Gospel for Sunday, February 23: VI Sunday C: Luke 6:27-38
LOVE EVEN YOUR ENEMIES?
27 But to you who listen, I say, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 To those who smite you on the cheek, offer the other also; To those who take away your cloak, do not refuse your tunic. 30 Give to anyone who asks you; and to him who takes of your own, do not demand it. 31 What you want men to do to you, you also do to them. 32 If you love those who love you, what credit will you get? Sinners also do the same. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what merit will you have? Sinners also do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what merit will you have? Sinners also lend to sinners to receive as much. 35 Instead, love your enemies, do good and lend without hoping for anything, and your reward will be great and you will be children of the Most High; for he is gracious to the ungrateful and the wicked.
36 Be merciful, as your Father is merciful. 37 Do not judge and you will not be judged; do not condemn and you will not be condemned; 38 forgive and you will be forgiven; 38 give and you will be given; a good measure, crushed, shaken and overflowing will be poured into your lap, for with the measure with which you measure, it will be measured to you in return.”Lk 6:27-38
Dear sisters and brothers of Misericordia, I am Carlo Miglietta, a doctor, biblical scholar, layman, husband, father and grandfather (www.buonabibbiaatutti.it). Also today I share with you a short thought meditation on the Gospel, with special reference to the theme of mercy.
The famous text of the “Sermon on the Mount” (Mt 5:1) in Matthew’s Gospel or the corresponding “Sermon on the Plain” (Lk 6:17) in Luke’s Gospel lies not only at the heart of the Gospels but is fundamental to the understanding of Christianity itself.
Paul Billerbeck, in a monumental work1, places this teaching of Jesus within the great rabbinic tradition, as does Benedict XVI2. Joachim Jeremias places Jesus’ words within the framework of late Judaism’s reflection and sees three possible interpretations3. The “perfectionist” one, also supported by Pinchas Lapide4: Jesus demands from his disciples radical Torah observance. The “unworkability” one, the interpretation of Lutheran orthodoxy: Jesus wants to make his listeners aware of their inability to accomplish in their own strength what God demands, and thus to trust in a salvation that comes only from God. The “eschatological” one, which reads into the discourse a set of exceptional laws, valid in times of crisis, in the form of an incitement to extreme tension of forces before catastrophe.
In contrast, for Rabbi Jacob Neusner, Jesus breaks completely with the Torah, claiming to stand above it5. “According to the treatise in the Mishnah (200 A.D.) called Avot (sayings of the Fathers of Judaism) it was said, <<Make a hedge around the law>> (1:1). Jesus would destroy this hedge, disposing of the Torah in an unprecedented manner and even teaching to violate some of the Commandments: the third, which mandates the sanctification of the Sabbath, the fourth, that of love toward parents, and finally the prescription of holiness. Jesus claims to take the place of the Sabbath (cf. Mt. 12:8: <<The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath>>) and parents (cf. Mt. 10:37: <<Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me>>) and makes holiness consist in following himself: in this way he dissolves what holds Israel together as Israel, endangering the essential of the faith of the covenant people” (B. Forte6).
From the duty of hatred to the enemy…
But whether one places the Sermon on the Mount as a fulfillment of the rabbinic tradition, or in opposition to it, there is in this sermon of Jesus a point that everyone emphasizes as one of strong rupture with the Old Law: the command of love to one’s enemies7. Such a precept of Jesus is truly revolutionary.
The Law prescribed, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). In Italian “neighbor” now means only “others, humanity in general” (N. Zingarelli8). In Latin, on the other hand, “proximus” means “very near,” deriving from the adverb “prope,” which means “near,” and indicates spatial contiguity. The Hebrew equivalent “re’a,” however, does not indicate only objective proximity, but rather a subjective relationship of friendship and kinship: it means “friend, companion, colleague,” the neighbor either by race or religion.
Jesus states, “You have heard that it was said, <<You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy>>” (Mt 5:43). As Hortensius of Spinetoli notes, “hatred of enemies had no codification, much less such a crude formulation. It arose as a consequence of the precept of love of neighbor. If <<neighbors> are countrymen, the love of <<re’a>> does not embrace others […], non-Jews. Matthew’s phrase, though not so coined, summarized a widely held practice. “9.
There was yes in the book of Proverbs a text that said, “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for thus you will heap coals of fire on his head, and the Lord will reward you” (Pr 25:21-22). It is the position that Paul, as a good rabbi, recalls in his letter to the Romans, adding, “Do not do justice to yourselves, beloved, but leave it to the divine wrath. For it is written, <<To me the vengeance, it is I who will requite>>10, says the Lord” (Rom. 12:17-21). But in Judaism it remains an isolated and ultimately still utilitarian position: my love for the enemy is subtle revenge because it further aggravates his position and gets me a reward from God.
Instead, the Psalmist is pleased to say, “Do I not hate, O Lord, those who hate you, and do I not detest your enemies? I detest them with implacable hatred as if they were my enemies” (Sl 138:21-22; and he prays, ”Daughter of ravaging Babylon, blessed is he who will return to you what you have done to us. Blessed is he who will seize your little ones and dash them against the stone” (Sl 136:8-9).
For the religious Jew, hatred against enemies was as much a duty as fighting against evil. In war, it was then believed to pay homage to God by taking neither captives nor spoils, but by passing all by the edge of the sword: it was the “herem,” the “anathema”: “When the Lord thy God hath put other nations in thy power, and thou hast defeated them, thou shalt vow them to extermination; thou shalt not make covenant with them, nor give them grace” (Deut. 7:211). And the prophets utter heavy oracles of curse against Israel’s enemy nations12. Tacitus writes about the Jews, “Apud ipsos, fides obstinata, misericordia in promptu; sed adversus omnes alios hostile odium”: “Among them, an obstinate faith, an easy mercy; but hostile hatred against others ”13.
Rabbi Neusner is still scandalized today by Jesus’ discourse on the attitude to take toward enemies because “it is a religious duty to resist evil, to fight for good, to love God and to fight those who will become God’s enemies…. The Torah always requires Israel to fight for God’s cause; the Torah admits war, recognizes the legitimate use of force. “14 Thus states another rabbi, Scialom Bahbout: “Love of neighbor must not exceed love of self, as this would constitute a distortion of the meaning of the phrase, <<You shall love your neighbor as yourself>>, and would go beyond what can humanly and realistically be asked of man. Often a certain morality present in Catholic culture has led to the belief that the good of the other can be placed above one’s own. Turning the other cheek to one’s enemy or to those who offend us is completely removed from Jewish thinking. To those who offend or harm us we should not turn the other cheek, but rather defend ourselves or place a separation between ourselves and the other!”15
While there are a few exceptions in rabbinic literature,16 no call to prayer for enemies is found in the Old Testament, however. Even today, three times a day, except on the Sabbath, Israel prays in the twelfth “blessing,” or “Birkat Ha Minim,” taken from the Babylonian Talmud: “For slanderers and heretics there is no hope, all will soon be lost, all your enemies will go to ruin abruptly. Thou shalt annihilate them in our days. Blessed be you, O Lord, who breaks the adversaries and humbles the reprobates.” An early version, found in a fragment of the Genizah in Cairo, Egypt, was more explicit: “Let there be no hope for the apostates; promptly uproot in our days the reign of pride; and let the nozrim (ed.: the Nazarenes, the followers of Jesus of Nazareth) and the minim (ed.: the heretics, the dissenters) perish in an instant; and let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and with the righteous let them not be enrolled. Blessed are you who bend the proud “17.
…to love even the wicked
Once again, Jesus goes against the Law in the name of a boundless, superabundant love that reaches even to enemies. So much for the Law of the Talion: “You have heard that it was said, <<An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth18>>; but I say to you, do not oppose the wicked man; indeed if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, you also give him the other; and to him who wants to call you to judgment to take away your tunic, you also leave your cloak. And if one shall compel thee to go a mile, thou shalt do two miles with him. Give to those who ask thee, and to those who desire a loan from thee, turn not away. You have heard that it was said, <<You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy>>; but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise over the wicked and over the good, and makes it rain over the righteous and over the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what merit have you? Do not the publicans also do this? And if you give greeting only to your brothers, what extraordinary thing do you do? Do not the pagans also do this? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5:38-48).
Jesus asks us first of all to renounce the logic of violence, even if it is motivated: we are not to oppose the wicked one, just as he did not rebel, to whom the first community applied the passage from Isaiah: “As a sheep was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb without a voice before him who shears it, so he does not open his mouth” (Is 53:7-8, quoted according to the Greek text in Acts 8:32).
But then he asks us to love the enemy: mind you, to love is not a generic feeling, but it is to take charge of the other, to benefit him, to want his good and to work for it. Like Jesus, who sacrificed his life for us sinners.
Finally, Jesus asks us for prayer for the enemy: praying that is not just begging for thanks for those who have harmed us, but that is beginning to look at the adversary with God’s own eyes, seeing in him a brother, a precious person, to be excused for all the evil committed, to be protected and for whom he deserves to immolate himself. Jesus sets the example: dying on the cross, he forgives his killers: “Jesus said, <<Father, forgive them>>” (Lk 23:34) As will Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who dying prays for those who stoned him, “O Lord, do not impute this sin to them” (Acts 7:60). But Jesus does even more: he not only forgives his executioners, but also exonerates them from responsibility: “They do not know what they are doing” (Lk 23:34), so they are not guilty!
It seems absurd to ask such foolishness of love of a father who has had a child murdered, a woman who has been raped, a people who have suffered torture or ethnocide… But Jesus is crystal clear, well aware that his logic conflicts with that of the Old Law: “For I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:20). “To help the enemy, the one to whom we properly owe nothing in strict terms of justice, implies the ability to break through the formal horizon of law and to reactivate those dynamics of interpersonal communication, which justice, in the proper sense, does not even have the possibility of programming” (F. D’Agostino19).
Happy Mercy to all!
Anyone who would like to read a more complete exegesis of the text, or some insights, please ask me at migliettacarlo@gmail.com.