Looking for Loopholes?
Epiphany 7C-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Several colleagues remarked to me this week, ‘Have you seen the lectionary? How are we supposed to preach ‘loving our enemies’ right now?
“Love your enemies” might be Jesus’ most unique and original teaching. It stands at very center of Jesus’ message. Yet, we don’t read this part of the Sermon on the Mount very often at worship. That’s because it falls on the 7th Sunday after Epiphany which is cut out of the worship calendar in the years when Easter comes early. There’s an old joke by comedian, W.C. Fields. Someone caught him paging through the bible in his dressing room. “What are you doing reading the bible?” they asked. He famously replied, “I’m looking for loopholes.” I’ll wager anyone who thinks loving your enemies is easy has probably never had one.
As we look for loopholes here in what may be Jesus’ most challenging command, Jesus doubles down. “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt” (Luke 6:29-30). For modern readers it sounds like we’re just supposed to be doormats. Does Jesus mean to say we should just be pushovers? The short answer is—No!
It helps to have a little context. Jesus lived his whole life in opposition to capricious violence and unjust autocratic authorities. Here Jesus showed us, not to kowtow, but how to overcome evil without becoming evil ourselves and to avoid creating new forms of evil. Bible scholar and theologian Walter Wink made videos on YouTube to dramatize Jesus’ message to better visualize how this worked in each case. By turning the other cheek, a servant could turn the tables on a superior who disciplined them with a back-handed slap. By not withholding your shirt a debtor could shame a creditor who demanded their coat as collateral. These are examples active creative nonviolent resistance.
The question of how to live in a corrupt, dictatorial society was central to Jesus’ ministry. Even when they hate you — even when the wicked do everything they can to enrich themselves and rob others — you are to love them.
In the prayer Jesus taught us to pray, we say every week, ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.’ Just as God in Christ freely forgives our sin, so we become like him in forgiving those who violate or hurt or sin against us. This is how we take the next step in our transformation, reclaim of our true humanity on the way to becoming the true human image bearers of God. “Becoming a human being is a grave and weighty task, and to reach that goal we each have to assume that burden. What we do with our lives and with our freedom in the world matters” (Pastor Len Vander Zee).
We heard Jesus say, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (vs. 31). Loving our enemies is nothing but a permutation of the Golden Rule. You might think it sounds impossible until you realize the ways we already take this standard for granted in our daily lives. Every time we go to the doctor we trust that doctor honor the Hippocratic Oath, often summarized as ‘First do no harm.’ Doctors do not portion out care according to their personal moral judgments or prejudices. Likewise, Lady Justice, depicted as a blindfolded woman carrying scales and a sword, asserts the ideal that we stand as equals under the impartial rule of law. Unfortunately, this simple standard is being seriously eroded today by the politics of revenge, patriarchy, and white supremacy.
The Golden Rule proved itself to be a very good foundation for social order, fairness, compassion, and justice. It has also proven itself to be an effective tool, in the form of nonviolent resistance, to disarm our enemies, to put sand in the gears of systems of oppression, and a stick in the self-perpetuating cycles of violence. Like the prophets of old, we are called to speak the truth in love to the powers and principalities on the rise today, of ignorance and domination.
Two years ago, Kari and I visited the Protestant Church of Reconciliation consecrated in 1967 at Dachau, the infamous prison camp run by the Nazis in WWII. The dedication service was led by the former Dachau prisoner, German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller. Niemöller wrote the famous words inscribed on the wall of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
Pastor Niemöller wasn’t just being poetic. That’s his life story. What is less well known is that Niemöller supported Hitler and the Nazis. He not only did not speak out. Indeed, Niemöller initially supported the Nazis until they went after the church, dictating that the Hebrew prophets could no longer be read at worship. Niemöller was detained several times before he was arrested for treason and sent to concentration camps, including Dachau. Niemöller’s final transformation did not come until he preached to a small ecumenical group of prisoners in Dachau on Christmas Eve, 1944. It signaled the beginning of a profound shift in his outlook — a shift from believing in a German national Protestantism to believing in an international world Church. (Diana Butler-Bass, Sunday Musings 2/22/25)
I tell this story because, thanks be to God, Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies is not a singular command but plural. Y’all must love your enemies. We belong to a community of believers who nurture in us the ability to forgive one another and ourselves. In this place we must help one another to love when we cannot. This week vandals broke the church sign in front of St. Luke’s in Park Ridge that identified the church both as Lutheran and as welcoming to LGBTQIA+ people. At Immanuel we strive to be a living sanctuary of hope and grace. It is time now to help one another reclaim the voice creative nonviolent resistance to hate rooted in the Golden Rule of Jesus.
After 27 years of cruel mistreatment in South African prisons, Nelson Mandela said, “As I walked out the door to the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew that if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.” Bitterness and hatred lock people in their own dark prison. It’s a place without real love, without mercy. It makes life a dead-end game of constant hurt and retribution. God’s gracious forgiveness is given to flow through us to others, even to our enemy. If forgiveness stops with us, it stagnates and makes us sick. That’s Jesus’ point. (Pastor Len Vander Zee, quoted by Kristin Du Mez, “As We Forgive,” Connections, 2/23/25)
We live in the ending of an age. It is an age fraught with danger and the specter of loss. Yet, at the same time, we are living in an age of new beginnings that give promise of an ecological civilization –that is sustainable and just for all. (Cobb) May God give us grace. May God give us wisdom. May God give us courage to love. May God’s kingdom come on earth as in heaven. Amen.
