Love your enemies

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany: Genesis 45:3-11, 15; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50; Luke 6:27-38; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42

The thing about the lectionary is that you don’t get to choose your favorite passages, or the ones you need at the moment. You have to deal with scripture, and sometimes it hits in difficult places. Today is one of those days. When I first looked at the lessons, my first reaction was a desire to abandon the readings.

We start with Joseph revealing himself to his brothers: they are suffering from the famine, have heard that there is grain in Egypt, and gone to seek it. Now they discover that the man at the head of the operation is their brother Joseph, who they first tried to kill, and then sold in to slavery. Their first response is silence — “they were dismayed”. What is Joseph going to do to them? Is he going to punish them for what they did to him? You can’t really blame them. But instead Joseph not only tells them that the famine will continue, but invites them all to return to Egypt with his father and all their flocks so that they “will not come to poverty”.

Joseph forgives his brothers, and offers his understanding of what has happened: his being sold into Egypt was God’s will, because his ability to understand pharaoh’s dream would protect many people from famine. It was God’s will that he be sold as a slave. I think this is messed up theology. I don’t think God wants people sold into slavery, or bad things to happen them. But when bad things do happen, God uses us in ways we can never predict. Joseph’s brothers behaved badly, and put their brother in grave danger. But Joseph’s talents are recognized in Egypt, and he has done good. So he forgives his brothers, kisses them, weeps, and they talk.

Joseph has made good things happen after bad things were done to him. In today’s reading from the gospel, Jesus makes this a principle. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Really? We hear that NOW? When government workers are losing their jobs, our government is threatening our nearest neighbors and allies, and apparently people who don’t understand what the government does are taking a sledgehammer to the whole thing. I’m supposed to love the people doing this? Do good to people who have harmed people I care about? What is this kind of crazy? Jesus goes further: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also”.

This is a huge challenge, and for me it is both central to Jesus’ teaching and the hardest part of it. But as Jesus points out, “if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them”. It’s easy to be good to those who are good to you; it is caring for those who are not that is hard. But Jesus is clear: the rule is that you “do to others as you would have them do to you”.

Our world is different from the one Jesus lived in, so we are dealing with different challenges: we see people in different ways. It may be how you treat people in person, but it could be how you respond (or do not respond) on social media. We are also often confronted with not individuals, but groups who do harm. Sometimes it seems to be impersonal forces, but there are always people behind them.

So what do we do? Thinking about this is especially important because of the ways the admonition to love your enemy has been turned against the poor and vulnerable, insisting that they love those who harm them. Women and children abused by a spouse have been told that they are not only supposed to love, but not leave. And that, I think, is not what Jesus is saying. It is not your Christian duty to put up with abuse. When you pray for those who are harming you, it doesn’t make you BFFs, but it changes you: it reduces their power over your mind, if not your body. As we pray for them, it also reminds us to never forget that our “enemies”, the people who are doing harm, are people. Do I “love” them? That is more difficult, but if I try to treat everyone the way I want to be treated, I will be showing another way to live in the world.

As we try to do this very hard thing, it may be comforting to remember today’s psalm:

In a little while the wicked shall be no more; you shall search out their place, but they will not be there.

But the lowly shall possess the land; they will delight in abundance of peace.

But the deliverance of the righteous comes from the Lord; he is their stronghold in time of trouble.

This is a time when it is good to be reminded that Jesus tells us to love our enemies. We may not hear such love from those in power, but if our response is full of love, it will challenge those who act from cruelty, hatred or vengeance. For, as the collect reminds us, “without love whatever we do is worth nothing”.