Genesis 45:3-11, 15 & Luke 6:27-38
Some authors claim that the teaching to love our enemies is the only entirely original and unique teaching of Jesus. These scholars point out that nearly everything else Jesus teaches can be found in the writings of the Old Testament, and much of the same teachings can be found in some form across multiple world religions that predate Christianity. I am not a world religions scholar, so I cannot say if this claim is true, but I do believe this teaching of Jesus is one of the most challenging to wrestle with. Loving our enemies, blessing those who curse us, turning the other cheek goes against every human impulse, defies our sense of justice, and at its worst these teachings have been used to justify and perpetuate some of the worst evils committed by humanity.
Jesus’s teaching to turn the other cheek has been used to keep women trapped in violent marriages and children in abusive homes, to subjugate and enslave people of color, to vilify those seeking liberation from violent and oppressive systems, to deny self-preservation to people who have been rejected by their families. I believe with my whole heart that this weaponization of Scripture is what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain, and I believe these malicious misinterpretations grieve the heart of God. So let me be very clear, because I know that people in other pulpits may have told you otherwise—Loving your enemies and forgiving those who sin against you does not require you to subject yourself to further harm. Jesus commands that we love one another, and sometimes the most loving thing we can do is leave. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do is say no, no more. Sometimes the most loving action available to us is to entrust someone to God’s care and walk away. As the great Black liberation theologian James Cone once wrote, “We must insist that God’s love and God’s righteousness are two ways of talking about the same thing.” Dr. Cone understood that God’s love means justice for oppressed peoples and abused individuals and God’s righteousness means a refusal to accept or endorse the behavior of oppressors and abusers.
We have in the story of Joseph and his brothers a parable of Jesus’s sermon. Joseph, the favorite son whose envious brothers sold him into slavery, has worked his way up from enslavement and imprisonment to vizier of all Egypt. Through his skills and spiritual gifts, chance, and God’s grace he has found himself in a position of power and authority, and with these gifts and powers he has saved an entire nation from starvation. A famine that he predicted has come to pass, and he has ensured that Egypt’s granaries are full. His brothers back home are struck by the same famine, and as climate refugees they make the desperate journey to Egypt in search of food. They do not recognize the brother they once despised and betrayed, but he recognizes them instantly. What we don’t see in this one moving passage is that Joseph did not immediately forgive and forget. He toyed with them, tested them, made them bring forward the youngest brother who he then took hostage. Perhaps he wanted to see if they would make the same mistake twice, sell out another one of their father’s beloved sons for a few pieces of silver. Or perhaps he felt the temptation of revenge, that most human inclination to make another suffer as we have suffered. Whatever his motivation, he cannot keep it up for long. More than once, Joseph is overcome with emotion, until finally he cannot hold it together any longer. “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” A powerful and respected advisor to the Pharoah, treated as a member of the royal household, married to an Egyptian aristocrat, dissolves into a sobbing puddle as he asks after his daddy’s health. The callousness of the rejection from his brothers in childhood has not succeeded in hardening Joseph’s heart.
Joseph’s soft, broken-and-mending heart has mercy on these men over whom he now has the power of life and death. They are stunned speechless, dismayed to learn that the person they had so abused is now the one person who can save them and their families from starvation. In a world where might makes right, Joseph would be justified in deporting them, sending them away empty and vulnerable like he was after they disrobed him and threw him into a pit as a child. In a retributive justice system, Joseph could have them detained indefinitely, taking their freedom as they so willingly sold his. In an honor/shame culture, Joseph can expose their wrongdoing to their father, all but guaranteeing their disavowal and disinheritance, leaving them destitute and homeless in addition to starving.
But Joseph does not condemn them. He forgives them. He gives to them freely and abundantly of what he has to offer. To these men who literally took away his coat, Joseph gives even his heart, kissing them and weeping upon them and talking with them after so many years. Is this justice? Not by any earthly standard. Is this fair? Definitely not. Is this response what Jesus asks of every survivor of abuse, neglect, betrayal, and trafficking? I don’t think so. But I do believe that Joseph himself embodies here what Jesus will teach many generations later.
Joseph has remained aware throughout his enslavement, imprisonment, and redemption that God was with him, redeeming that which others intended for evil. Joseph ends up with the power of life and death over the people who had the power of life and death over him and he chooses not to answer their violence and rejection with violence and rejection of his own. Joseph has the opportunity to restore the relationship and give them life instead of death. In the midst of enormous suffering Joseph has found a way to preserve life and share abundance to prevent further suffering. Joseph understands that God had restored his life, and he chooses not to relinquish that life for the sake of revenge. If Joseph had become like his brothers, if he had harbored hatred and bitterness and vengeance in his heart, something in him would have died. If he had struck back at them, if he had exercised his power over them to exact revenge against them, he would have succumbed to the same hardness of heart that allowed them to behave violently against him.
The hard teaching of Jesus, the imperative to love the enemy and do good to the hater and pray for the abuser, is about our identity as children of God. It is about God’s identity as a god of mercy, justice, and love. To be children of such a God is to inherit the kingdom of heaven, and with such a great inheritance comes a great moral responsibility. The responsibility to be merciful as God is merciful, to have compassion as God is compassionate, to be generous as God is generous, regardless of what others might choose to do. As children of God we are called to live into that identity even when others fail to do the same. Our enemies, no matter who they are, all have one common goal, at the very heart of it all—to make us forget that we are beloved children, bearers of the image of God. We cannot let them win, and the only way to be sure they don’t is to remember who we are and whose we are, and to act accordingly. For good measure, pray for them. They are God’s beloved children too.
Mother A Writes 