LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

Historical Jesus scholars say that "love your enemies" is an authentic Jesus saying. My Jewish teachers agree that these statements are unique to this particular first century Jewish rabbi.

Sunday's Gospel Reading is Luke's version of the aphorism. It is also found in Matthew. New Testament scholars argue that material shared by Matthew and Luke come from a much earlier tradition ("Q" for quelle [German] or source).

This aphorism represents Jesus’s most powerful challenge to empire's divide-and-conquer strategy. What is the worst situation of enmity between persons or peoples? Their being enemies. Jesus’s call to "love your enemies” subverts enmity.

In the gospel, we have “enemies who love,” who actually serve the least, who actually take the side of those whose only hope is God, who completely subvert expectations. There is Zacchaeus, the rich, chief tax collector who gives back to the poor and pays back four times everyone he had defrauded. There is the centurion, who not only loved the Jewish people and built their synagogue but loved his slave dearly and sought help from the Jewish community when the latter was ill and close to death. Then, of course, we have the Samaritan who was a neighbor to the Jew who fell into the hands of robbers.

Loving our enemies is very hard. It is not based on emotions nor on relations. Loving our enemies requires a decision. It is agape. The One who calls us every day to follow him, chose to love his enemies to the very end.

Loving our enemies is very hard. But to do so is to follow Jesus.

+art, "Hands, All Together," Avandale Patillo United Methodist Church, 2007 (from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

BLESSED ARE THE POOR

The Greek word for poor is "ptochos": people who are destitute, people who are so poor that begging and stealing become options for them to survive. They are drowning in misery.

War, slavery, and indebtedness leave people widows and orphans and refugees. War, slavery, and indebtedness leave people destitute, displaced, and dispossessed.

The Hebrew Bible, over and over and over, challenged the Ancient Israelites and Judahites to care for widows, orphans, and refugees. War, slavery, and indebtedness were all part of the structures and systems of evil that made the rich richer and the poor miserable.

During the time of Jesus, the 1% owned and controlled the land and practically everything else. Half of the population was slowly starving to death. Life expectancy was 28 years.

The poor that Luke--and also Matthew--talk about are those who pray "The Lord's Prayer". They beg God to give them today the food they need because they live from one day to the next. They also beg God to cancel their debts. Yes, debts. Not sins nor trespasses.

There are people who love to pray this prayer while they have cupboards--or even storehouses--of food enough for a week, a month, a year, or longer. There are people who love to pray the prayer while being the reason why so many are suffering from indebtedness.

These people are not poor. They should stop praying the prayer.



*Art, "The Sermon on the Mount," JESUS MAFA, Cameroon 1973 (from the vanderbilt divinity library digital archives).

THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY AND SOLIDARITY!

 

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GO FISH!

When we were growing up, we used to sing a song in Sunday School that went, "I will make you fishers of men, fishers of men, fishers of men. I will make you fishers of men if you follow me."

Life during the time of Jesus was extremely difficult. Historians paint a Roman-occupied Palestine where the average life expectancy was under 30, the majority was suffocating in debt, and half of the population was slowly starving to death.

At the bottom of the social structure were farmers and fisherfolk. Nothing has changed. Farmers and fisherfolk remain at the bottom of the social structure today. Over 1.5 million families in the Philippines are fisherfolk. The poorest two out of every five poor people in the country are fisherfolk.

In Sunday's Gospel Reading Jesus calls fisherfolk to follow him in order to fish for people. A carpenter calls fisherfolk to fish. Jesus does not call anyone to worship him. Or to believe in him. Or to accept him as their Personal Savior and Lord. Or even to be a carpenter. Jesus calls us to follow him. To do what? To fish for people.

Many ancient peoples were afraid of the seas. They feared drowning; they feared the turbulent waves; they feared the ancient, eldritch leviathans they imagined lurking beneath the surface.

But Jesus does not call us to fish people out of their fear of the deep.

During Jesus's time, the Empire owned and controlled the seas! Taxes were imposed on fishing, on boats, on nets, on everything! In our lection, Simon tells Jesus that they were fishing all night and caught nothing.

Jesus's call to fish for people is a call for us to follow him in taking out people from systems and structures that oppress, that dehumanize, that subjugate, that murder.

And who are the people who experience the evil of these systems and structures every single moment of their lives? Fisherfolk. Genuine transformation always comes from below, from among those at greatest risk of drowning, from the toiling masses, from among those whose only hope is God. The call has not changed. People, especially the most vulnerable, are drowning in imperial waters. Trump back as POTUS makes things worse.

Jesus is calling us right now to follow him and fish for people.


*Art, "Miracle Catch" by Mike Moyers. To purchase Moyer's works, please visit mikemoyersfineartdotcom. Image accessed from vanderbilt divinity library digital archives.

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