2011-2-20 Love Your Enemies
Eric P. Lemonholm
Epiphany 7A
Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; Psalm 119:33-40; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23; Matthew 5:38-48
Love Your Enemies
[i]In Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount today from Matthew 5, we hear some difficult words.
The most difficult, perhaps, is at the end: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I am not perfect.
Unlike Mary Poppins, I am not even “practically perfect in every way.”
Are you?
“Be perfect” is actually not a very good translation.
The word translated as “perfect” (tevleio”), is better translated “complete” or “whole,” “full grown” or “mature.”
And, it’s not an individual command, but a second person plural future promise: “You all will be whole, as your heavenly Father is whole.”
In The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson translates the verse like this: “You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.”
Live out your God-created identity – all of us, together.
How do we do it?
How do we live out our God-created identity together?
How do we move toward wholeness, toward maturity, as disciples of Jesus the Christ?
There is no one answer to that question.
In a sense, that is why we keep learning, keep reading the Bible, keep praying, keep worshiping together, keep wrestling, keep living out our faith in our daily lives.
We live out our God-created identity by pursuing our mission together: Living and Sharing Jesus.
But in a sense, that’s too broad.
We need to get specific, and God’s Word helps us do that.
So what does Jesus say in today’s scripture?
Listen again to some of Jesus’ hard words for us:
38You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
Whoa!
Do we live like that, all the time?
Does the United States live like that?
Do we turn the other cheek?
Are we generous to people in need?
On the other hand, is Jesus saying to just be pushovers?
To let people walk all over us? To be doormats?
First, we need to take a closer look at what Jesus is saying.
He is not saying to ignore evil, or to cooperate with evildoers in doing evil.
Think of Jesus in the Temple, scattering the money changers’ tables and driving out the merchants who made God’s Temple into a place to fleece the poor.
Think of Jesus speaking truth to power, to both the religious and political leaders of his day.
When Jesus says, “Do not resist an evildoer,” he is speaking against violent resistance.
He must have known what would – and eventually did – result from violent resistance against the Romans in Israel: the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the Jewish people, which occurred some 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
But Jesus constantly resisted evil and evildoers nonviolently. He was not passive; he was not weak; he was not a doormat; Jesus did not cooperate with oppressors, but rather challenged them.
That’s why they crucified Jesus.
There is power in nonviolently turning the other cheek to an oppressor.
You see, for someone in the right-handed Roman society to strike you on the right cheek, it meant they were dealing you a humiliating backhand slap.
And that is something people on the top of Roman society did to people below them – a slave, a peasant, a woman or child.
For a slave to strike his master back would be suicide.
But, for a slave to turn the other cheek to the master would be like saying, as Walter Wink notes:
“Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status (gender, race, age, wealth) does not alter that. You cannot demean me.” Such a response would create enormous difficulties for the striker. Purely logistically, how can he now hit the other cheek? He cannot backhand it with his right hand. If he hits with a fist, he makes himself an equal, acknowledging the other as a peer.
But the whole point of the back of the hand is to reinforce the caste system and its institutionalized inequality.[ii]
It’s the same with Jesus’ example of the court of law. Poor people were constantly being sued and even enslaved for owing money to the rich.
Only the poorest of people would have to give the coat off their back to settle a lawsuit.
So, Jesus says, if someone sues you and takes your coat, give him your underwear as well, and shame the rich person for robbing you of all you had.
Jesus also talked about going the second mile. It was a Roman law that subjects could be forced to carry a soldier’s pack (up to 85 pounds) for one mile, but no more than one mile: they did not want to cause open rebellion. So, Jesus’ counsel to go the extra mile puts the initiative back in the hands of the oppressed.[iii]
To truly understand these hard words of Jesus, you have to see where Jesus and his listeners lived, and you have to look at how Jesus lived out his words in his life.
He was not passive or weak. He did not remain quiet in the face of evil and oppression. Instead, he stood up to evil bravely but nonviolently, and gave his life for us and all people on the cross.
But this nonviolent way of Jesus is not easy to follow.
How often do we turn to violent responses, even with the words of our mouths or the thoughts of our hearts?
How often do we strike back at those who wound us?
How often do we let hatred or bitterness simmer?
It is not easy to turn the other cheek.
Jesus continues:
43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
It is sad that those of us in churches that stick to the lectionary cycle have not heard Jesus say “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” in a Sunday scripture reading since February 18, 2001.[iv]
When we are at war, as we essentially have been since 9/11/2001, it’s a good idea to be reminded of these words of Jesus more than once a decade.
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Do you think Jesus really means what he says?
Amen!
Nearly 43 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while he was in Memphis defending the rights of sanitation workers to organize and be treated humanely.
Martin Luther King shows us the interconnectedness of nonviolence and love for enemies. Words of King:
“Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the [one] who wields it. It is a sword that heals.”
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for
humankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Humankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
In the face of violent opponents of civil rights, King refused to hate; he refused to demonize racists.
Instead, King saw them as fellow children of God, as brothers and sisters who have gone astray, and yet were created in the image of God just as he was.
We do find it hard to follow Jesus, as King did.
We find it difficult to turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile, to stand up and nonviolently resist the evil in the world.
We struggle to love our enemies.
Nonviolence is harder to live out than violence. Nonviolence is the difficult road less traveled; the road Jesus calls us to take.
It’s not an easy road, as protestors in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and other countries have recently discovered.
Loving our enemies is perhaps the most difficult road to travel.
Even Jesus’ disciples had trouble with nonviolence and loving their enemies. Remember that Peter took up the sword against those who came to arrest Jesus, until Jesus said:
“Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?”
Later, what impressed non-Christians most was the way Jesus’ followers, including Peter, gave their lives nonviolently, spreading the good news of the Prince of Peace and the Lord of Love in the face of violent persecution.
The good news for us is that Jesus is not calling us individually to be God – to love everyone all the time with a perfect, infinite, completely unselfish love.
Remember, Jesus is saying to us:
“You all will be whole, as your heavenly Father is whole.”
“You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.”
Turn the other cheek and love your enemies together.
Martin Luther King did not bring about civil rights in our nation alone. In the same way, we are not called to face our enemies and change the world alone.
We are called to wholeness, called to community.
Called to live and share Jesus in solidarity and in love.
Called to grow into our God-created identity as we follow our Good Shepherd Jesus the Christ, who calls us friends and blesses us as fellow children of God. Amen.
[i] The direction of this sermon inspired, in part, by David Lose’s article “Perfect,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=456
[ii] Walter Wink, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, reprinted by CommonDreams.org
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] See my blog post ““Love Your Enemies” Missing from the Lectionary for Ten Years,” http://lemonholm.blogspot.com/2011/02/love-your-enemies-missing-from.html
Follow me on Twitter 
