But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you

 "But I say to you who hear:  Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.  To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also.  And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.  Give to everyone who asks of you.  And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back.  And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.

"But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.  And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners lend to receive as much back.  But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.  For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.  Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged.  Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you:  good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."

- Luke 6:27-38

Yesterday we read that Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.  And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles:  Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot; Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor.  And He came down with them and stood on a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came to hear Him and be healed of their diseases, as well as those who were tormented with unclean spirits.  And they were healed.  And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.  Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said:  "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.  Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man's sake.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy!  For indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.  But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger.  Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.  Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets."

 "But I say to you who hear:  Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.  To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also.  And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either.  Give to everyone who asks of you.  And from him who takes away your goods do not ask them back.  And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise."  We continue to read what is known as the Sermon on the Plain (as Jesus stood on a level place to preach, as we read in yesterday's reading, above).  Here my study bible reminds us that the "Golden Rule" of doing to others as we'd wish them to do to us is the minimum of Christian virtue.  It places humankind's desire for goodness (what Cyril of Alexandria calls "the natural law of self-love") as a basic standard of how to treat others.  It's the first step on the path to perfection of virtue; our ultimate desire as Christians is union with Christ.  What that means is that God's mercy and judgment is the standard, rather than the desire of human beings.

 "But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.  And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners lend to receive as much back.  But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.  For He is kind to the unthankful and evil.  Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful."  We have to understand what Jesus is aiming at here.  Our behavior toward others is not merely conditioned by theirs toward us.  Our behavior, rather, is conditioned by our love of Christ, our relationship to God, our own choices.  Everything is negotiated through our relationship to God, which is our primary relationship.  To show mercy is to be "God-like."  Jesus teaches us a kind of dispassion, which in the ensuing years and centuries of the Church, will be the hallmark of monastic ascesis.

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged.  Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you:  good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."  My study bible tells us that mercy precludes human judgment.  Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over describes how an honest and generous merchant would measure bulk goods.  For instance, if one presses down a on a measure of flour, it yields a more generous amount than flower fluffed up with a lot of air remaining inside the measure.  My study bible says that the blessings God intends to put into our hearts are more generous than we can possibly contain, but that also depends on the spirit in which we ourselves give and forgive.

In yesterday's reading and commentary, we wrote that nothing Jesus says or does should be taken out of context and magnified, one passage over another.  His sayings in today's reading in the Sermon on the Plain are no exception to that.  They fit within a particular understanding and a particular goal of Christian life.  They are not abstract ways of living life, separate from a relationship to Christ, to God.  Rather, they are part and parcel of a way of living life and of seeing our place in the cosmos.  Our real goal, as Christians, is union with Christ, and all that we do -- every practice and every form of worship -- is a component of that goal and contributes to it.  With this in mind, we come to see Jesus' words as those which are teaching us to choose to be "like Him."  That is, to choose to participate in the Kingdom, to be a part of this spiritual realm.  In that context, how we treat others becomes negotiated by our participation in this Kingdom -- and not merely some form of reciprocal action based on emotions or sentimentality.  To be merciful is to seek to find His way through a situation.  It is to leave Judgment to Him.  It is to find in our love of God the help to know what it is to live the life He calls out of us, leads us into, blesses us with.  We look closely at Jesus' words, "Give, and it will be given to you:  good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom," and we see a promise of virtue.  What can God put into our bosom?  This isn't necessarily a promise of return of material goods, nor is it a promise that all people are going to treat us well in return for our mercy.  It is, rather, a promise about the gifts of the Spirit and the life that becomes a part of our own lives.  Jesus promises that our reward will be great, that we will be sons of the Most High.   His words and teachings are not about creating a kind of utopia in the world, nor does His mercy preclude justice.  Rather, He is teaching us to carry the Kingdom into the world, to participate in that Kingdom even while we are in the world, to live and grow the Kingdom of heaven within ourselves.  He is talking about what kind of human beings we can be and become on His path, His way, and through participation in His life.  This is what He offers us, what the Church understood from its most ancient inception.  We can't use abstract notions about His words to understand the aim and the goal here, which is nothing less than our own transformation.  It's interesting to compare verses in today's passage with St. Paul's quotation from Proverbs 25 in a passage in the Epistle to the Romans.  St. Paul writes, "Therefore 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.'  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:20-21).  We participate not in a Kingdom of our own making or invention, but rather in a spiritual Kingdom in which Christ is Judge.  If we would be sons of the Most High, we live to Him, and our relationships with others become negotiated through our relationship to Him.  In this sense, we ask that our debts be forgiven as we forgive those who in some sense are indebted to or who have trespassed against us (see Matthew 6:9-14).  Life's riches are those blessings of the Kingdom which help us, even to our greatest surprise, to become those who are patient and merciful, who may ask for discernment in all circumstances -- or even whose greatest hurts can be given up to God for reconciliation.  This is where He leads us.  It is not a road that makes us "perfect" in some worldly sense.  Rather, it is a road of holiness, in which God's work and Spirit can work in us, even with our struggles and flaws, which is quite something else all together.