Love Your Enemies, Says Jesus
A Sermon by Andrew Colman based on Luke 6:27-39
Let’s remember for a moment the great commandment
Love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your heart, mind, and soul, and the second is like unto it - love your neighbour as yourself
Have you ever stopped to ask or heard it asked - well, who really counts as my neighbour?
I have heard answers to this question, such as the people who are in your community and with whom you have regular interaction. This doesn't mean that people outside the community don't deserve your love; it's just that they are not really your neighbours.
Another more encompassing answer is that anyone you might reasonably rub shoulders with. So the cashier at the supermarket, your teachers at school, the person on the street asking for food - all of them neighbours - who we are supposed to love like ourselves.
There are ever-widening circles until you reach the answer offered by African American Theologian Cain Hope Felder: " Neighbor means another human being, irrespective of the person's race or class."
That is all well and good, but the thing I think we mostly think of as a neighbour is someone who is neighbourly. Yes, there may be neighbours out there who are not great or even some who are terrible, but when we think of neighbours, it usually has a slightly positive connotation in one way another.
For the most part, we do not think of our neighbour as our enemy.
When we look of the definitions for the word enemy which we heard here tonight find that being an enemy is not a passive. They are active An enemy is an antagonist; they intend harm, and they are looking to hurt the ones to whom they are opposed.
If we find that someone we live beside is an enemy, we call the police or move away if we have the capacity for that. Or we at least put meaningful distance between us and them.
Of course, if your life or health of you or someone you love is truly in danger, then please do that. I am not advocating that we thoughtlessly put ourselves in harm’s way.
But even if it's not that bad and we perceive that whoever this person or group is is intending to our harm, we certainly don't want these people as our neighbours.
[If we take Felder's approach, that person is still our neighbour, as hard as that is to swallow.]
But we seem to live in social and political times where we are asking the question of who our neighbour is less and less, and we are starting to ask a bit more of a disturbing question.
Who is our enemy?
It seems that everyone has a story of someone they've known for a long time, suddenly having a very different perspective on things—whether it's healthcare, politics, justice, or any number of other topics—one that is vastly different from what we would expect of that person.
More often than I'd like to admit, what used to be meaningful discussions about disagreements has turned into vitriolic rants that cut deep, causing profound pain and disorientation.
All of a sudden, some folks who we used to consider, if not our friends, at least our neighbours, are all of a sudden acting like our enemies.
In which case it becomes time to gird up the defenses or at least put some real distance between us and them - or worse.
And then, tonight, we hear in our Gospel - I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
Love one’s enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you and pray for those who abuse you.
As per usual Jesus flips things upside down. We just spent so much time trying to figure out who really is our neighbour. Who really is it that we need to love /as ourselves?/ Our neighbours! But surely not those who are actively trying to hurt us. They must be excluded!
No, says Jesus. You must love your enemies. For all that we have been considering it is a seemingly impossible task. How in the world are we supposed to love people who are actively trying to hurt either us or the community that we belong to? Jesus just lays it out for us.
Bless those who curse you. This means responding to someone who has insulted you and wished you harm with a sincere Blessing of God. That they would find peace, wholeness, and a good life, and love that they would know the healing love of God.
And when you've been truly cursed/ hurt by someone, it's either a blessing or harbouring your anger and resentment. You could try letting it just slide off your back, but I find that there is something about our inner sense of justice that doesn’t really let that happen. Something needs to happen.
And of Resentment, Nelson Mandela, a man wrongfully imprisoned for 27 years of his life, said, "Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”
Blessing someone who has cursed you is not only an act of freedom - not being trapped by others’ wrongdoing - but also the very act that God promises to each and every one of us.
Very good, we say, I can bless someone from afar. I still don't have to be their neighbour. Well... then, Jesus preaches, do good to those who hate you. Opting out, or even leaving well enough alone, doesn’t seem to be an option.
This could look like so many things - but I’ll quote Martin Luther King Jr. here, at a little bit of length, for a stunning description of the heart of it.
“When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”
Easier said than done - but Jesus does not leave us there. He continues
Pray for those who abuse you.
Prayer makes all of this possible. It is the only way to hear an enemy’s curses and find the courage to offer a blessing in return.
Because prayer moves us from our broken condition and aligns our will with the very will of God.
This doesn't mean that all of our hurts and our struggles and pain magically go away. Or that healing from all those things is right around the corner.Neither does it mean that we have to go rushing into a painful potentially dangerous situation.
But it does mean that with all of the wounds that we carry, inflicted upon us by the Sin, the Powers and Principalities of this world, we can see through the eyes of God and see the Goodness that is inherent in all of creation - in each and every person.
When we see each other through the lens of prayer, through the eyes of God - enemies, those who curse, those who abuse, those we're afraid of, those whom we disagree with, distant neighbours, friends, family, loved ones, all of a sudden through the eyes of God... they all actually look the same.
Each one, made in God's image, each deserving of the love, and respect, the blessings and the good deeds as the other.
Now, where they fall on the spectrum of saftey changes how it things will unfold,
the will for their peace, wholeness, goodness, and love does not change.
Maybe what Felder was picking up on when he said that "neighbour means another human being, irrespective of the person's race or class" was that when Jesus is talking about neighbours, he is inviting us to see each other through his perspective, not our own which is tainted by the sin on the world. We are invited to see through his preseptice ne where we are all saints and sinners a like all beloved all washed clean by his precious blood.
Fleming Rutledge speaks to our aligning our will with God’s through prayer as an act of obedience of faith,
She says, "The obedience of faith in Jesus Christ does not mean restriction or claustrophobia or imprisonment. It means freedom. It means power. "
I’ll add here freedom from the poison of resentment; power over hatred,”
She continues, "Aligning oneself with the power of God in obedience to the Spirit: [to God's will] this is the power that overcomes the world.
The power that comes through prayer lets us do the impossible
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Amen