Grace Cathedral

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“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Lk. 6).

In these days of enmity how shall we live? This sermon is about the good news that even today we can live with grace and joy.

1. Jesus says, “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you” (Lk. 6). All week I thought of this as our president belittled the leader of Ukraine calling him an “unelected dictator” and implying that he was somehow responsible for the Russian invasion of that country which has killed hundreds of thousands of people.¹

Thousands of federal employees have not just lost their jobs but seem to be actively despised by our fellow citizens as “the enemy.” I have in mind Elon Musk’s unkind tweet, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”² Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget at one time said, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected… When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”³

Perhaps these three men regret these rash words. Perhaps these sentiments are taken too much out of context or I do not fully understand what they are trying to communicate. My point is that although enmity, retribution and revenge are not new, these days they seem particularly conspicuous, even legitimate.⁴ What fears drive those who want to make other people so afraid?

I heard somewhere that human beings are the only animals who end their our own lives.⁵ Perhaps this is because we can use reason, or because of the power of language. We can form an abstract vision of the future that is more terrifying to us than our own death. We can imagine that nothing exists outside of our own ego. And so we try to protect ourselves by controlling the world around us – but we cannot succeed.

At times we think we really know how things are. We may even have powerful intuitions about how things are going to turn out – but we are wrong. We are not God. If you were to be severely injured in an accident this afternoon would you want the surgeon operating on you to be motivated by fear, or by love and grace? By grace I mean that confidence in being guided by God in the work you were created to do.

Jesus teaches that we do not exist simply to keep existing, or to wield power over others. We exist for love. We exist to give grace and to receive it. Jesus flatly rejects seeking revenge and goes much further. He says, “If you love those who love you what credit is that to you?” He says, “Love your enemies… expecting nothing in return.”

Love is not a strategy for gaining something else. It is not quid pro quo “you do something for me then I’ll do something for you.”⁶ Jesus says that by its nature, love is not a transaction.

These last few weeks have given me a new appreciation for the non-transactional arenas in our shared life. Our society protects areas of objectivity and fairness – I’m thinking of the court system, journalism, medicine, science, the work of civil servants and investigators. Even as we acknowledge that it is impossible to have perfect goodness, fairness or truth, we should resist the tendency to turn every institution in our society into a kind of political weapon. But this sermon is not about that. It is about you and me and what we decide to become.

2. At one point the poet Jane Hirshfield (1953-) came out to California to be a writer. She was curious about Zen teaching and made her way to Tassajara, the retreat center in the Ventana Wilderness above Big Sur. Although she went to learn about Buddhism intending to visit for only a week she ended up staying for months. In fact she writes, “I think of this time as the diamond at the center of my life. Whoever I now am came out of that experience.”

This is her poem “Tree.” “It is foolish / to let a young redwood // grow next to a house./ Even in this // one lifetime / you will have to choose. // That great calm being, / this clutter of soup pots and books – // Already the branch-tips brush at the window. / Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.”

Right now immensity is tapping at your life. Right now Jesus is calling you to come closer.

Over the centuries many people have quoted Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Plain. They call it the “Golden Rule.” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” But really Jesus means exactly the opposite of how we use this expression. For him the whole point of love is that it exists outside that world of exchange. Even sinners love the people who love them, do good to them, and pay back what they lend.⁷

The tone Jesus uses here really matters. He is not solemnly giving us a “rule” golden or otherwise. He is not saying “Thou shalt love… or else.” There is a lightness in his words that is important, they border on the ridiculous and absurd. If someone hits one cheek offer the other, if someone takes your shirt give him your underwear, don’t ask for your property back from the one who took it from you, pray for them.

This is not encouraging anyone to stay in an abusive setting. Doing so is harmful for both the abused and the abuser. And Jesus wants us to be safe. But we can still avoid dehumanizing or dismissing anyone. The question is how are we going to live. How are we going to look at the world.

One of the most wonderful things about the Greek text is that Jesus does not say if you love those who love you, “what credit is that to you.” He more literally says if you love those who love you what “GRACE” (Xaris) is that to you. To go on, “if you do good to those who do good to you, what grace is that to you. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what grace is that to you.” It says, “God is kind to the ungraceful and wicked.”

We have the chance to be people of Grace. Jesus promises just this saying, “You will be children of the Most High.” Let me share a couple of pictures of what this looks like. In his book Works of Love the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) writes that we know that we are capable of love because God commands it. He goes on, “But what, then is love? Love is to presuppose love; to have love is to presuppose love in others; to be loving is to presuppose that others are loving.”⁸ For me presupposing love means working to understand the behavior of those around me in the best possible light.

The story in Genesis of Joseph gives a picture of what this love looks like. Of all his brothers Joseph’s father Jacob loves him the most. He gives him special clothing. As a boy Joseph tells his brothers about dreams he has of sheaves of grain and then the sun, moon and stars bowing before him. This infuriates them and they plot to take his life. At the last minute they sell him as a slave to merchants on their way to Egypt.⁹

Many years later Joseph has risen up to rule over all of the land under Pharaoh. During a severe famine his brothers come to Egypt to beg for grain. They come into his presence and do not recognize him. Joseph says, “I am Joseph.” They are so upset they are paralyzed. Joseph says, “Come closer to me. I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt… do not be distressed or angry with yourselves… for God sent me here to preserve life” (Gen. 45). This is life with grace. We admire Joseph for being able to forgive.

You should never say to someone who is suffering that God has a plan for them. But if you are someone who has suffered and you have learned the true meaning of love, you may one day find a way to see this for yourself.

3. Over thirty years ago my teacher Annemarie Schimmel taught me to love the Sufi mystical poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273). He grew up at the crossroads of the known world in what is modern day Turkey and had experience with Jews, Christians and Muslims. His joyful faith in God inspires me. For Rumi, Joseph represents what is beautiful. He embodies our story of feeling separated from and then reunited to God. He embraced the paradox of love – the more one is captured by it, the freer one becomes.¹⁰

Rumi also loved Jesus very much. In contrast to the sternness of John the Baptist, Rumi saw Jesus as the loving prophet. He tells a story about serious John reprimanding Jesus for always smiling and saying, “don’t you ever think of God’s wrath?” Jesus with a smile asks in return, “don’t you ever think of God’s loving-kindness.” The story goes on. A saint who overhears this exchange asks God who he loves more. God responds, “The one who thinks better of me.”

In a more serious poem Rumi writes, “The body is like Mary. Each of us has a Jesus, but so long as no pain appears, our Jesus is not born. If pain never comes, our Jesus goes back to his place of origin on the same secret path he had come, and we remain behind, deprived and without a share of him.”

Above all Rumi encourages us to pray. He says that prayer is the most precious part of human life. It is where we leave the world of matter behind to feel ourselves in the presence of God. It is a shield that protects us from the “arrows of affliction.”

The first story by Rumi (in the Mathnawi) to be translated into a Western language is about a man who prayed to God for a long time and did not hear an answer. At last Satan prevailed on him and he gave up on prayer. But then the man, “heard the Divine Voice” saying, “Your call ‘O God!’ is My call ‘I am here.’ / Your supplication is My message, dear, / And all your striving to come close to Me / Is but a sign that I draw you to Me. / Your loving quest and pain: signs of My grace! / In each ‘O God!’ a hundred ‘Here’s my Face!’”

In these days of enmity how shall we live? We have a choice. We can imagine that nothing beyond our ego exists. We can wake up alternating between being terrifying and being terrified. We can nurse our rage and resentment, enjoying our aggression while being chained to our own anger. Or as immensity taps at our life and Jesus invites us closer, we can presuppose love in others, expecting nothing in return. Through the love of the Most High we can become children of grace.

¹ Matt Murphy & Jake Horton, “Fact-checking Trump claims about war in Ukraine,” BBC Verify, 19 February 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9814k2jlxko

² Elon Musk wrote this tweet on February 4, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/pageoneplus/quote-of-the-day-inside-musks-aggressive-incursion-into-the-federal-government.html?searchResultPosition=2

³ In a 1999 letter to Amazon shareholders Jeff Bezos wrote that he tells employees to “wake up terrified every morning” so that they can be more productive. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/fact-check-jeff-bezos-once-030000611.html
Stace Young, “I’m a Federal Employee. This Is What We Most Need in the Trump Era,” The New York Times, 12 January 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/12/opinion/administrative-deep-state-trump.html

⁴ Grievance, resentment, vengeance, retribution, cruelty, the gratuitous infliction of suffering – seem far more prominent today than at any time in my life. In moments like this the love of Jesus could not be more important.
During a campaign event last summer our current president said, “I am your justice. For those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” FBI Director Kash Patel promised to purge enemies saying, “We are going to come after you.” Cited in Peter W. Marty, “A Dish Best Not Served,” The Christian Century, March 2025.

⁵ This paragraph and the next come from an Instagram post by lorilet_monegro, Dr. Lorilet Monegro.

⁶ I have in mind the arrangement protecting the New York City mayor Eric Adams from immediate prosecution so that he can enact the president’s immigration policies.

⁷ The love of Jesus is grace, that is it expects nothing in return. Although it saves our life, it is completely free. God is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked too.

⁸ Therefore whatever experience you may have had, however embittering, so much so that You may wish never to have been born and the sooner the better to become silent in death-think only of how love edifies, and you will again be built up to speak! There is only one up-building sight and only one up-building subject; yet everything can be said and be done for up-building, for wherever up-building is, there love is, and wherever love is, there is up-building, and as soon as love is present, it builds up.
Love builds up by presupposing that love is present. Have you, my reader, experienced this yourself? If any person has ever spoken to you in such a way or acted toward you in such a way that you really felt yourself built up, it was because you quite vividly perceived that he presupposed love to be present in you. Or what kind of person do you think another man might be who could in truth build you up? Is it not true that you would wish him to have insight, knowledge, talent, and experience? But still you would not consider these to be decisive but rather that he was a reliable, loving person, that is, truly a loving person. Consequently you consider that up-building depends decisively and essentially upon loving or having love to such a degree that one can abandon himself to it. But what, then, is love? Love means to presuppose love; to have love means to presuppose love in others; to be Loving means to presuppose that others are loving. Let us understand each other. The qualities a man can possess must be either qualities he has for himself, even if he makes use of them in relationship to others, or qualities for others. Wisdom is a characteristic for oneself; power, talents, knowledge, and such are likewise qualities for oneself.
To be wise does not mean to presuppose that others are wise. It may, however, be very wise and true for a truly wise person to assume that all men are far from being wise. Because wise is an exclusive characteristic, it is not impossible to suppose that there could be or could have been a wise man who dared say that he assumed all others to be ignorant. In theory (to be wise and to assume that all others are ignorant) there is no contradiction. In the actuality of life such an expression would be arrogance, but in pure theory there is no contradiction. If, however, one were to think that he loves, but also that all others were unloving, we would say: no, stop; here is a contradiction in pure theory, for to be loving means precisely to assume, to pre-suppose, that other men are loving. Love is not an exclusive characteristic, but it is a characteristic by which or in virtue of which you exist for others. In ordinary speech we properly say, when reckoning a person’s qualities, that he is wise, understanding, loving — and we do not notice what a difference there is between the last characteristic and the first ones. His wisdom, his experience, and his understanding he has for himself, even if he makes gifts of them to others. But if he truly is loving, then he does not have love in the same sense that he has wisdom, but his love consists precisely in presupposing that we others have love.
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love Tr. Howard and Edna Hong (NY: Harper Torchbooks, 1962) 211.

⁹ Potiphar, the captain of the Pharoah’s guard buys Joseph who rises to be the manager of the whole household. Potiphar’s wife (in legends she is called Zulaykha) falls so deeply in love with Joseph. He refuses her. She falsely accuses him of rape and he is imprisoned. He only is released when he interprets the Pharaoh’s dreams. Rumi writes a poem in the voice of Zulaikha who in her love sees his beauty everywhere until his very name is, “food for her, and fur on days of cold” (28). Her “sole intention was but Joseph’s name.”

¹⁰ Annemarie Schimmel, I Am Wind You Are Fire: The Life and Work of Rumi (Boston, MA: Shamballa Press, 1992) 28, 119-122, 182 .”