]
That is a high bar. Probably out of touch with the spirit of our time.
To you who will listen today, I offer a second story.
When the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, Gerrit tenZythoff was 17 years old and leading the sort of life that was common for teenage boys even then — a life filled with schoolwork and sports and good friends. And then his life began to change.
First the authorities confiscated the textbooks written by Jews. Then his Jewish teachers and classmates disappeared, the family doctor — also a Jew — died by suicide, and the local butcher who had served the family for so many years — another Jew — was beaten to death.
Gerrit’s parents had been active in the underground movement to transport Jewish people out of danger. After the occupation, his father gave specific instructions to Gerrit and his five siblings. He said, “One day you will see people whose presence you will deny. You will see faces that you shall not remember. And you will never ask a name.”
So, the tenZthoff children heard movements in the night that were never explained to them, and their parents harbored mysterious people until they could make the next leg of their journey. Some mornings they had breakfast with people who were “never there.”
Gerrit found his own ways to protest. He was a good student, but once he came home with a report card with an F in German. He was proud of himself for deliberately flunking the class. His father, a school principal, said “Son, it was not always like this in Germany, not will it always be. A day will come when you have to know the language. After the Germans have lost the war, we will have to talk to them, and you will have to know the language if you want to be part of the solution.” So, he compromised and agreed to pass the class.
In 1943, when he was a university student, Gerrit refused to sign a loyalty oath to the German regime. He was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in a forced labor camp in Berlin. At twenty-years old, he was tortured in an attempt to get the names of people in his village who were sheltering Jewish people. Gerrit adamantly refused. The injuries he sustained to his bones, spinal cord, and nervous system would plague him for life.
Then, in 1945, an Allied bombing raid scored a direct hit on the factory where he was imprisoned. Gerrit and another Dutch student escaped, but they had to make their way 500 miles to home. They were dressed in shabby clothes, had no real shoes, no identification papers and no ration coupons. Because of his father’s long-ago insistence, Gerrit spoke fluent German. That probably saved his life when a soldier engaged him in conversation on a train.
When he crossed the border into Holland, his home country was still occupied and dangerous. In fact, the Nazis knew of his disappearance from Berlin and had already been to his family home looking for him. He spent the next two years in hiding on a farm owned by a family friend.
When the war was over, Gerrit finally returned home. He had endured torture, deprivation, confinement and taken great risks. This was in part because of the example set by his parents. But his suffering had been at the hands of the Nazi’s. They had more than earned the label of enemy.
When he finally made it to his parent’s house, he found two children he did not know. Names of guests were no longer a secret, so he asked who they were. When he heard the names, he said “What! These are Nazis!” His parents said that yes, their parents had been Nazis. Gerrit said “Then I don’t want to be under the same roof with them.” He stormed out, slamming the back door as he went.
It was his mother who followed him and said, “Gerrit, I love you very much but you’re wrong. They are children of Nazis. But, we are Christians and we will stand with those who suffer.”
Years later, Gerrit became a pastor and then a professor. He taught in the United States at Reformed Church seminaries, including New Brunswick in New Jersey. He said, “My father’s and mother’s actions really, literally saved me from a life of bitterness, resentment and hatred.”[4]
To those who will listen, Jesus says “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. . .
Because you are children of the Most High who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
[1] Fred B. Craddock, “On Being Gracious” The Collected Sermons of Fred B. Craddock, (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011), p. 155-156.
[2] Martin Luther King, Jr. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, New York: Harper and Row, 1958) p. 93
[3] The Rev. Nathan Nettleton in his sermon “Becoming Children of the Most High” https://southyarrabaptist.church/sermons/children-of-the-most-high/
[4] Most of this information comes from Southwest Missouri State University, where Gerrit tenZthoff founded the Department of Religious Studies in 1969 https://www.missouristate.edu/assets/relst/The_Tablet_Summer_2001_GerrittenZythoff.pdf