Since our daughter moved to Canada, married a Canadian and became a Canadian citizen, we are much more aware of Canadian culture and some its, often amusing, differences from the United States. One fairly recent difference is that the pictured coin, a Canadian penny, is no longer being minted there. While you can still spend one in Canada, they were withdrawn from circulation a few years ago and are becoming increasingly rare.
Then there is kilometers versus miles, milk sold in plastic bags, the dual labeling of merchandise in English and French, and the general fact that Canadians often tend to be a little more polite than Americans. Traveling to Canada is bit like a “Twilight Zone” shift, where most things are almost familiar, but not quite.
I’d like to suggest that the Gospel of Luke is like Canada in relation to the Gospel of Matthew, especially as regards Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount” versus Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain.” We tend to be more familiar with Matthew’s way of telling it than Luke’s, so when we pay attention to Luke’s version it can seem quite strange.
As we observed last week, the Beatitudes in Luke are stated differently than they are in Matthew, with alternative emphases. This week in Luke 6:27-38, we find words which ring very close to words in Matthew 5:42-48. But Luke’s version is in a different order and word choice is varied enough that it feels a little odd. The striking difference is in a comparison of Matthew 5:48 and Luke 6:36.
Matthew has Jesus wrap up His teaching about turning the other cheek, submitting to demands for service, lending to those who ask, and, most of all, loving one’s enemies with the admonition, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” a seemingly impossible demand. But in Luke that is transformed into the slightly more doable, but still difficult, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Thank God for Luke! The demand for perfection, whether drawn from Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 or from our own self-understanding, can be almost the opposite of mercy when wielded heavy-handed in judgment of others or of ourselves. But when we grasp that, while God is morally perfect in every way, one of the peaks of His perfection is a gentle, forgiving mercy toward those who are not so perfect, it changes everything.
Like I said, the demand for mercy like God’s is still a daunting command and may often elude us. But, unlike some shiny state of divine perfect being, it’s a virtue to which we may genuinely aspire and, with divine help, occasionally achieve.
It might do Americans some good to let go of our feelings of national superiority and emulate the “niceness” of Canadians. It might do Christians some good to let go of false and hurtful ideals of perfection, and emulate our merciful Lord.