February 20, 2022
“But I say
to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate
you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 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. Give to everyone who
begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them
again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“If you love
those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who
love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that
to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you
hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to
receive as much again. But 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 is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful,
just as your Father is merciful.
If anyone was disturbed by last week’s blessings and woes, here is some teaching that goes even further. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. We hear Jesus say all of these things. It’s no wonder that somebody wanted to kill him.
These are among the most extreme teachings that he imparts, far more extreme than the average person is willing to go. I don’t know if you have any enemies. If so, I will venture a guess that you don’t actively love them. The best any of us could do is to ignore them, to give them room to live on the same planet, but pray that they don’t come too close.
Say, for instance, you have been elected to the local school board. One night when you have a quiet agenda, an angry parent stomps in the door. She is ready to attack you for policy decisions that your board has taken. To focus her fury, she singles you out, points, begins to accuse, calls you names, declares you are stupid, and then concludes the speech by quoting Bible verses. I will bet today’s offering plate she is not quoting these Bible verses. I’ll also bet you won’t be thinking of them.
So what might you do? How would you respond? There are plenty of options. You could start yelling at her and call her names. You could dial up the police. You could sit quietly and think of a logical rebuttal. Or you could do what a lot of folks I respect would do: listen as patiently as possible to her pain, hold your tongue, pray for a clear head, wait until she’s done, and then say something like, “Thank you for sharing your opinion.” Nobody wants to inflame an explosive situation. So you take the high road. Go home to sip the Maalox.
We don’t know what to do with enemies. If we could, we would prefer a quiet life, surrounded by those whom we enjoy. Preferably people a lot like us, who see the world from a similar perspective. These days, such folks are harder and harder to find.
That may be the rule, rather than the exception. Ever notice how the Bible is full of enemies? Why, just to take one test case, there are seventy-seven times in the Book of Psalms when the Poet mentions his enemies. Sometimes he describes how they bully him. Other times he complains, “Why doesn’t get rid of them?” Often he simply moans, “How long must I endure my enemies?”
Notice, however, he never declares any love for them. And if he prays for them, he prays they be scattered to the winds or destroyed. Jesus knew the Psalms. He prayed the Psalms. But here, he says, “Love the people who hate you.” What a radical thing to say!
Of course, he had some experience with this. We heard a couple of weeks ago about that first sermon in the hometown congregation. Their smiles turned to snarls. And they tried to throw him off a cliff. Ever since, just as he has collected followers and healed the sick, he has made a lot of enemies – and it’s only chapter six.
· The demon in Capernaum said, “Jesus, what are you doing here? Leave us alone.”
·
Then
he put his hand on a leper; he wasn’t supposed to do that.
·
He
leaned over a paralyzed man and said, “Your sins are forgiven.” The religious
people said, “Who do you think you are?”
·
Then
he called out a tax collector and said, “Follow me.” The man left his job,
which was a good thing, but then hosted Jesus for a banquet in his home, and
that became a bad thing.
Oh yes, Jesus has been making a lot of enemies. We probably should expect that. In Luke’s stories of his childhood, there’s no Evil King Herod; he’s lurking over in the Gospel of Matthew. But there is an old man named Simeon, hanging around the temple, peeking into all the blue blankets, and asking, “Is this the One?” When he sees Baby Jesus, he scooped him up in his arms, blessed the child, blessed God – and then said to the mother, “This one will make others rise and fall; and he will be opposed.” Well, thanks for nothing, Old Man Simeon. You have announced his destiny before he’s weaned from his mother.
Life is not only full of conflict. Life is conflict. I hate to bring that up, but it’s true. And I’m not referring to the aggrieved politician who can’t process his own mistakes, nor the tyrant still fuming that his empire broke up thirty years ago. No, the conflicts come every day. Often the conflict sparks because we are trying to do the good thing, or at least the best we can.
I have a good friend, a pastor, who gets a long e-mail complaint every week from one of his absent church members. The guy is not even there, but he tunes in on YouTube, then writes a missive to complain about what he sees. Just to rub it in, he watches the online service one of those Glorious Churches with a large production staff, and then compares the Glorious Church with his own church, where he no longer attends. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Who needs it?
Yet I tell you, my friend reads every note, responds as positively as he is able, leaves his chainsaw at home, and encourages the Outraged Dude to pray, forgive, and keep tuning in. My buddy is a spiritual giant. Just like Jesus.
If there is anything I have observed in the last five years of national poison (or is it the last twenty-five years of national poison), it is the regularity of conflict. We pray for peace because we have so little of it. And we know there’s no way to settle differences on a cable TV talk show. There is no lawsuit that can ever settle a score. Something else has to happen. And in saying that, we have a clue what it is.
Years ago, one of our elderly church members regularly sent me mail. No, he wasn’t complaining about me or any of you. He was lamenting about the world. Every time he saw something terrible in the newspaper, he clipped it and mailed it to me. Sometimes he saved them up. Once he sent a large manila envelope. Now why did he do that? Because he knew the world is a mess. Even here, in the manicured suburbs, there’s a lot of pain.
“So what do we do?” That’s what I asked him one day. “What do we do? You send me all these clippings of all these terrible things, what do we do?” He looked like I sprayed him with cold water on a February day.
“Well, you’re the expert,” he started to say. I cut him off and said, “I’m no expert. I don’t know very much at all.” That was another splash of cold water. So I said, “All I know is we have a very clear choice. Either we stay immobilized in pain, or we choose to step beyond it and find some way to express the love of God.”
That was more than he could handle, so he blurted out, “You’re probably going to tell me how Jesus says to love our enemies.” In a rare moment, God’s Spirit gave me enough moral clarity to say, “Bob, Jesus only commanded us to do what he was willing to do himself.” And that includes love our enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
The same Jesus who said such things is the One who forgave the people who put him on the cross. That’s how sin is cancelled, by forgiveness. That’s how brokenness is healed, by doing good. That’s how hate is extinguished, by love – generous, self-giving love. Just to prove it, Jesus came back after the cross to keep the movement going. And that’s why we are here.
Now you might think church is the place where enemies drop their weapons and people get along. After all, we talk a lot about forgiveness and mercy and grace. We talk a lot. We do a lot of talking…but talk can be cheap.
What I need to tell you is when Jesus speaks of love, he’s talking of active love. The word for love is “agape.” That is love that moves. Agape love comes from a place of power and moves to a place of service. Agape love comes from the heart of heaven and moves down here. Agape is what the apostle Paul is singing about in First Corinthians: patient, kind, never insisting on its own way, rejoicing in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It never ends, and it never sits still.
When Jesus says, “Love your enemies,” he is speaking to victims, to those who have had one cheek slapped, to those who have had their coats taken away from them. His word to them is not to merely stand there and take it, but to take the initiative and to counter hatred with love. That’s the ongoing task of those who follow Jesus. It’s the power of the word he speaks. On behalf of God, Jesus announces there’s another way to live, and it’s the way of acting for the benefit of other people. That’s the very definition of love.
In a sermon called
“Loving Our Enemies,” Martin Luther King Jr had these famous words to say:
Why should we love our enemies? The first
reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding
deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out
darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do
that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness
multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says,
“Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable
admonition… The chain reaction of evil (hate begetting hate, wars producing
more wars) must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.[1]
Today it’s enough to receive the words of Jesus and to
remember how he begins to teach: “I say to those who listen: love, do good,
bless, pray.” Anybody listening?
[1] Martin Luther King Jr, “Loving Our Enemies,” The Strength to Love (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2010) p. 47
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