By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
February 23, 2025
Click here to Join our Meeting for Worship
Luke 6:27–38 (ESV)
27 “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. 31 And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. 32 “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36 Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. 37 “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
Today there is a great deal of discussion about what it means to be a Christian. As people debate various cultural positions they invoke the name of Christ in their defense. I have listened to man of these debates, I have sadly engaged in some of these debates. I engage in these discussions and sometimes I have to check myself. I have to ask myself if I am being representing truly representing the life and lifestyle of Jesus.
This is why I enjoy the practice of contemplative prayer. To be able to sit with scripture, to study scripture, and then to sit with those words in prayer and let them speak deeply. To interact with the words, and to imagine I am there listening along side the disciples of old.
Our reading today comes from the most famous of Jesus’s teachings, the Sermon on the Mount. I want us to imagine the scene for a moment. Prior to this had been traveling around Galilee. He would go to the synagogues along with the rest of the community, and while he was there he would worship, teach, and talk with the others. We are told that this was his custom, meaning for Jesus worship was important. Worship in the fullest sense of the word. Not merely singing songs of praise, but also reading scripture together, and discussing it. But the synagogue was more than what we see as church today. In that culture the synagogue was the central part of the community. It was the library, the hall of records, the school, the place you would go to seek justice in civil matters, and it was the place of worship. Jesus made it his custom to go to the heart of the community, he got involved, and shared insight.
He traveled throughout Galilee, or the northern region of Israel, and he would deeply interact with the community. And while he was there in worship, or listening to the concerns of that community, he would come into contact with various people. Shortly after he left his home town Nazareth, which we discussed a few weeks ago. He returned to Capernaum where a man with an unclean spirit cried out in a loud voice, “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy one of God.” This was in the synagogue, the place of worship, the center of their society. Jesus rebuked the man saying, “Be silent and come out of him.” That man was thrown to the ground by the demon, and left the man. And the people were amazed.
He then left the synagogue and entered the home of his friend Simon. His mother-in-law was sick with a high fever and they made an appeal to Jesus concerning her. And Jesus rebuked the fever and it too left her. And she rose and began to serve them. When the people heard of this the whole community began to come to Simon’s house, and Jesus brought relief to many, until the sun set.
The next morning Jesus went out to desolate place. He went out alone, away from the chaos and busyness of life, and in that place of stillness he prayed. While he was away in that isolated place, the people sought him. They earnestly looked for him, wanting to keep him in their town because he amazed them. But Jesus did not stay, instead he said, “I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other towns as well.” And he went and taught in the synagogues of Judea.
Right away we see the rhythm of Jesus’s life: worship, prayer, and service. Loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit and living God’s love with others. He continued to work, he continued to amaze people. He cleansed a leper, restoring the marginalized to society. He provided a blue collar family of fishermen an astonishing catch of fish. And people began to leave the life they knew to follow Jesus and learn his way of life. This group had been common laborers, government officials working at a toll booth, and nationalistic fanatics. They were centered in the community of Capernaum along the shores of the sea of Galilee, because that is where Simon lived, with whom Jesus was living at the time.
Then one day, according to Luke, Jesus came down from the mount, we are not told in Luke where he came from or what he was doing, but he came down to them. It is likely, knowing the rhythm of life that Jesus kept, Luke was implying that Jesus had been in an isolated place in prayer. And as he was returning to the shore to help his disciples with their work, he saw the crowd gathered. They had come to hear him, to be healed, to find ease for their troubled spirit.
They came. And Jesus spoke these words of blessing and woe. He spoke these words of challenge and of hope. And in this place, at this time shortly after he says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”
I want us to imagine the scene. Who was there? Who would have come to meet with Jesus?
He continued, “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, fo you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when al people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.”
Again who was there? I want us to really consider this. These are words being spoken to a divided community. The rich the poor, the hungry and the gluttons. I cannot help but imagine that these are the words our world needs to hear today.
This sets the scene. All the people that received the words of blessing and woe are with this crowd. People that fit into those categories are in his own band of disciples. They are all squirming just bit, just like we do when we get trapped in one of the debates that so often occur today. They are joyful or upset. Blessed and woe.
Then Jesus hits them with something hard. “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
Jesus had just acknowledged the division within their society. There are those that have everything and those that have nothing. We do not have to imagine very hard what that image might look like because we interact with it every day. It is being played our on our streaming devices and TV’s. And right after he acknowledges these divisions and the struggle within a society that cause, he tells them, “Love your enemies.”
There are four commands om that first verse, Love, do, bless, and pray. As I was studying this week I learned that this is the first time Luke used the word agape, in his gospel. This word we associate with the type of love that God has for us. It is benevolence or good will. It is a self sacrificing type of love that does is given without merit or reason. In Greek culture this type of love was mysterious, because there was no reason or distinction for it. We understand friendship. We enjoy passion. But agape love, we struggle with. How do we love for no reason? Or with no expectation? We demand a reason to love.
This is why it hits so hard. Jesus is telling us to be benevolent, and gracious to people that do not deserve it. And he twists the shot to our guts just a bit more. Agape your enemies. Love, without limit the very people that absolutely do not deserve it.
This took everyone’s breath away for a moment. This teaching is something unique to Jesus. There are no parallels in the teachings of the Old Testament, at least directly, and it is absent in the moralistic teachings of western philosophy. Both encourage us to love those that are deserving of our love, to treat people the way they treat you. If someone cuts you off in traffic, the moralist would say it is perfectly acceptable for you to lay on your horn and present gestures for them to see in their mirror. You are justified because they wronged you. To the moralist it is perfectly acceptable for you to demand restitution for injury or theft. The moralist, or the just of this world demand from our enemies payment of the wrong done to us, and blessing to the those that do good.
This is the kingdom of men, but that is not so in the kingdom of God. Love your enemies. Do good for those that hate you, or wrong you. Bless those that speak ill toward you. And pray for those that do violence against you.
Jesus then goes on to tell us how to do this. “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and the one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either.”
We often look at these words and we misunderstand what Jesus is saying. We see it as backing down, being quiet in the face of injustice because what can I do? This is often because the translations we have often do not allow for the fullness of meaning. If someone strikes you on the cheek for example. It is a perfectly fine translation, but there is a wide range that these words can express. It can be a slap of dishonor. Or it can also mean an uppercut to the jaw. I am guessing the translators used the milder terms because most of us do not face a fist fight every day. But that is also a valid translation. Jesus says in essence, if someone finds what you say or what you stand for so offensive that they are willing to sucker punch you, you get right back up and stand firm. That is what offering the other also means. You are not backing down, you do not allow injustice to occur around you, but you stand and take the blows.
But we do not strike back. Instead we pray for those that would use violence to maintain injustice toward another. We bless those that curse us. We do good, or provide acts of kindness to those that hate our very existence. And we love our enemy.
“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.”
This is Jesus challenging the moralist philosophies of his day. You can read the teachings of the Greeks and find great teachings to apply to your life. You can look in the writings of the eastern religions and find something similar. Treat people the way they treat you. Do good and good comes back to you. It is karma. Jesus looks at the people around him and he says you are all claiming faith, you are claiming to be children of God yet your life and lifestyle is no different than the people you are claiming your enemies. This is what sinner means in this case, they are the people outside of the faith of the Hebrews, the gentiles who strive to live the moral life.
We cannot be good in the world’s eyes and expect people to see something different in us. We have to be more. Our world is filled with morally good people. There are countless people in Russia, China, India, America, Africa, and Europe that are morally decent people. But that does not make them fit for the kingdom of God. Why?
Mao in China did good to the people that did good to him. Stalin was good to the people that were good to him. Even Adolf was a benefactor to those that were good to him. Seemingly good even moral people can do terrible things. Even our ancestors in the name of their goodness did conducted themselves in vile ways toward people and nations that did not agree with them.
Goodness or morality is not enough. Just following the rules of our land is not good enough. Not causing a ripple is not good enough. James Edwards says this in the Pillar New Testament Commentary:
The twentieth century was powerfully altered, however, by courageous observance of this essential teaching. Gandhi’s radical response to injustice, which he inherited from Tolstoy and bequeathed to Martin Luther King Jr., was to “become naked,” i.e., put himself in a defenseless posture [against] powerful aggressors in order to shame them into repentance by the evil in their hearts. The result of Gandhi’s unconventional behavior was the liberation of India from British rule; and the result of similar behavior on the part of King, massive gains of civil rights for African Americans in the United States. The peaceful demonstrations that issued from the Friedensdekade—a decade-long prayer for peace in Protestant churches in former East Germany—broke ground not only for the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, but for the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. The Truth and Reconciliation movement played the critical role in dismantling apartheid in South Africa and in sparing the nation a bloodbath of racial revenge. In each instance powerful and systemic structures of oppression were undermined by nonreciprocal and nonviolent practices that were informed by and modeled on the essential teaching on love articulated in [Luke] 6:27–30.1
It is not enough to be good. We need to love, do , bless, and pray. We need to be merciful, even as our Father in heaven is merciful.
We have a great deal of troubles in our world today. Leaders of nations are upset because other nations seemingly do not repay the goodness shown to them. Nations within our world invade another nations because other nations do not seemingly repay the goodness shown to them. Corporations are upset that laborers are not happy with wages and wonder why they cannot find employees willing to accept the goodness they seemingly give. Church leaders, politicians, teachers, business owners none of us are immune from these feelings. We feel justified in our discontent because we have not been repaid so we need to strike.
Yes, we need to stand up for injustice. Yes, we need to encourage people and nations to treat others with dignity. But how are we doing this? In the kingdoms of the world, the poor will displace the rich. And suddenly the once poor are the new rich, and they begin to oppress the ones who once oppressed them. And the cycle continues from age to age, generation to generation. When does it stop?
It stops, when we listen to the words of Jesus. When we Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you. It stops when one knocks our teeth in and instead of backing down we stand up for justice while offering them our coat and our undershirts instead. It stops when we decide to do, when we decide to live in the life and lifestyle shown to us by Jesus. And accepting the mercy and grace offered by his life, death and resurrection. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. That is the way of Christ. And anything less than that is the way of the world.
1 Edwards, James R. The Gospel according to Luke. Edited by D. A. Carson, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos, 2015, p. 199.
To Donate to Willow Creek Friends Church Click here:
To donate directly to Pastor Warner click here:
Previous Messages:
Ransomed to Love
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 19, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:17–23 (ESV) 17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time…
Born Again to a Living Hope
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 12, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili 1 Peter 1:3–9 (ESV) 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born…
Broken Dreams Restored
By Jared Warner Willow Creek Friends Church April 05, 2026 Click here to join our Meeting for Worship Click to read in Swahili Bofya kusoma kwa Kiswahili John 20:1–18 (ESV) 1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the…
Discover more from Jwquaker's Blog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Discussion
No comments yet.