Karen Hollis | August 27, 2023
Radical Love 2 – love your enemies
Luke 6:27-36
‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 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. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
What is Radical Love?
Of the 4 values, I got the most questions about Radical Love. If I was to weave together the conversations around the Neighbourhood groups, the overall dialogue might go something like this:
person 1: What does Radical Love mean?
person 2: yeah, I’m not really comfortable with the word Radical . . . I don’t understand what it means here. There were radicals in the 60’s . . . is that what we’re talking about?
person 3: It’s inclusive love, it goes with community and offering love for all. It affirms there aren’t rules around love.
person 4: Maybe it’s about being loving to people not like us and people who are hard to love. Or doing what you wouldn’t initially choose, being brave, bold, complete in your loving. We are called to embrace the difficult – it’s challenging!!
person 5: I think it’s about giving all you’ve got. Radical is unorthodox and not limited, not afraid to go outside the boundaries, give back and do what is necessary. Jesus was a rebel and offered love to all. That’s what we’re expected to do.
person 6: I connect Radical Love to our support for the LGBTQ+ community. It reminds me of the ’88 split in the church and when Maggie invited the gay choir to finish their concert at Comox United.
others: yes, I remember that! Yes, so important! Yay!!
So what does radical love mean?
- Dictionary definition of radical: relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; also, advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change;
- The etymology of radical is: relating to the root, connected to the root.
- Some things for us to reflect on: Radical love perhaps asks us what is the root of love? What is the essence of love? What feeds and grounds love? Radical love invites a continual process of clearing out all of the superfluous stuff and drilling right down to the heart of love.
- Perhaps Radical Love is an invitation to a continual practice of re-centering ourselves in the essence of love and taking action from that place.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
“Let love be messy” by m jade kaiser
Love isn’t just one thing;
it’s fierce and soft,
intimate and collective,
wild and sincere and deliberate and just.
Love can be more chaos than order.
Love can be a boundary.
Love can be conflict.
It’s complicated.
It’s multifaceted.
Love is hard work.
Love is natural.
Love is a process and practice.
Though its paths are many and varied,
love always leads to life.
Love is an ever-unfolding thing
we are all still figuring out.
Love is a process and a practice in all areas of life and especially when it comes to loving those who are intentionally hurtful, mean, or wilfully cause destruction in our world. Loving those who are difficult to love is at best a process and a practice. It is never going to be something we do with ease or a carefree attitude, still, it is a crucial piece for our collective ability to thrive.
Luke’s Jesus says several things in our scripture passage this morning. Here are some things he doesn’t say . . . he doesn’t say that it’s ok for people to harm us, emotionally or physically . . . he doesn’t say it’s ok for someone to cross your boundaries or fail to treat you with dignity and respect. He doesn’t say that if someone has manipulated you into an unhealthy power dynamic, simply loving them will make everything ok. These are not examples of radical love at work. In the context of loving those who bring intentional destruction to the world, radical love or agape love – the highest, most universal form of love, which Jesus references again this morning – might look like . . . truth-telling, setting boundaries, accountability, or reconciliation.
Turning the other cheek is an example of radical love that you might find surprising. This story was written in a time and place where people lived in a completely right-handed world. People did most everything with their right hand, their clean hand, even striking someone on the cheek. For example, if a master was to hit his slave, it would be with the back of the hand on the right cheek. Then, if you turn the other cheek, you make them either use their left hand, unclean hand, or use the front of their right hand. Using their unclean hand challenges them to acknowledge that what they’re doing is unclean, unjust. Alternatively, using the front of the right hand is the way one strikes their equal. Either way the one doing the striking is confronted with himself.1
Jesus continues on to say: from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your tunic, which is the garment worn next to the skin. At that time, it was shaming to see someone in the nude out in public . . . doesn’t shame the nude person, rather the person who sees them. So you can imagine the one person continuing to offer garments and the other saying, no, no, never mind – cover yourself up! Jesus offers these examples of non-violent responses to injustice.
I think it takes a huge amount of self-discipline and self-mastery to respond with radical love in situations where someone else has failed to love. And it’s critically important for the common good. Without the practice of love, we can very easily fall into endless cycles of wounding one another. Israel/Palestine is a classic example. The ongoing relationship work in North Ireland after The Troubles is another example. Padraid O’ Tuama, who co-wrote the little book on Ruth (Borders and Belonging) I have quoted a couple of times, does reconciliation work in North Ireland. He writes: How, in the centuries of British presence in Ireland, do we make sense of British and Irish stories in Ireland now, where so many people – of all national and religious identities – have suffered? Each side has its own griefs and grievances. Your people killed my lover. Your people took my language. Your people killed indiscriminately. Your people didn’t use peaceful means to achieve political ends. Your people endorsed robbery by calling it a national project. Your people murdered. Your people murdered. Your people started it. Your people started it. You’re to blame. No, you are.2 On and on it goes.
On both sides of any conflict there are wounds, hurts, brokenness, longings . . . parts of us that are so easily activated . . . this is why I say loving is not easy. Loving is a practice, loving is a discipline . . . it is human work and it is lifelong.
Luke’s Jesus puts it this way: it’s easy to love those who love us . . . it is more difficult to respond to those who do harm without reciprocating harm . . . even more difficult to do it with love . . . still, we must. I invite you to think for a moment about the strategies you have witnessed or used to respond without doing harm. What is your strategy? How do you hold your center? How do you stay curious?
This teaching from Jesus invites self-awareness. Without it we react in a split second – before we realize what’s going on, we’re intrenched in our own side of things and we perhaps fight back and forth until grace invites us to stop. Awareness can begin in the place of reflecting back on the experience – this hurt or that memory was activated in the interaction.
1. Eventually we can get to the place where we notice a wave of feeling coming in real time. And it’s a powerful discipline to observe that wave rise in us and fall again without taking action on it. It’s an invitation to notice what hooks us – what is it that causes us to shift focus and protect our wounded place instead of responding with love? Our feelings teach us where our wounds are. I’m not trying to tell you that I’m good at it – radical love invites us to practice this until we die. Because anytime we are able to do any part of this is better than not doing it. And when we don’t catch the wave this time, we still can reflect and learn for next time.
2. We can also make a plan or set an intention for how we want to respond in the future when these places in us are activated . . . even if we don’t follow through, we’re engaged in the practice of responding with love.
African American minister and author, Jacqui Lewis (who was our speaker this year at the Regional meeting) writes in her book Fierce Love: When Mom told me that night that some people wouldn’t like me because I’m Black, she pulled back the curtain and opened my eyes to the racism all around me. And yet her fierce determination for me not to take the racism personally, and the way she prayed with me about it, showed me a way to deal with racism as the activist I would become. Watching Mom helped me learn how to live justly in the world, and how to make everyday choices toward fairness and equality. Watching her was like reading a book on how to love my neighbor, the stranger, and the world, as I loved myself.3
Whether we have a personal interaction or we encounter something more systemic, love invites us to remember that as much as something activates the woundedness in us, anything that seeks to harm us was generated from a wounded place. God created us and calls us good, so I think humans are basically good . . . and as a human species, we are so wounded and fractured . . . people do crazy things out of these places. When I remember the brokenness we all walk around with, it helps me have compassion when I don’t feel like loving . . . and helps me remember the actions aren’t personal.
With this meta-perspective on woundedness in the world and practices of self-awareness, we are invited every day to connect with agape love – the universal and highest form of love that radiates through creation from the heart of God. Agape love is more powerful than brokenness or darkness or a desire to do harm . . . agape love has the power to transform even these and heal the hurt in us and the world. This transformation begins in us, in our homes, in our daily interactions, where small shifts and changes can blossom into large ones. In this way, Radical Love isn’t a noun, it isn’t something we possess . . . it’s a verb, it’s something we do, it’s a way we move through the world. Radical Loving is a continual invitation to re-center ourselves in the essence of love and move through the world from that place.
