“Love Your Enemies”

February 19, 2011
Matthew 5:38-48

The apostle Paul says it is important what we, who like to think of ourselves as Christians, build on the foundation given us by Christ. For Paul, we are ‘temples’ in which God’s Spirit can dwell – a dwelling place worthy of its foundation. In other words, Jesus’ teachings, including today’s, should be crucial building blocks in the personal makeup of all Christians so they might become more Christ-like and more like God.

In Matthew today, examples of such building blocks are given, when Jesus talks about love being our response to the evildoer and the need to love our enemies. Again this week, it is important for us to realize that what first might appear to be about us is really about God – this is what God does. So if we are to be closer to God, this is what we must try to do. We are to love as God loves.

When faced with an enemy ‘out to get us’ or someone threatening to hurt us, most of us have a natural and understandable reaction: either fight or flight. We’re told by those who should know about these things that it’s the human thing to do. It’s instinctual, an ingrained response to danger.

Either we look for an escape route, a way out, or we fight – hoping to strike the first blow. The goal is to save yourself and those you love. You want to hurt the enemy, to incapacitate the threat against you. You want to put them down and make them bleed. That was the thinking of the people in Jesus’ day as well. Do unto others before they do it to you.

Sometimes in reading today’s text, where Jesus instructs his followers, “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, but I say…” we forget ‘an eye for an eye’ was a more just way of dealing with problems between feuding factions or families than what existed before Moses’ Laws - a tendency toward escalating retribution. Yet Jesus isn’t replacing the law of Moses. Rather, he is restoring it’s true spirit.

Jesus takes this ‘fairer’ application of justice known as proportional retaliation – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, of Mosaic Law and offers a new set of guidelines: “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” (Matthew 5:38-41).

Although the tenet of “an eye for an eye” was to curtail excessive retaliation or punishment in specific legal situations, the religious leaders had extended it to everyday life, which became transactional: Each person was to give back what they were given, or, more precisely, pay back others. There was no (forgiving) love for one’s neighbor.

So, in this ‘tit for tat’ world, Jesus’ instruction is a whole new way of responding to a personal attack. To the natural reactions of fight and flight – payback and avoidance – hate your enemies, Jesus has added a third response: Love.

Over the years, many Christians and non-Christians as well, have found this response to be every bit as effective as a flight to safety or a fight that draws blood, but it requires real bravery and commitment. This love is grounded in a deep determination to respond to danger by acting in a Christ-like way. By responding in this way, we’re challenged to be as courageous as we are vulnerable.

Jesus insists that this third response – love – does not retaliate. He asks his followers to completely reject the idea of retaliation or preemptive violence and instead respond with love. How crazy is that?

Such a response makes no sense at all unless we see it in the context of the kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, enemies are embraced and turned into friends, not rejected and put to death. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” says Jesus — demonstrate that you are a follower of the Prince of Peace (v. 39). “[I]f anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well” — show the world that you find your security in God, not in material possessions (v. 40). “[I]f anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile” — reveal your generosity by offering them more than they are demanding of you (v. 41). “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” — make a point of helping others as the Lord has helped you (v. 42).

But what are we to do if it seems impossible to ‘forgive those who trespass against us’ as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer? What do we do, other than pray that someday we can?

And if that is not hard enough, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” but I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (vv. 43-45). This too is a response to adversity that is connected closely to the kingdom of God. He is challenging us to love our enemies not because they are wonderful people who deserve to be loved but because they are children of God — we are to love them because God loves them. After all, says Jesus, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (v. 45).

Jesus has raised the bar to what seems like an impossible level. His is not an easy kind of love. Love your enemies – not just those who love you. Pray for those who persecute you – not just your friends. Let love, and no other option, be your response. Some say Abraham Lincoln practiced this and was once criticized by an associate for his attitude toward political enemies. The associate asked, “Why do you always make friends of them? You should destroy them!” Lincoln replied, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“Be perfect,” Jesus says, “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48). This means to be complete in your love. It means to be wholehearted in your servant love, focusing on the standards of God’s kingdom.

In his book The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner says that:
“The love for equals is a human thing — of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

“The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing — the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

“The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing — to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

“And then there is the love for the enemy — love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer.

This is God’s love. It conquers the world.

Today, may ours be God’s love.