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LOVE YOUR ENEMIES
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your friends, hate your enemies.’ But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may become the children of your Father in heaven.”
(Matthew 5:43-45)
Love your enemies.
Nothing Jesus said is harder to our ears than this.
His examples are unbelievable.
“ I tell you: do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. And if someone takes you to court to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. And if one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two miles.”
(Matthew 5:38-41)
Now some of these scenarios at least seem improbable for you and me today.
It’s unlikely we will be sued for our shirts, and thankfully we don’t have occupying soldiers hanging around the streets of Glasgow to take advantage of us to carry stuff.
But it’s easy enough to update them.
If you come home one evening to see a burglar running out of your house, do you stop him and say, “Excuse me sir! Here’s my car keys! You can come back for my car later when you have time.”
If you realise your employer has made a mistake and has been underpaying you, do you go to them and say “Actually I’m just happy to work here for nothing?”
These are mad scenarios.
What does Jesus seriously want us to do?
Turn the other cheek? Is Jesus serious?
Do we let bullies do what they want?
Do we act as doormats for the rest of the world?
Jesus has taken things to a new extreme.
Now we have to remember that Jesus is not above using exaggeration in his speech.
To make a point he’ll sometimes say some astonishing things that he clearly did not mean literally.
For example, earlier on in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus says “If your right eye causes you to sin, take it out and throw it away!” (Matthew 5:29)
And then he follows that up with…
“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, and throw it away”. (Matthew 5:30)
Did people ever do that?
Did Jesus actually want them to?
Or was Jesus exaggerating to make his point?
The trouble is, we can say that the examples Jesus gives here are not meant to be taken literally, but we are still left with the problem of working out what Jesus is actually saying to us.
First thing we need to notice about this whole thing is to see that this is a prime example of how the Bible develops.
In the Bible we see a development in people’s understanding of God.
Remember that the Bible isn’t one book that was written at one moment. It’s a collection of writings that span hundreds of years.
And over the years people’s understanding of God deepened.
In a broad sense, you could say that people began by imagining God as a fierce warrior god who cared only about one race of people and only one patch of land, to seeing God as a God of love who cares for all people and all creation.
Listen to these words from the Old Testament:
“When you capture cities in the land that God is giving you, kill everyone. Completely destroy all the people…as the Lord ordered you to do.”
(Deuteronomy 20:16-17)
So not only is it right to capture someone else’s city, and not only is it right to kill everyone who lives there, its actually God who commands it to happen.
Doesn’t sound much like the God Jesus came to tell us about.
But the Bible moves forward from the warrior God of Deuteronomy to a thing called “eye for eye”.
The Jewish people were keen on writing laws to live by – laws which govern all kinds of behaviour.
How do we pay back our enemies and those who mistreat us?
In Exodus we read this famous command: “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
(Exodus 21:23)
“Eye for eye” may be a crude measure, but there is a basic fairness here.
If your neighbour breaks a bit of your fence, you shouldn’t destroy his entire farm.
If someone bumps into you and you fall and sprain your ankle, you don’t kill that person’s entire family.
Eye for an eye was a law that tried to get a sense of proportion. This command is actually aimed at mercy – an attempt to stop things escalating.
It’s a whole lot better than the bloodthirsty words of Deuteronomy.
It’s even fair.
But for Jesus even this isn’t good enough
Jesus urges us to go beyond it.
He had a new ethic which we are commanded to follow.
Jesus said, “You have heard it said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but now I tell you do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
(Matthew 5:38-39,43)
Jesus takes the words of the Bible and changes them.
Now why would Jesus do that?
Why would Jesus change scripture – given that scripture is so important?
There must have been a very “important” reason..
Either people were wrong all along about God and were saying God approved of things that God didn’t approve of. In other words, they were projecting their own beliefs onto God and using God to justify them.
Or God was guiding people bit by bit to become more humane and less barbaric and God was moving step by step with human consciousness - developing through the years into a better ethic.
You can take your choice. Either way, things needed changing!
So what is Jesus trying to say, when he tells us to love our neighbours?
The love he is referring to is an action. It’s not about sympathetic or romantic feelings. It’s about the way we choose to act. It’s about our behaviour.
Forget an eye for eye. That often just escalates and gets out of hand.
“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind!” said Gandhi.
“Don’t seek to retaliate. Don’t seek revenge,” says Jesus.
The great civil rights campaign in the United States headed by Martin Luther King was successful because of its determination to act in peaceful non-violent ways.
Listen to these words from MLK…
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, creating the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate….
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Non-violence changes the world.
Non-violence does not mean (as I wondered earlier), that we let bullies do what they want, or that we act as doormats for the rest of the world.
If someone starts attacking your wife or children do you just stand back and let them get on with it?
If people are kicking a disabled person do you walk right past?
If you are a wife who is regularly being beaten up by your husband, do you just stay in that situation and keep quiet about the abuse?
If there is a crazed madman running round the streets with a gun do you refuse to try to restrain him?
No (!) is the answer to all of these questions.
Non-violence does not mean non-action.
Did Jesus turn a blind eye to bullies?
Did he refuse to speak up for those being mistreated?
Did he do nothing in the face of injustice?
We know that’s not true.
Think of one of the most dramatic moments of Jesus’ life and work – the clearing of the Temple.
Jesus acted decisively when he saw that the Temple had been turned into a money-making racket.
He sure went into action!
He didn’t look away. He didn’t do nothing.
But no one was killed by his actions.
No one was hurt by what he did.
He acted non-violently.
But that non-violent action made a huge impact.
When we meet violence with violence the lines can appear blurred. It is harder to see who is right and who is wrong. As the violence escalates its easier to conclude each side is as bad as the other.
On the other hand, nonviolent actions often have a way of waking people up to the reality of a situation, and helping them to perceive the truth.
The UK has a sad involvement in arms trade and manufacture. We are one of the worlds biggest exporters of arms around the globe, and much of our economy is bound up in the arms industry.
Recently a major arms fair was held in London, with arms dealers from all over the world invited to attend to show their wares. Some Christians gathered there to protest the event and they held a communion service at one of the doorways to the centre.
They were arrested and charged with breach of the peace.
At the same time, two companies were told to leave the fair after displaying and promoting illegal torture equipment, but they were not charged. And they were only asked to leave when an MP reported the story to the press.
This was the sixth time in recent years when companies have been removed from the London arms fair for illegal activity.
In each case, the removal has taken place only after exposure in the media and none of the companies have ever been prosecuted.
The companies walk away free, while Christians praying at a doorway for peace are arrested and face possible imprisonment.
The news from yesterday on this story is that the charges against six of these protestors have been dropped. Why is this?
It turns out that the Crown Prosecution Service have discovered that lawyers for the six are preparing evidence and calling witnesses such as Amnesty International to prove that the many of the companies are acting illegally as well as immorally, and they don’t want this evidence to be heard in court.
So this is a story from yesterday, that has still got to reach a conclusion, but it’s a current reminder of the power of non-violent action.
Jesus is calling us to practice non-violence.
Jesus is calling to go beyond our automatic gut level, and even our first instinct, and instead aspire to live life at a deeper level.
And of course, related to all this, is Jesus’ call to us to forgive.
Elsewhere in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urges his followers to “Learn to forgive.”
Forgiving isn’t about forgetting. Or shrugging our shoulder and saying “It doesn’t matter.”
Like choosing to love someone you don’t get on with, (someone who is your enemy), forgiveness is, likewise, a choice we make.
The person you choose to forgive may not in any way deserve your forgiveness.
And that’s just the point.
Because when we choose to forgive, different things happen.
We create a way to move on from the situation.
It may set free the person who has wronged us.
But we are also setting ourselves free.
For when we refuse to forgive and move on we ourselves are trapped in a cycle of bitterness and resentment.
When we choose to forgive we set ourselves free from the prison of hate and negativity.
In other words, there are a lot of good reasons to practice non-violence and forgiveness. But Jesus doesn’t actually make use of these good reasons.
Instead, he says that the reason why we must strive to love those who give us a hard time is that this is what we are called to do as his followers.
It is this that shows we belong to God.
In Jesus’ words, it is this that shows we are God’s children.
Remember who you are.
Be who you really are.
Claim your identity in God.
“Love your enemies.”
Hard?...... of course it is.
But living as a Christian will always involve us in challenge.
And Jesus wants to inspire us and encourage us
to be the best that we can be.
Matthew 5:38-48
February 23 2014