Photo credit: Belinda Fewings, used with permission via Unsplash
When I moved to Birmingham to start practicing law, I lived in this cute little neighborhood. Just around the corner from my apartment, there was this cute little diner where I ate brunch every Saturday. They had the best Eggs Benedict, the best cheese grits, the best coconut cake. It was brunch – so you could have both cheese grits and coconut cake – and I was 25, so I could eat whatever I wanted. Every Saturday morning, I set up camp there... and grazed.
I usually settled in at a little table near the kitchen, so I got to know the folks who worked there, including the owner of the diner... let’s call her Cassie. Cassie was... brusque... abrupt... she didn’t suffer fools gladly. But I was on her good side – and I tried to stay there – because, well, the coconut cake slices were just a little bit bigger that way.
Now my friend Allyson – one of my law school buddies – she had a very different experience of that diner and its owner. And one day we were talking about it, and Allyson said, “Scott, the food is good, but Cassie, well, she’s just mean.” I jumped to Cassie’s defense, with the best Southern nuance I could muster – “Welllll, I think Cassie has a special place in her heart for the people she likes.”
Allyson.. well, I thought her head was going to explode... “Scott Clark!!! Everybody has a special place in their heart for the people they like. That’s the easy part. The challenge is having a special place in your heart for everyone else.”
The core of Jesus’ teaching, from beginning to end, is love. The core of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ is love. Jesus commands love again and again. This scripture is one of those times. We know the others.
There are, of course, levels of complexity to Jesus’ love command. But we need to break it down so that we can live it out. So I want to suggest that there are 5 basic elements to Jesus’s love commands. If you look at those core teachings – the ones we hear throughout the gospels – there are 5 central variations on the love command:
1. Love God. What is the greatest commandment? How do you find your way to life? Love God with all your heart and mind and strength.
2. Love others. And the second command is close to the first: Love your neighbor as you...
3. Love yourself. Loving others and loving yourself are all intertwined together; you can’t do one without the other. They necessarily require each other. And then there is today’s tough one:...
4. Love your enemies. It’s not enough... as Jesus and Allyson point out... to love the people who love you. That’s the easy part. You have to love the people who don’t love you. Love the folks you may not even like. The difficult folks.
Love God. Love others. Love yourself. Love your enemies –
put all that together, and it boils down to this:
5. Love everyone. No exceptions.
Love God. Love others. Love yourself. Love your enemies. Love everyone.
Repeat after me, whether you’ve wrapped your head around it or not:
Love God. Love others. Love yourself. Love your enemies. Love everyone.
This morning’s scripture comes from the part of the Gospel of Luke that’s called “The Sermon on the Plain.”[1] The Gospel of Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount – we all know that one – “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and all that. “The Sermon on the Plain” is the lesser known version in the Gospel of Luke. While Matthew envisions Jesus up on the Mount, preaching to the crowd. Luke puts Jesus on a level place – with the crowd. And Luke centers the disciples – not just the twelve – but many disciples – all the growing number of folks who have decided to follow Jesus. In the Greek, it’s literally, Jesus is speaking to “the ones who are listening.”[2] When Jesus begins to speak, he turns to his disciples, as the larger crowd listens in... as we listen in.. and he begins to teach. In Luke, it’s more like a very public training session. We could think of it as Turning the World Rightside Up 101.
Jesus starts with the Beatitudes – Luke’s version of those blessings – a little different from how Matthew tells the story. In Luke it’s “Blessed are the poor.” The poor... not the poor in spirit... the actual poor. Blessed are the poor. And, in Luke, Jesus pairs these beatitudes – these blessings – he pairs them with woes. “Blessed are the poor... but woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Blessed are you who are hungry, for you will be filled... but woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.”
Remember we’re in the Gospel of Luke – Jesus is turning the world rightside up. Remember what Mary sang in the Magnificat – God is lifting up those held down low; God is bringing down the kings from their thrones. God is turning the world rightside up. And maybe folks are getting a little revved up now – ooh, the powerful are going to get theirs.
And then, Jesus says this: But to you – the ones who are listening – I say this: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you.”
Wait. Did Jesus hear what I was thinking?
And wait – What? Huh? How?
You see Jesus is teaching and preaching nothing less than the transformation of the whole world – including us – all of our ways of living and being and doing that help create harm in the world.[3] Jesus is turning the world rightside up.
And their world is a world driven by patronage and retribution. In their world, you do good to those who do good to you, and they will do you more good. You hope. And those who do bad to you – well, when they go after you... you go after them. They lash out at you. You strike back. And hard. Love your friends, and show it. Hate your enemies, and show that too. And ever the world was so.
Into that world, starting with his disciples, Jesus says: Stop. Stop this cycle of violence and retribution. Love your enemies. Pray for those who mistreat you. It’s hard to think of a command that could be more counter-cultural. Then. Or now.
What we are seeing in our world today is an extreme version of what Jesus is warning against. What we are seeing in our world today is a worldview where everyone is becoming the enemy. And that worldview has come to power. First it was political adversaries. If you don’t think like me, you are my enemy. But then, it turned on political friends – on those who would not bend to the party line, or to the party leader. And now, we see our nation turning even on the civil servants who comprise the government. A government purging every bit of itself that it sees as enemy. It is as if the nation is looking at its own body and ripping chunks out. The stranger in our midst... an enemy and an existential threat. And as we look to outward to neighbors – nations who used to be allies – they are enemies too. Even Canada. And so on. And so on.
And it’s not just the government. We are a government of the people. It’s us. And here’s the thing: When you live in a world fueled by retribution, and everyone starts becoming the enemy, the world so quickly fills with hate. It is not sustainable. Hate destroys everything in its path.
Jesus lives in a world like that. And he says Stop. If we don’t stop. It will bring the house – the world – crashing in on our heads.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve been talking a good bit about the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman – sharing his teaching – his prophetic spirituality. We’ve talked about “how good it is to center down” – in times of turmoil – Thurman says we have to take the journey inward and find that voice within, that moral center, and then we take the journey outward and engage the world for good. Dr. Thurman writes of finding our “working papers” – the life that we uniquely are called to live in the world.[4]
Thurman’s best-known work, Jesus and the Disinherited, is just five chapters long.[5] Chapter 4 is titled "Hate." Chapter 5 is titled "Love." I’ve never quite recovered from reading that Chapter 5. The context of his writing is the civil rights movement as it continued on into the 1970s. And by chapter 4, it becomes clear that he’s writing to his community – to other Black folks long-engaged in the struggle. And white readers like me – well, we’re honored to listen in.
And to that community, Thurman says, We can’t hate our oppressors. It will destroy us. Thurman opens Chapter 4, saying: “Hate is one of the hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the disinherited in season and out of season.”[6] There’s a particular danger when a culture “brings hate out into the open and gives it a formal dignity and a place of respectability.”[7] And it for those who experience the hate it becomes easier to reflect it back – as a way of psychological self-protection. It can suck us in. But ultimately, Thurman writes, ultimately, “hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater. While it lasts, burning in white heat, its effect seems positive and dynamic [even powerful], but at the last it turns to ash, because it guarantees [our] isolation from each other.”[8]
And so, Thurman says, We must love. We must love even those who stand in opposition to us – in life writ small, in our daily lives – and in life writ big – those caught up in the systems that do harm. He suggests –for his community – what he called an “unscrambling” – separating how we think about the person out from the category, from the label of “enemy.”[9] Thurman looks to Jesus, whose teaching he summarizes like this: “Love your enemy. Take the initiative in seeking ways by which you can have the experience of sharing mutual work and value.”[10]If we are demanding that folks see everyone as fully human, we have to start there ourselves. The first time I read all that, I remember thinking, “Wow. Dr. Thurman, that’s a hard word.”
When Jesus and Dr. Thurman say “love your enemy,” they are not in that moment speaking to the powers. They are speaking to those who are listening... to all of us. It is a hard, challenging word.
Where do we even start? Well, that’s where we might want to come back to those 5 elements of Jesus’ love command. Love God. Love others. Love yourself. Love your enemy. Love everyone. It’s all there. Where we might start is by holding those 5 elements of the love command in balance.
Let’s start by talking about what Jesus is NOT saying. One of the hardest things to hear in this scripture is “When someone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other one.” Jesus is NOT telling us to remain in situations where we are getting beat up; he’s not telling anyone to remain in situations of abuse[11]. No, God always wants our well-being, and never wants our harm. (1) Love your enemy. (2) Love others. We hold that in balance with (3) Love yourself. What Jesus is saying is – Don’t strike back. Stop the cycle of violence. Don’t sink yourself more deeply in it. Let’s not further harm ourselves by buying into the hate.
And. Jesus is NOT telling us to sit down and shut up in the face of injustice. Loving the enemy doesn’t mean buying into their agenda. Remember all the other things Jesus says – good news for the poor, freedom for the oppressed, healing for every hurting place. Jesus calls us to speak up. To shout out even. We hold (1) “love your enemy” in balance with (2) “love others” and (3) “love everyone” – love the poor, the hurting, the captive, the stranger, the neighbor. All that – all that is essential to (4) loving God – to loving all whom God loves.
I want to offer something concrete, something useful, something I think we actually can do. Remember those 7 spiritual practices from the beginning of the year. There was one – “pray for others” – where the example I gave was adapted from the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness – which I think lines up so beautifully with the Christian practice of love, unconditional love –loving everybody, no exceptions. Both practices flow out of our shared humanity. The practice of lovingkindess starts us by praying for just that – praying for the well-being of others and ourselves – just because they are human – just because we are human.
As I have come to understand it, particularly from the writings and teachings of Sharon Salzberg, the practice of lovingkindess – or metta – invites us to gently repeat – to pray – “phrases that are meaningful in terms of what we wish – as human beings – for ourselves, and for others.”[12] The most basic, fundamental things, for all people. For example:
May you be safe. May you be free from danger. We pray just for the physical well-being of others (and ourselves).
May you be healthy. We pray just for the wholeness of others and ourselves – we aren’t endorsing their brokenness or ours – we are praying for wholeness, healing, and health – in every bit of the world. For us, and them, for everybody, no exceptions.
May you live in peace. And this one may be hard at first – because if we are calling someone “enemy” – we may want to see them squirm. I know I often do. But remember – we are praying ultimately for the transformation of the world. For those of us who seek to follow in the way of Jesus, we are praying for a world where power-over is replaced by power with; where systems of retribution and violence are replaced by systems of mutuality, and sharing, and tender mercy. When we pray for peace – it is always peace with justice. When we pray, May you live in peace, may we live in peace, we are praying for a world turned rightside up, even us.
May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you live in peace.
We say those phrases with those we love in mind, and ourselves, and those we barely know, and those we find difficult, everyone, no exceptions.
This praying for enemies is a daily struggle for me, particularly in contentious times, when I am convinced so much is at stake. I’ve found that this type of prayer is, what I would call, the least I can do – praying for the humanity and dignity of all people. No exceptions. And even then, it’s not easy. But I hope it’s a start.
This sermon doesn’t have a big ending – just the conviction that we can’t let the hate in this world consume us – and a confession that that is not easy. It’s easy to have a special place in our heart for the people we like, for the ones who agree with us – to love those who love us. It’s harder to love... everybody else... no exceptions.
So this sermon ends with an invitation to try. To start. And I’d like us to do that together by using our prayer time to try out this practice of lovingkindness. We’ll start our prayer as we do each week, singing. And then, I’ll lead us in trying out these simple phrases -- May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you live in peace – as we bring to mind someone we love, someone we know who is hurting, ourselves, someone we find difficult, and then everyone and all creation.
Let's begin our prayer, singing:
[community sings “Love Has Come”]
Settle in -- this Scripture brings a challenging Word -- settle in again to this place -- in this company of kindred spirits -- we are here, in this, together.
Bring to mind someone you love.[13]
May they be safe.
May they be healthy.
May they live in peace.
Bring to mind... someone who you know is hurting.
May they be safe.
May they be healthy.
May they live in peace.
Bring to mind... yourself.
May I be safe.
May I be healthy.
May I live in peace.
Bring to mind... someone you find difficult.
May they be safe.
May they be healthy.
May they live in peace.
Bring to mind... everyone, the whole wide world
May we be safe.
May we be healthy.
May we live in peace.
Connected in love to all creation, with everyone who has ever called on God for help, we pray the prayer that Jesus taught:
Our Father/Mother, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
Sermon © 2025 Scott Clark
[1] For background on this text and the Gospel of Luke, see R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. ix (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), pp. 140-48; Justo L. González, Luke (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010); Sharon Ringe, Luke (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995); Wes Avram, Commentary in Connections, Year C, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY; Westminster John Knox Press, 2018), pp.265-67.
[2] See Avram, p.264.
[3] See Ringe, p.95.
[4] See Howard Thurman, A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life (Walter Earl Fluker and Catherine Tumber, eds.) (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998), an excellent anthology of highlights from Dr. Thurman’s work.
[5] See Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1976 (2022 ed.)).
[6] Id. p.63.
[7] Id. p. 64.
[8] Id. p.75.
[9] Id. pp.86-87.
[10] Id. p. 90.
[11] See Ringe, p.95.
[12] See Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Boulder, CO: Shambala Publications, 1995 (2020 ed.). The practice presented here is grounded in practices learned through Salzberg’s meditations and teaching on the Ten Percent Happier podcast and platform.
[13] See id.
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