Love Your Enemies...Really. A Sermon for the 7th Sunday After Epiphany Year C

 

One of the many signs like this that dotted the landscape of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, DC, 2019. 

The Epiphany season's Gospel lessons are a bit like an onion: each week, we peel back another layer to get a glimpse into who is this Jesus and what makes him tick. Next week, it will be the great reveal. But first, we are challenged to face one of the most difficult commandments of the followers of Christ: love your enemies. 

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(Text: Luke 6:27-36)

“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.” (Luke 6:27)

Perhaps you’re like me, and you want to look at this sentence over and over. Maybe turn the paper sideways, upside down…

In case we hadn’t picked up on this already: Jesus is countercultural. I mean, really counter to the culture…definitely counter to OUR culture. This is more than love beads and flower power. This instruction goes against everything logical.

It goes against how we are conditioned to respond.

And honestly, for anyone who has ever been abused…by an intimate partner or family member…or even a supervisor…this is more than foolish. This potentially deadly advice.

I want to scream at Jesus, “How dare you?! How am I supposed to preach about this?”

Truthfully, the ones I am most upset with are the folks who devised the lectionary readings. It’s not that we need to avoid this message of “Love your enemies.” But…and this tends to be one of the biggest issues with getting only small snippets of Scripture each week…in order to wrap our minds around what Jesus is saying…we need to remember what he said in last week’s Gospel…that list of who are the blessed and who are the woeful…and how do we learn to live with one another and move closer to each other instead of moving further apart.

So…let’s go back and revisit Luke’s beatitudes.

The ones blessed are the poor, the hungry, the mournful, the hated and excluded. Jesus tells them that all these things, these states of mind, body and spirit…the stuff that conventional wisdom of society says makes them a “less than”: God blesses these characteristics…and Jesus gives a future tense promise that “Yeah, you are in this place of hurting…and you WILL move through your trials and be in a better place.”

Then he turns to the woeful. Who are they? They are the rich, the ones with full bellies, the laughing, and those who sit in places of power. Jesus warns them, “Yeah, you’re feeling all cocky and confident now, but you’re trusting in the “things” and not the One God…and that’s gonna bite you if you’re not careful.” One group gets comfort; the other caution to not get too comfortable.

And now we are at today’s Gospel…which starts with Jesus saying, “But I say to you that listen.”

To. You. That. Listen.

My father used to always say right before he was about to lay down some hard truth or fact of life, “Listen and you might learn something.”

What are we listening for in this? I think it’s a couple of things.

One is that each one of us is going to find our selves in one of these camps…blessed or woeful…at one time or another.

For example, each one of us is going to find ourselves in mourning…whether it is due to a death of a human or pet or a dream that goes unfulfilled. Life is not without pain and suffering. And when that comes, some of the best medicine is that person who doesn’t pat us on the head or attempt to take away the hurt through some diversion. It’s that person who knows how to show compassion…which means “to suffer with.” Jesus’ whole life is one that was lived out of compassion…God with us. This is the person who sits with us, weeps with us, can relate to us in our pain.

At the same time…we will all experience moments of joy and laughter. It’s not that it’s bad to be happy; it isn’t and God desires for us to have joy. But if all we did is bounce through life without ever knowing sorrow or hurt, we’d really be of little help to that person who is suffering a loss.

In my experience, there’s nothing worse than being in place of deep sadness and having someone insist that I must be perky or “get over it” because they simply can’t relate to what I’m going through.

Understanding this….and having gotten their attention with that “listen and you might learn something” language…we get to the next part of Jesus’ very difficult teaching: “love your enemies…do good by them.” The wisdom of the rabbis…and remember Jesus is Jewish…was to teach that by aiding or helping an enemy that was a way to “subdue the evil inclination in the human heart” (b.B. Metz 32b). It’s that idea that the enemy won’t bite the hand that feeds them.

In a perfect world, that’s exactly how things might work. Our enemies would experience our generosity, our helpfulness and respond by no longer hating us. We’d clasp hands and sing Kumbaya and all would be right in the world.

But Jesus knew that the world he was living in was less than perfect, and so he goes on to explain himself:

“If you love those who love you what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them” (Luke 6:32)

Let’s put this in our own times. We’re living in a moment in our culture where there’s just so much polarization and anger. We have become so divided that we now have whole television networks devoted to keeping us separated and angry at each other while reinforcing our own prejudices. We’re being enticed and encouraged to tune each other out, become more tribal, only care for our own kind and let those who aren’t on “our side” just die.

I was reading a blog which talked about an episode of the TV show The Jeffersons in which George Jefferson saves the life of a KKK member. When the Klansman learns that a black man saved his life, he tells his son, “You should have let me die.”

And maybe we agree. Why should anyone save the life of a person dedicated to hatred and bigotry. Why not leave that one bleeding and dying in the ditch? Afterall, they won’t be grateful, right?

The Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who was known for his advocacy against the Nazis, noted that the instruction to “love our enemies” gets perverted when we think that “love” means something like being in love with the enemy. That’s not at all what Jesus or Paul or any of the New Testament writers are talking about. Niebuhr says:

“We aren’t told to love our enemies because they will love us in return.” We love them for the transcendent nature of love. This is agape love. A love that wants what’s good for our enemy because the good of our enemies will always be bound to that transcendent ideal…the sense that we are all connected as beloved children of God.

In the case of the Jeffersons episode, the hatred might have remained with the Klansman, but in that same episode, the Klansman’s son thanks Jefferson for saving his dad, rips up the Klan fliers, and walks out of the room. George’s ability to see the humanity beneath the hatred helped to turn the next generation of that family toward the light of Love instead of continuing on that dark path of self-centeredness and fear.

In the time of Jesus, he was giving this “love your enemy” instruction to a people living under an oppressive Roman Empire.

In our time, we are being challenged to see the humanity in that person in our lives…family members, neighbors or colleagues…with whom we just don’t see eye-to-eye.

If you’re struggling with this, you’re not alone. And I wish I could sugar-coat this teaching, but I can’t because this is some of the toughest work we’re called upon to do as followers of Jesus.

I will suggest that if you need a prayer to help with a particular person or situation, I’d recommend one that is in our Book of Common Prayer. It’s on page 816, and appropriately, it’s a prayer “For Our Enemies.”  I’ve used this prayer countless times in my advocacy work. It has helped me remember that ultimately, I can’t change the other person, but I can change how I respond to them, and recognize that we are interconnected even if we are at odds:

Let us pray:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from cruelty, hatred, and revenge. And in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.