Luke 6:(20-26) 27-42

“Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36)

Luke's sermon is preached on a level place rather than a mountain, and his beatitudes are spoken in the second person, to you who are poor, hungry, weeping and hated, each one matched by a woe to those who are rich, full, laughing and well spoken of. The bracketed opening gives the reading its edge: these are not general virtues but a reversal already under way. What follows is the hardest teaching in the gospel. Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, offer the other cheek, give to everyone who begs, lend expecting nothing in return. The ground of it is not that enemies deserve it but that God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil, so mercy here is imitation rather than strategy, and the measure you give is the measure you get back, pressed down and running over. The closing images turn the teaching back on the hearer: a blind guide cannot lead, a disciple is not above his teacher, and the speck in a brother's eye is invisible to anyone with a log in his own.

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