I want us to think for a moment about how we learn, how we come to be skilled in something. To be sure, we have to study, read, and attend lectures or watch DIY videos on YouTube. All these are important in our progress. But we also learn, we come to be skilled, through imitation, through observing someone who is already knowledgeable in a subject or practiced in a skill.
This last point relates especially to discipleship. The term disciple in the original language means “one who learns.” The disciples are those who learn from Jesus. But how does he teach them?
When he called his disciples, Jesus did not relate to them as a British tutor does to his students. In the British university system, the tutor assigns his students a stack of books and tells them to come back in three months to discuss what they learned. But this is not how Jesus relates to his disciples. Instead, he invites them to follow him.
In his Gospel, Mark captures the meaning of this invitation when he states: “He appointed 12, that they might be with him…” (3:14). Luke nowhere states this explicitly, but the fact is evident everywhere in this Gospel. Except for those times when he retreats to a mountainside to pray by himself, Jesus is always with his disciples.
This is as it should be for the disciple. Disciples are to be in the presence of Jesus. The most important things in life are caught rather than taught. Can you imagine it to be otherwise, especially when it involves what Jesus teaches in the lesson appointed for this Lord’s Day?
Imagine that he set this teaching down in writing, gave it to his disciples, told them to go and ponder it on their own, and then come back in three months to talk about it. Would they have been able to make anything out of it? “Love your enemies?” “Do good to those who hate you?” “Lend to others without expectation of return?” These are not practical guidelines for living. This is no plug-and-play formula for success.
In this connection, a pastor describes arguing with a church sign while driving one day. The sign said: “Following Jesus is Loving and Practical.” The pastor had no issue with the first part, but “practical?” In this world? Following Jesus is anything but, she thought. Practical steps that lead to worldly success seem a far cry from the life of discipleship.
If we are honest, we will have to admit that it’s hard to know exactly what to make of this teaching in our gospel lesson. Nor do we always find talk in the church about this teaching very helpful. Preachers tell us to “love our enemies” and “do good to those who hate you” so that we may prove ourselves to be Jesus’ disciples. But such preaching seldom motivates. Carl Scherer, the great Lutheran preacher of the last century, observes that we can’t quite conceive of doing those things that Jesus keeps insisting that we should. Instead of overcoming evil with good, for instance, we forever try to wipe it out with its own weapons. Instead of turning the other cheek, we let the other fellow have it with our fist—both fists if we can manage it.
Is then Jesus commanding his disciples, both then and now, to do what it is impossible for them to do? Or do the commands apply only to the elite few, capable of superhuman acts of virtue?
But this question is not a productive one. It leads nowhere. The problem stems from a superficial reading of the lesson. For if we reflect on it long enough, we see that it tells us less about the teaching than about the teacher, less about the principles than about the person.
Shifting our focus from the commands to the one who gives them, from the teaching to the teacher, will actually open up a more helpful perspective on the lesson. It will help us to hear and understand it and take the right action in response to it.
Let us begin with an observation. The traits of a person stand out most when he’s compared with persons who do not have them. We will see how this applies to Jesus and to us by means of the following illustration.
Mark Mayfield, director of Mayfield Counseling Center, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, writes about our deep yearning to belong. He notes that this yearning can be so intense that we would literally do or say anything to be part of something. He first found this yearning in himself in his middle school years. In the ninth grade, he finally achieved belonging, but in order to do so, he became something he never thought he would become: a bully. He knew what it was like to be bullied, and he disliked it. He did not want to be on the receiving end anymore, and so he chose to be the bully.
He recounts an incident from a science class. The teacher momentarily stepped out of the room. There was a rather clumsy student who tended to knock things over, run into things, and make random, nonsensical comments. While the teacher was out, this student knocked over a beaker full of solvent. It shattered on the floor, spilling the liquid everywhere. The entire class broke out in derisive laughter. No one moved to help her clean up the mess.
Mayfield himself felt an impulse to help and comfort the distressed student, who was trying to clean up the mess by herself while wiping away her tears, but he quickly suppressed it. His desire to belong, to fit in, to be part of the club, was stronger than his desire to show her compassion. Instead, he blurted out: “Nice job, klutz. Look at the mess you made.” The class, especially the boys Mayfield wanted to impress, laughed even harder. They all gave him “high fives.” He now belonged, but at what cost?
Do you ever wonder why there is so much divisiveness, so much hatred and discord around us? Is it not because the members of our group find their belonging, their solidarity, in their opposition to those they exclude and reject. We call this tribalism. It is us versus them. The ties that bind us with our allies are strengthened when we have a common enemy.
Can you imagine an alternative scenario? What if Mayfield did yield to the better impulse and stoop down to help the student clean up the mess? What if the student did not hold against Mayfield the humiliation to which he subjected her, but instead forgave him? What if she returned kindness for the ridicule the rest of the students heaped on her?
But this does not happen, at least not very often. To step outside the group and help the student would be social suicide for him. And to forgive those who hurt her would be to make herself vulnerable to further injury. We are bound by our fears and insecurities, our self-protection. We are not free for this alternative scenario.
But the perspective on relationships opened up by the teaching of Jesus in this lesson does offer an alternative. But again, let us not consider the teaching apart from the teacher. Let us not see it as a set of abstract principles, but rather a set of concrete practices lived out by Jesus.
Jesus’ interactions are not determined by role expectations. He is not driven by his instinct for self-preservation. He does not concern himself with his self-image. He does not avoid his enemies because of his inner insecurities, which he doesn’t have.
On the contrary, his desire is to love and bless them. This reflects his inner freedom. He is secure in himself. That inner security, that stability, that vitality, enables him to reach out in freedom to those whom he should have avoided. The Roman centurion, the Samaritan woman, the tax collector—these were enemies of the Jewish people and therefore his enemies too, as he also is a Jew.
But Jesus did not hesitate to help the Roman centurion when he came to Jesus with the request to heal his servant. He did not hesitate to cross a boundary to interact graciously and meaningfully with the Samaritan woman. And not only did he associate with the hated tax collectors, he even chose one to be his disciple.
Let us make no mistake. All these had the power to damage his reputation, tarnish his image, even threaten his person. That is why his people avoided them. But Jesus doesn’t care. He doesn’t fear the power they have. In fact, he cannot even regard it as a power, because he bears an infinitely greater power, which is his love.
The commands “love your enemies” “do good to those who hate you” “bless those who curse you” and the rest—they reveal above all the person of Jesus. What he commands he fulfills in his own person. Jesus is not a principle but a person, as we have already mentioned. To see the commands in the lesson as an abstract ethic has no compelling appeal for us, as we have also already pointed out. Only when we hear and receive the teaching in light of Jesus’ person does it invite a second look.
So let us probe further. What is at the core of Jesus’ person? It seems clear here and elsewhere in the New Testament that it’s his unwavering devotion to the God he called Father. In this case that devotion shows itself in his conviction that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Jesus’ relationships with people, especially his enemies, is always determined by this conviction.
The Old Testament lesson about Joseph illustrates this point. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. He was carried off to Egypt. There he was bound, mistreated, and imprisoned. He spent the best years of his youth in abject misery. Now his brothers come to him. There is a famine in their land, and they have come to Egypt to buy grain. Joseph could have avenged himself on them. After all, they are his enemies. Now he’s in a position where he can make life very painful for them.
Joseph does not choose this option. Instead he refers his past to God. His brothers did evil to him by selling him into slavery. But since his awareness of God determines his relationships with his brothers, Joseph sees God’s hand in it. In his inscrutable providence, God used this evil to place Joseph in a position to preserve their lives. Not only does Joseph refuse to avenge himself on his brothers, but provides them land in the region of Goshen, so that they can survive the famine. God is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. To his brothers Joseph is a living embodiment of this truth. He is merciful to them, just as God is merciful.
Theologians tell us that Joseph is a type of Christ. That means that Joseph’s life foreshadows Jesus’ own life. Jesus came to his own, but his own did not receive him. They mistreated him and drove him out. Finally, they had him crucified. But when they did all this, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead he prayed while hanging on a cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Just as Joseph before him, Jesus entrusted himself to God. And in him the words of Joseph find their ultimate fulfillment: “what you meant for evil, God meant for good, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20).
Thus far have we considered the demanding teaching of Jesus. We have pointed out that our reception of the command to love our enemies is seldom productive. That is because as an abstract set of principles it seldom inspires. It is as we see it fleshed out in the life of Jesus that it begins to change us.
My dad and mom did not like the friends I chose when I was an adolescent. They used to urge me to go to the house of a nice boy down the street. “Why don’t you go and hang out with him? Maybe he will rub off on you.”
There is an old saying: “we are the company we keep.” That is why parents are concerned about the friends their children choose. Jesus chose the disciples, that they might be with him. And as they spent time with him, they learned to think and feel and act as he does.
It is the same for us. Let us be sure that we spend time in his presence, through prayer and meditation on his Word. For he is indeed with us and in us by his Word and Spirit.
And let us be sure that we spend time in the church with those who are mature in their faith. It’s God’s plan to reproduce his Son among us, that he may be one of many brothers and sisters. For God predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
The Apostle Paul is saying here that God’s plan is that we become like Christ, as brothers and sisters. There should be a family resemblance.
That is why Martin Luther said that we are to be little Christs to one another. In the same vein, C.S. Lewis states that as Christians, we are named after Christ, not because he is absent from us, but because he dwells within us. Therefore, we are Christs to one another and do to our neighbors—and even those we regard as enemies—as Christ would do to them. Lewis continues, “He came to this earth to spread other men and women the kind of life he lives, what I call “good infection.”
Unlike Covid, this is an infection we want. For a life lived as a disciple of Jesus has to be caught. For only as it is caught can it be learned. And only as it is caught and learned can it be taught. Amen.