Matthew 5.38-end - Love your Enemies
• ¬Last week we were struggling to come to terms with Jesus’s very demanding teaching about the importance of forgiveness. We acknowledged how tough it can be to forgive or to ask forgiveness of people we have wronged.
• In today’s passage Jesus goes further and gets even more demanding as he speaks about the question of retaliation and then about attitudes to enemies.
• In fact the words of Jesus at this point get so demanding that we may assume he was exaggerating; that we are not really required to do what he said.
• Let’s take a fresh look at the two sections of the reading and ask God to help us interpret them.
An Eye for an Eye? Verses 38-42
• Look at verses 38-39. In Jesus’ day, people would use the OT saying (Leviticus 24.20) to justify taking revenge on anyone who had wronged them. But, as you may know, the reason for that OT law was to LIMIT the amount of retaliation which, from the beginning of time had tended to be way over the top (see Lamech’s statement in Genesis 4.24).
• This is a good example of how a lot of OT laws are not God’s ideal, not the last word on the subject, but were the best people could cope with at the time. History shows all too clearly where retaliation leads, but also raises the question: “is there any realistic alternative?”
• Now Jesus, speaking with his own authority as God, makes an extreme correction to the old law. He calls his disciples to take no revenge at all. In fact to invite a further attack. He’s certainly offering an alternative, but it doesn’t seem realistic or doable, does it?
• Put it this way; have YOU ever responded to a personal attack in the way Jesus suggests? Actually I was speaking to someone the other day who had their face slapped unfairly and who then handed their attacker a stick and invited them to continue the beating with the stick. This was a gamble, but it actually stopped the attacker in their tracks and led to a heartfelt apology and later to a big improvement in the relationship between the two people. A rare/surprising case?
• Someone who famously put this teaching of Jesus into practice was the Mahatma Gandhi, a Hindu who was a great admirer of Jesus. When he entered Noakili after the mass slaughter of Hindus by Muslims, most of the hatred just melted away. However, in his biography of Gandhi the Christian missionary E. Stanley Jones records that “One Muslim came and was unaffected by the Mahatma. He grabbed the Mahatma by the throat and choked him till he was blue in the face. In the midst of it the Mahatma kept on smiling and even laughing. The absence of resistance and even of resentment so unnerved the attacker that he desisted. Later he came and fell at the Mahatma’s feet and begged forgiveness for what he had done. The Mahatma carried on as though nothing had happened.” (Jones p133).
• Millions of Indians followed Gandhi’s example, resulting in the non-violent achievement of independence from the British Empire. You can probably think of some more recent examples…
• An important point to note is that neither Gandhi nor Jesus called people to be doormats. It is not a question of being completely passive in the face of evil.
• Stanley Jones explains it like this: “It was really not a passive resistance – it was an active resistance from a higher level. The opponent strikes you on the cheek, and you strike him on the heart by your amazing spiritual audacity in turning the other cheek. You wrest the offensive from him by refusing to take his weapons, by keeping your own, and by striking him in his conscience from a higher level. He hits you physically and you hit him spiritually.” (Jones p33).
• This is all very challenging - and we are only halfway through Jesus’ teaching…
Love your Enemies? Verses 43-48
• Now Jesus makes it even tougher by correcting the traditional teaching that we should love our neighbours and hate our enemies. Interestingly, the OT verse quoted says nothing about hating enemies. It says “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself.” (Leviticus 19.18). Of course in practice many of the people of Israel and its leaders did believe it was God’s will that they should hate their enemies, and some OT passages can be cited which support that view.
• But now Jesus comes along and turns it on its head. Speaking with his own authority, as God, he says “ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”
• Now this is radical teaching and there aren’t many people who could say this and have any credibility at all. Aren’t enemies almost by definition the people we don’t love and who don’t love us?
• I wonder how the disciples and the rest of the crowd on the Mount heard this? Did they think Jesus was exagerating or perhaps speaking about some ideal future society where everybody would get along? Was he just casting a dream of perfection and encouraging people to aim high even though they were bound to fall short?
• Certainly there is evidence in the gospels that the disciples did not really think he meant it, as for instance when they offered to call down fire from heaven on a village which had not provided hospitality.
• We’d better have some strategy for taking the sting out of this verse, because if we do take it seriously it is massively challenging. Maybe it is meant to be massively challenging. Look at the reason Jesus gives for commanding his followers to love their enemies: “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”
• Jesus explains further that God causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. God pours out his blessings freely on those who deserve them and on those who don’t. This is so unlike us!
• Anne Lamott puts it like this: “I know the world is loved by God, as are all of its people, but it is much easier to believe that God hates or disapproves of or punishes the same people I do, because these thoughts are what is going on inside me much of the time.” (Lamott p220-221).
• Well of course that would be easier. But if we seriously want to be followers of Jesus, and children of our Father in heaven, we know that love must reign and that it isn’t an easy option.
So how can we progress?
• First, we can ask God to help us. God has a lot of experience in this whole area of loving enemies. We could go right back to the story of Adam and Eve, who made themselves enemies of God by eating the forbidden fruit. Yet, even as God expels them from the garden, God makes Adam and Eve little suits of clothes to keep them warm.
• Or look at Cain who made himself an enemy of God by committing the first murder. Notice how God marks Cain to protect him from vengeance.
• We can pray for God to help us and by the working of the Holy Spirit to transform us into people who are growing more capable of loving our enemies. This is the kind of prayer that God loves to answer.
• We should also pray for those who persecute us and this I think is a very achievable step. Whether it is just for our own relief or for the more worthy desire of wanting God’s absolute best for every other person, we should pray for those who are our enemies, in whatever sense, to encounter God’s transforming love. This is another prayer that God loves to answer.
• As well as praying, we can also discover in the Bible and in the lives of the saints many great examples of loving enemies. The parables of Jesus contain some great examples – eg the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan – but above all it is the personal example of the life of Jesus which shows us how to love our enemies.
• Surely you are exagerating, we say. “Watch me.” He replies…
• It was while we were God’s enemies that Jesus died for us (Romans 5.10) and ultimately it is at the cross that we can receive understanding of God’s love and learn to share that love even for those who hate us.
• 2 exercises I suggest to help us experience this healing power of the cross. 1 is to use the many images of Jesus on the cross which are everywhere in this country – paintings, sculptures, carvings, perhaps the passion facade of the Sagrada Familia – and allow God to minister to you through the artist’s interpretation. This is not a very protestant or evangelical suggestion! Our focus is rightly on the empty cross which signifies the resurrection, but I think we skip too quickly past the cros son which Jesus hangs in agony and in perfect love.
• The second exercise is to ask God to draw you more deeply into the meaning of the sacrament of Holy Communion, in which we relive the drama of God in Christ loving us to the limit.
Conclusion
The cross of Jesus Christ is the perfect example of non-retaliation and of love of enemies. Jesus ends this part of his sermón on the mount with a call for his followers to “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”, which can also be translated “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”
As we learn to love even those we had thought to be our enemies, may we discover that they are no such thing.
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