Are You Carrying Excess Baggage

Kent had two pastoral moments that morning. One was that James Drake had just told the church to come see them, we're here for you — a week before leaving town for six months. The other was a birthday: Dotty Green, the church's artist in residence, turning 101.

And then the hardest sentence in the sermon.

"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Jesus is doing what he does all through this sermon. You have heard it said — here is the conventional wisdom, here is what the religious leaders have told you for years — but I say to you, and he turns it all upside down.

He is speaking to an occupied people, Jews under the boot of Rome. And he says: you know how you have been told things work in this world. How has that been going for you? That is not how it will be in my kingdom.

The excess baggage in the title is the grudge. It is heavy, it is old, and he is asking you to set it down.

Why love your enemies? Jesus gives a reason, and it is not that it works, or that they deserve it, or that it will change them.

"So that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust."

The reason is family resemblance.

God is indiscriminate in his kindness. The sun comes up over the house of the man who curses him. The rain waters the field of someone who has never once said thank you. God does not means-test his common grace, and never has.

So when you are kind to someone who has not earned it, you are not being naive. You are doing the family business. You look like your Father.

And it is worth sitting with the uncomfortable version: you have been on the receiving end of that indiscriminate kindness your whole life. Every sunrise you did not deserve. He was already loving his enemies. That is how you got in.

"For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?"

This is Jesus removing the floor from under our self-assessment.

We tend to grade ourselves on our warmth toward people who are warm to us. We are generous with our friends. We are patient with people we like. We show up for those who show up for us — and we feel reasonably good about it.

Jesus says: so does everyone. The most despised people in that society manage exactly that much. Reciprocal love is not a Christian distinctive; it is the baseline behavior of the human race.

It does not make reciprocal love bad. Love your friends well. It just cannot be the evidence you point to when asking whether the gospel has changed you.

The evidence is what you do with the person who cannot or will not return it. That is the part that has to come from somewhere other than nature.

"And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others?"

What more. That phrase is the whole Sermon on the Mount in two words.

Jesus is not interested in his followers keeping pace with the surrounding culture's decency. He assumes something extra, something visible, something that cannot be explained by ordinary human niceness.

And notice how small the example is. Greeting people. Not martyrdom, not radical sacrifice — who you say hello to. Who gets acknowledged, who gets included, who gets treated as a person rather than moved around like furniture.

Most of us would find the martyrdom easier to imagine than the consistent small courtesy toward someone we have written off.

Kent kept returning to it: the rules are different in this kingdom. Not because we are earning points or making up for bad karma, but because this is what the heart of a real disciple actually looks like.

What more are you doing? It is a fair question and it is asked kindly.

"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

And there it is — the sentence that ends the chapter and ends any hope of getting through this on your own steam.

If you have read the whole Sermon on the Mount honestly, this is where you should be. Not inspired. Flattened. Anger is murder. Lust is adultery. Love your enemies. Be perfect.

That is not an accident of tone. It is the design. Jesus raises the standard past every possible human reach precisely so that nobody walks away thinking they can manage it with more effort and better discipline.

The word behind "perfect" carries the sense of complete, whole, brought to its intended end. Not flawless performance — finished work. Which is a hint about who is going to do it.

So let it flatten you, and then look at who is speaking. The one demanding perfection is the only one who ever achieved it, and he did not come to grade you. He came to give it to you.