Love Your Enemies

Matthew 5:38-48

2-23-14

Rev. June Wilkins

Again, we’re hearing Jesus 

Sermon on the Mount

This is the last installment for us on Sundays,

There’s a two more chapters of it beyond this

if you care to take a look at it.

The expectations of the blessed ones are high

We are supposed to be a light to the world and

in Jesus sermon, last week we heard

how God has hopes for our relationships

with our friends and relatives

and wants us to work on problems in

those relationships.

And this week,

Jesus says one of the most radical things ever

Jesus says, “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.”

Reconciling with a friend or relative is one thing,

but this is a whole new level.

“Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you”

I think we would find it pretty shocking

if we hadn’t heard it a million times already.

And if we actually did it, it would truly set Christians

apart from the rest of the world

I think Christians agree to this in theory,

but when we start thinking about real situations we struggle.

So if someone does something to me, I don’t fight back?

If someone yells at me, or hits me, or hits my family,

I’m just supposed to turn the other cheek?

If someone bombs us, we have every right

even a responsibility to bomb them too, right?

If someone says something bad about me,

I’m going to say something bad about them.

It’s the cycle of violence that has plagued this

world since the beginning of time

Jesus starts off today by saying:

“You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

This was actually from the old Testament

The original Exodus law (21:24-25) reads

"eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,

foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."  

The original purpose of this law was to not to say that you had to take revenge if someone did something to you

but it was to curb excessive retaliation.

If someone in your family loses an eye,

that does not mean you can cut off the head of the perpetrator.

It’s about using justified violence, violence that fits the offense.

The next part is usually translated

“do not resist an evil-doer” or “do not resist evil”.

Well, Jesus resisted evil all the time, so what does he mean?

The word translated as resist in Greek is antistenai

and it was usually used to refer to armed fighting.

So a better translation would be : “Do not violently resist evil."

Do not violently resist violence.

Figure out another way to resist

Jesus isn’t changing the law here,

Jesus is taking it up a notch.

Jesus takes this rule that was meant to stop escalation

of violence and pushes it further.

Jesus is saying that blessed people

don’t even use justified violence.

The usual response to this is that if we

Don’t return violence for violence

if we loved or respected our enemies,

everyone would just take advantage of us,

steam-roller over us, that we will be door-mats.

We like to think that there’s only two ways to respond

to evil or violence or wrong-doing  --

Retaliate or ignore it.

But Jesus outlines a third:

Resisting without violence.

Jesus says,

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other one also.

And if someone takes your coat, then give them your shirt too.

These are not actions of passiveness,

These are acts of defiance.

Turning the other cheek is an act of defiance, not weakness.

Jesus didn’t say cower until they hit you again.

Jesus said turn the other cheek, offer it to them.

It is showing the other person that you

have not been reduced by their actions.

And if they wanted to humiliate you by taking your coat

then you show them that the

coat didn’t matter and give the shirt too.

Let them see you walking around in your underwear.

Jesus advocates standing up and showing

the enemy their wrongdoing by offering more.

Jesus advocates not reacting in fear,

but acting with the confidence and power of God.

Jesus advocates not getting

caught up in this endless cycle of escalating violence,

but exposing it for the activity that it is.

Martin Luther King Jr. took the power of this

seriously, they were the guiding principle of the civil

rights movement he led,

he did it himself, he lived it, and it worked.

When people saw protestors on TV getting hit with

the spray of hoses and attacked by police dogs,

and not retaliating, it didn’t show the

weakness of the protestors, it showed the

weakness of their enemies.

It was powerful, more powerful than seeing a another fight.

It showed that loving our enemies

is more powerful than hating them.

When Martin Luther King preached

on this part of Jesus sermon at his church,

and talked about the power of loving our enemies,

He told this story about Abraham Lincoln.

When Lincoln was running for president,

there was a man named Edwin Stanton

who ran all around the country talking about Lincoln.

He said a lot of bad things about Lincoln,

He was an abolitionist and he thought Lincoln was too weak.

He said a lot of unkind things.

Sometimes he would even talk about Lincoln’s looks

saying, "You don’t want a tall, lanky,

ignorant man like this as the president of the United States."

He wrote and spoke and went on and on.

Finally, Lincoln was elected and when he had to choose

his cabinet, he needed to choose a Secretary of War,

which is now secretary of defense, a very important

position that John Kerry holds now.

He looked all over and Lincoln chose Stanton.

And when Lincoln told his advisors and

they said to him: "Mr. Lincoln, are you a fool?

Do you know what Mr. Stanton has been saying about you?

Do you know what he has done, tried to do to you?

Do you know that he has tried to defeat you on every hand?

Did you read all of those derogatory

statements that he made about you?"

Abraham Lincoln said:

"Oh yes, I know about it; I read about it; I’ve heard him myself.

But after looking over the country,

I find that he is the best man for the job."

Mr. Stanton became Secretary of War,
and a few years later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
Stanton was called to his death bed and as he died,

Stanton said the famous words, "Now he belongs to the ages."

And he also said,

"There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.”

Martin Luther King said,

"If Abraham Lincoln had hated Stanton,

if Abraham Lincoln had answered everything Stanton said,

Abraham Lincoln would have not

transformed and redeemed Stanton.

Stanton would have gone to his grave hating Lincoln,

and Lincoln would have gone to his grave hating Stanton.

But through the power of love,

Abraham Lincoln was able to redeem Stanton."

I would also add that Lincoln was redeemed

by his own choice to love instead of hate.

 

Our enemies are redeemed by love.

We are redeemed by our love.

The world is redeemed by love.

How can we make those decisions to love instead of hate?

To pray for those who do us wrong?

In the grocery store, while we’re driving?

Can we pray for politicians we don’t agree with?

Can we pray for those who have treated us badly?

Those who have betrayed us?

Those who when we think of them and what they did

it makes our blood boil.

Can we pray for those people?

Can we pray even for people who resort to violence?

Murderers? Terrorists?

Who makes you the maddest? Pray for them now.
Not that they change, but that they would find peace

and joy and that no harm would come to them..

 

Love has an awesome power.
It is the power of God working in our world.

And Jesus has given it to us to use.

We are the blessed people,

we are the light of the world.

God means to use us to

redeem the world.