Our world thrives on the adage, “If you scratch my back, I will scratch yours.” This system of reciprocity has shaped our society for most of its existence. We deal with contracts, quid pro quo, engagement-rewarding algorithms, social networks built on mutual benefit, and relationships negotiated around equal emotional return. Our world moves as if there is no such thing as a free lunch. This bleeds into our faith, where we think that to be a good disciple of Christ, we live as though we must look to the world for respectability, comfort, and modest civic duty. Our version of being “countercultural” is limited to superficial taboos (what media we consume, what parties we skip, what places we avoid). As such, we avoid Christ’s far more unsettling countercultural command. Comfort lulls us into trusting our own resources and reducing love to a transaction. Jesus reveals that true discipleship emerges when comfort is dismantled, driving us to rely entirely upon God and empowering us to love where there is zero guarantee of return. This becomes clear as Christ gets down on the level with his disciples and delivers the Sermon on the Plain.
20 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; 28 bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. 29 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. 30 Give to everyone who asks of you, and if anyone takes away what is yours, do not ask for it back again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 Instead, 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 himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition (Friendship Press, 2021), Lk 6:20–36.
Christ’s message opens with a call to patience and a warning, much like the prophets before Him, in the proclamation of blessings and woes. A woe is an exclamation of grief, pity, and warning, not, as some might think, a vindictive curse. Through the blessings, Jesus reminds the disciples that times will be hard and that, in those times, we cannot always dictate our circumstances and must rely more completely on the Almighty. In contrast, the woes are Jesus’ diagnosis that abundance insulates us from reality. When our pantries, investment accounts, and reputations are secure, our prayer that asks for “daily bread” becomes nothing more than liturgy, instead of an urgent cry that comes when we are poor. Comfort becomes a breeding ground for spiritual laziness; without urgency, we lose the sense of a grumbling stomach that is desperate for God. In the place of desperation, we misattribute the absence of trouble to the presence of God’s favor. When trouble and need show up, we find we no longer have certainty in what once comforted us. As Jesus calls the poor blessed, he identifies those uniquely positioned to recognize their absolute need for external help. The call is to turn our minds toward heaven, but we often cannot do so until we first realize this world offers us nothing permanent.
The Church’s mission is to become a countercultural force in our world. Jesus points to this by reminding us that grace is not only doing for others what will result in payback or payment of some kind, because Jesus shows us that grace goes against the tide of our cultural waves. Our churches are not meant to be another social club where we spend time only with people who look like us, share our politics, and will always return an invitation. That is not countercultural witness, because it serves only self-preservation. We do not witness to the grace offered to us in Christ by simply doing all the same things the world does, nor do we do so by proving our worthiness through shallow cultural markers of holiness. We are not rewarded by shielding ourselves from media produced by the culture, because the media of the culture is a mirror held up to reveal the truth about society; thus, to be truly countercultural, we must not act and carry out the Church the way our culture does. After all, discipleship is not measured by sheltering ourselves from secular culture; it is demonstrated by stepping into broken spaces to extend mercy where they cannot return the sentiment.
By letting go of the need for reciprocity, we truly understand that God’s love is often given without any return, and that the Church is called to mimic the Almighty God’s pattern of love. In His command in verse 35, “Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return,” we are called to remove the idea of personal payback from our minds completely. As the Church, we are expected to give through our finances, our social capital, and our emotional capacity to people and things that will not or cannot give back. This does not come naturally to us and may be hard to imagine; however, we cannot do it by intention alone. Rather, Christ makes it a reality because we have been given grace upon grace, and oftentimes the giver in unilateral love, and we are beneficiaries of His unilateral grace. Through this act, God justified the ungodly through Jesus Christ. Before we ever moved toward holiness, Christ died for us. Therefore, as we approach verse 36, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful,” we are called to care for our community the way God has cared for us in bringing salvation to the people. We do not complain that the people are ungrateful, nor do we make people “sing for their supper,” as God’s love for us comes as a gift of unmerited grace.
Throughout Jesus’ sermon to the disciples on the Plain, Jesus did not sit on high and point at them in judgment, but rather He walked beside them on their level to show them an example of love that was not reciprocal. Sometimes it can feel comfortable standing at a distance and proclaiming to people about God’s love, but Jesus invites us to get down on our neighbor’s level and show them love that asks nothing in return. With the temptation to sit back in our safe enclave, where comfortable living silences the true urgent and intentional prayer, we must ditch self-reliance and actively trust in God’s providence, and heed the call to love without any thought of reciprocity. When making the decision to sell the church building several years ago, the church looked at its budget and spending and realized that the resources of the church were allocated to servicing the building, which in turn offered a space to keep going at what we had been doing, and nothing toward ministry outside the walls. We had to look and realize we needed to be radically giving in service to the Gospel, and in order to do that we had to start by letting go of the building. So the challenge is this: are our resources primarily allocated to spaces of mutual benefit, or are they flowing toward those who cannot repay you? There exists a challenge for the church and our personal lives to practice love as a one-way street. This means we must forgive someone who has not apologized, serve a person or group that cannot offer social capital or networking opportunities, and bless someone who could be considered an opponent in a time of deep political division and discourse. Jesus came off the mountain to walk with us, so we need to live radically like Jesus and do the same in our community.
