Good morning. I have a strange request. I am going to ask that you would take a moment, settle your minds, and begin to think about anybody that you might classify as an enemy. I am not just talking about personal enemies. Maybe somebody who has harmed you in the past like a coworker, a former friend, or family. I am talking about a person or someone who represents a people group that are so opposed to your way of thinking, your belief system, and your values that you would collectively refer to them as enemies. I can tell some of you are struggling, so I thought I would provide some images that came from the internet. I know most of you well enough that if you were to meditate on some of these images your blood would start to boil. I think many of them are opposed to what you believe, your values, your political affiliation, and that sort of thing that you would refer to them as enemies. What is true in the church is also true in the culture. What we see in the culture and in the church to a certain extent is that when we consider somebody an enemy, at a minimum, we try to badmouth them, dishonor them, disparage them, and in some extreme cases actually destroy them. What we see in today’s passage is that a lot of people decide to hate them. We also see in today’s passage that Jesus had another option. He would say to love them.
We are continuing the series Learning to Live Like Jesus. It is an 11-week series based on the Sermon on the Mount, which is Jesus’ extended talk that is found in chapters five, six, and seven of the gospel of Matthew. We are winding chapter five where Jesus had given us a pretty good picture of what life looks like in the kingdom and what a kingdom citizen would look like. Today, we are going to cap off chapter five where Jesus addresses a very important topic, and that is the topic of love. Not simply love of God, not even love of neighbor, but really love of enemies. Consistent with what we have been doing the last few weeks, I would like to have somebody stand up and read from the NIV Matthew 5:43-48. (Scripture read here.)
Some very challenging words from Jesus to the people back then and even us today. As usual what Jesus seems to be doing is contrasting the common teaching of the day as taught by the Pharisees and the teachers of the law and that sort of thing with also his common opinion about a particular topic. This has to do with the topic of love. Jesus begins by saying “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” As I mentioned last week, when Jesus would say “You have heard that it was said”, he is often referring to the Old Testament or what we would call the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, which are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. This particular passage comes from the book of Leviticus. It is actually Leviticus 19:18 where it is said “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against your people but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” So Jesus is finding this passage back in the book of Leviticus. He is very fond of this phrase “Love your neighbor”. We see it in other sections of the gospels. He is particularly fond of tying it with love of God. He would actually consider love of neighbor the second-greatest command next to “Love your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.” We know where Jesus got this first part of the phrase, but we really don’t know where he got the second part where he says “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” We don’t know where he got this because there is really not a passage in the Old Testament that specifically says to hate your enemy. There are passages that seem to allude to it like Psalm 139:21-22 where as King David says “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies.” Some suggest that maybe this is where the idea of hating your enemies came from. But really what I was reading this week is that many scholars and commentators feel that the hatred of enemies just became implied based on the first command to love your neighbors. The assumption is if I am to love my neighbors then that means I should hate my enemies. That was where many believed the common teaching came. But even thought we don’t know exactly the source of it, what we do know is that Jesus comes on the scene again and begins to challenge the common though to the day. He challenges the idea that you are to love your neighbor and hate your enemy. He goes on to say “But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you.” This is a radical thought obviously back then and as much as it is today.
As a side note, we really don’t know what enemies Jesus is talking about. We don’t know who he is referring to in this particular case. Some would think it is the Romans. As I mentioned last week, the people in Jerusalem were under the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire. They didn’t treat the people very well. It is easy to assume that when he says enemies he is referring to the Roman Empire. Others would suggest maybe he is referring to the non-Jews. The ones who would be collectively referred to as the Gentiles. Others suggest maybe he is leaning towards the pagan people. People that worship idols. Or it could just be the Jews that were of a different caliber. There were a lot of different types of Jews. There were the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Samaritans, and Essenes. Maybe enemies refers to different types of Jews. Or it could just be people that don’t belong to the same tribe. It could be somebody from the tribe of Benjamin seeing the enemy as somebody from the tribe of Judah or possibly even a different ethnicity.
As I implied in my opening illustration, we tend to categorize our enemies in very similar ways. We do classify people by their religion. We have Roman Catholics and the Protestants. Depending on what side you are on, the person is often seen as the enemy. Within the Protestant movement you have all sorts of variations. You have Methodists and Presbyterians and Pentecostals and the Baptists. Some people would consider them their enemies. Then you have the whole idea of race. You have people of different races and sometimes we see the person of the opposite race as an enemy. Or political affiliation. The Democrats, the Republicans, the Independents. Particularly, we are able to identify enemies as the country of origin. Like some of you, I grew up in the baby boom between the late 40s and early 60s. Part of living in the baby boom meant that you were exposed to the Cold War Era. It wasn’t an actually war, but there was a lot of military tension between the United States and Russia. When we were growing up, the Russians were the dreaded enemy because we were convinced at any moment that some Russian President was going to release all these nuclear war heads over America, and it was going to land and bomb us. We would be drilled over and over again about not liking the Russians. We would go through actual drills at school. A siren would go off and you would simulate a nuclear attack. As a kid in elementary school you were supposed to drop down, get under your desk, and cover your head. It is funny because it is like the wooden desk is going to protect us from a nuclear war head. I don’t think so. My point is that we were groomed to hate the country of Russia. It wasn’t until the 90s when I made two mission trips to the former Soviet Union that I began to think why do I hate these people? These are really nice people. They are the most hospitable people. They would give you the shirt off their back. You go for dinner and they just feed you and feed you even though it might be the last part of their food. They are loving people. What I did find out too is that similar to me, they also grew up hating the United States of America. Once you get to know somebody you wonder why you hate each other.
So going back to the passage when Jesus says “But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute”, I think it is intentional that he didn’t spell out who the enemies were. What I think he was doing is what I did when we opened up the sermon. Just get the people to consider who it is that they hate and which enemies come to mind. Allow them to squirm a bit when they think about the notion of trying to love them. When I say love your enemies, enemies come to mind and the natural follow up is a little bit of uncomfortableness and a wall go up when you think about the notion of having to love your enemy. Some of you think it is unrealistic. As I mentioned last week, as disciples of Jesus Christ are we interested in just doing what is realistic or what Jesus requires? He requires us to love the enemies. When he says love, he is not just talking about a superficial type of love like I love my car, I love my iPhone, and I love Oreos. He is not talking about romantic love. He is talking about sacrificial love. Agape love. Agape love that seeks the best interest of the other person. Even when he talks about praying, “pray for those who persecute you”, he is not thinking about one of those prayers just to release a little bit of guilt on Christians. You know the prayer “Dear Lord, I really don’t like the Catholics but I hope they do well with their fish fry.” That type of thing. He is not talking about those kinds of prayers. He is talking about prayers that seek reconciliation. Prayers of peace. Prayers of breaking down the walls. This is not Chuck talking. These are Jesus’ very words. Jesus did not pull those words out of thin air. Jesus spoke this way for a purpose. He was trying to connect love to God and God’s relationship with us. As I have mentioned over and over again, we are all children of God, made in the image of God, which means that our character should reflect the very character of God, starting with this idea of love. And really because we see how God loved very equally. We really see it in creation.
Oh, sorry that was a comic. Let me back up to there. To me it epitomized it. It says “Love your enemies” and then it says “Certainly, I hope it’s not the Romans”. I don’t want to have to love the Romans. We could easily substitute that and say I certainly hope it’s not the Democrats. I certainly hope it’s not the Republicans. I certainly hope it’s not the Independents or the Catholics or the Jews or that type of thing. We can easily substitute that.
So anyways, when Jesus says “But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, he is connecting the fact that we were created in the image of God that we should reflect that image of God, the character of God, the love of God that he has for all people as expressed in creation. He goes on to say “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” What Jesus is saying is that God is a good father. He is a good father because he doesn’t show favoritism to his kids. What he is saying is the most holy person that we can think of shares some of the same elements of creation as the most vile person we can think of. The Mother Theresas of the world share the same sunshine as the Charles Mansons of the world. I know that makes some of you a little uncomfortable because some of you Democrats don’t like the idea that Donald Trump might share the same sun as you. Some of you Republicans don’t like the idea that Hilary or Bernie Sanders are sharing the same spring rain with you. But Jesus would come on the scene and say so what. Get over it. Too bad, so sad. Your heavenly Father does not show favoritism and that means you shouldn’t either.
Then he goes on to unpack this a little further by talking about how silly it is to think that just because you love those within your own circle of friends and within your own clan, how silly it is that because you do that you are actually righteous before God. He goes on to say “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the pagans do that?” Getting back to the idea of who is their neighbor. They have this image of the loving neighbor, but unfortunately, they define neighbor as someone who is of the same religious affiliation. Someone who is of the same flavor of Jew. Someone who is the same ethnicity. Someone who is in the same tribe. That would be who they consider their neighbor. They would be thinking I follow the commands. Love God and love neighbor. So I can pat myself on the back. I can check that off my spiritual to-do list. It is all good. Jesus says I don’t think it is all good. You are at the minimum level of love. When you think about the tax collectors and the pagans, they are the lowest people, at least in the eyes of the Jews, on the spiritual totem pole. They are lower than low. The tax collectors worked for the Romans and collected taxes and turned them into the Romans and often were extorting money from the people. The pagans were worshiping idols. What Jesus seems to be saying is as bad as you think those people are they are probably pretty loving within their own circle of friends. They love their family. They love their spouse. They love their children. They have their neighbors over for a barbecue in the cul-de-sac. They are loving to each other. I was trying to think of a modern-day analogy. The only analogy I came up with is thinking about the IRS agent and an atheist. Two types of people that are not popular this time of year. An IRS agent is trying to take your hard-earned money. An atheist is trying to take away your faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ especially around this time of year around Eastertime. But having said that, I suspect that most IRS agents and even most atheists actually probably have very loving relationships with their family and their children and the neighborhoods. What Jesus is saying is just because you love those who have the same political affiliation, just because you love those who have the same sexual orientation, just because you love those who belong to the same denomination, just because you love those who have the same skin color don’t pat yourself on the back and think that you have somehow arrived and that you can check off the spirituality box in the church. You can’t. Jesus is suggesting that kingdom people are different. Kingdom citizens move past the basic understanding of love that is common to all of humanity and moves over into the agape love. The divine love of God. What you see as you begin to make that leap and knock down a wall and enter over into that divine, agape love, you have entered divine space because very few people go there. When you are in that realm, you know God is there, so you are entering a very holy place. In fact, a writer named Scott McKnight says it well. He says “To love our enemies is to break through the self-barrier into divine space.” When you begin to enter into that realm of loving your enemies, you are entering into divine space. In order to do that, we need to begin to convert our enemies. But I do not say convert into our faith. What I am saying is convert them to your neighbor. Convert them first to your neighbor and then you can think about converting them to your faith. That is what Jesus is talking about here. You are crossing over the self-made boundaries and beginning to go across enemy lines so to speak and make your enemy a neighbor. If you don’t do that, you are never going to be up to par with God’s standard of perfection in this area.
That is why I think Jesus closes this section by saying “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is one of those passages that causes a lot of grief for people because they rip it out of context. You have to keep it in the context. A little bit of background. The underlying Greek word for perfect is teleios which basically has a sense of perfection or completeness, but it also has the sense of maturity. If we keep it in that understanding and think about the prior four verses or so, we know that it talks about love of enemies and talks about love, so what some suggest what he is doing is he is trying to say be more mature in your love of others. In fact, I would say that the author Eugene Peterson says it best in the book The Message where he says “In a word, what I am saying is, Grow Up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously towards others, the way God lives towards you.” Those are hard words. He is basically saying love those people. Love the Democrats. Love the Republicans. Love the straights. Love the gays. Love the blacks. Love the whites. Love all these people. Just learn to love your enemies. These are hard words. I am speaking to myself as much as I am speaking to you.
In close, I was trying to think of an illustration that gives a good understanding of how to do it. The best illustration I can come up with was my own personal illustration back in about 2003. I think I mentioned before in 2003 before I became a pastor here I was a chaplain intern at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. If you have ever been there, you know it is a huge hospital. I was an intern there for the summer of 2003. I was one of 15 chaplain interns. These were chaplain interns that came from all walks of life. Gay and straight, Methodists, Lutherans, nuns, different genders, different sexual orientations, different political views. Here was Chuck the Bible thumper coming into that group. In some ways it was the worst experience and in other ways it was the best experience. What we would have to do is every day we would just be sent out to the hospital and just go be a chaplain. We didn’t know what we were doing anyway. We would come back the next day and we would just gather in our morning group session. We would just start talking about our experience and maybe throw out scripture here and there. Before you know it, all sorts of discussions are opening up. Back then there was a big deal about the Episcopal Church ordained the first gay bishop. There were a lot of heated discussions going on in so many different arenas. Very heated to the point of almost name-calling. By the end of the summer, I really had a good relationship with most of them. I really feel we knocked down some walls and began to cross the line from enemy to neighbor. The reason I know this is the most memorable thing I got out of that was at the end one of the young ladies I didn’t like in so many ways said to me, Chuck, I really disagree with you on most of your stances on a lot of stuff. I just really disagree with you, but you know what, I would come to your church. That was a compliment to me. This was a lady who had different political stance, different sexual orientation, definitely different in my beliefs and my values, but she said she would come to my church. That was a compliment to me. Ever since that time, I have been trying to break down walls continually. All sorts of them. That is why I meet with half a dozen pastors from different denominations every single week.
That is kind of how I was first exposed to trying to put this into application. Being thrown really into the fire. I don’t know what it is going to take for you guys to cross over. To have an enemy become a neighbor. But I do know that it takes a lot of risk. It is going to take leaving your comfort zone, which many of you are not willing to do. But really what it is going to take is seeing people differently. When I say differently, I am saying take off your human glasses and put on God’s glasses and see the other as made in the image of God. Genesis 1:27 being made in the image of God is not just about Christians. It is all humanity. That means every person has a touch of the divine inside of them. Your job is to search that out. If you focus on that and find the good in the other person, you will see that you will quickly turn that enemy into a neighbor. The person who summarizes this best is Martin Luther King, Jr. I was doing my research and I came across a sermon on the exact passage. He said some words that were so profound I thought I would put them up on the screen. He says “The person who hates you most has some good in him; even the nation that hates you most has some good in it; even the race that hates you most has some good in it. And when you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls ‘the image of God,’ you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does you see God’s image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. As you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude.” I think he is just summing up what Jesus says. See the image of God. See the image of God in the other person. Finally, what he is saying, be perfect, again, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Let us pray.
