The Work of Love

Let us pray. Take my lips, O Lord, and speak through them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen. Please be seated.

Our gospel reading is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, read last week.  And it’s helpful to remember where we are in Luke’s gospel. Jesus has come down from the mountain to a level place with his disciples. There was a large crowd pressing in on him, seeking his healing powers, having come from all Judea, Jerusalem and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. And in the midst of all those people, Jesus began to teach. In describing what appears to be a sociopolitical reversal, through the familiar Beatitudes, Jesus seemed to be on the verge of instigating a social revolution, turning the status quo on its head.  And now having gained their attention, Jesus then calls his followers to a new way of living, that rejects their understanding of human interaction. He makes the shift with these words, “I say to you that listen”. But the paraphrase from the message, I think is more direct, more stirring, “To you who are ready for the truth. I say this,” preparing them for a hard teaching. “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you”.

Now, we must understand that Jesus didn’t speak these words in a peaceful, unified society. He spoke to those in a land occupied by Rome, a brutal empire that maintained control through violence, taxation, and fear. The people hearing Jesus were deeply divided. Many in Jesus’ audience long for revolution. Groups like the zealous wanted to overthrow Rome while others like tax collectors and some government leaders, worked within the system to maintain power. Even the religious leaders, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and others, argued over how to be faithful under oppression.  And there was a rigid divide between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the power and the powerless. So when Jesus says, “love your enemies, bless those who curse you”, he’s speaking to people who have been beaten down by real, tangible oppression; corrupt tax collectors, abusive Roman rulers, religious elites who care more about remaining silent and maintaining the status quo than about the people being harmed.

For those in oppressed communities, these are not theoretical hypothetical enemies. These are the people causing harm to their lives, yes, to their very existence. And Jesus says, love them anyway. I tell you I struggle with these words. So I can imagine that many wanted justice, vengeance even, and they wanted a messiah who would take power back for them.  Instead, Jesus tells them to respond with mercy to a world that had shown them anything but.  Now the word translated as ‘merciful’ in the New Revised Standard Version from the Greek may be better understood or helpful as understanding it as ‘compassion’.  Be compassionate, Jesus says, just as your father is compassionate.  This can be an important and enlightening distinction.  Mercy can be what a superior might show a subordinate who has done something wrong. I’ll let you off this time, but compassion. Compassion calls us literally to feel with, is it a visceral sharing of someone else’s experience of pain so that we suffer right along with that one and find ourselves moved to do something to change the underlying systems that create the circumstance of suffering.

Frederick Buechner wrote, “Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin.”  So Jesus saying, “Love your enemies”, was probably not well received then, and frankly would not fare well today in America either. Our society can be pretty mean. It seems that people get angry and express hate so very easily, and I would suggest that the definition of enemy has been expanded in our national life. The increased polarization of our society has heightened this tendency and has led friends, neighbors, family members, and worst of all fellow siblings of faith, to view those with whom they disagree as evil.

The pervasive thought is, if I don’t agree with you, you are now my enemy, and evil to be defeated so that I win with my position, my way of thinking as to determine the way that you will live.  Attacking people who think differently than we do has become acceptable and the hatred towards the other side has grown exponentially. Our compassion for one another’s humanity and suffering seems to have shut down. And when we subtly view someone as less human, less like us, we also tend to see them as more deserving of rejection, criticism, and hurtful treatment.

So what does it mean to live in a world so divided? What does it mean to love our enemies in a world that thrives on division.  It starts with refusing to dehumanize the other. It starts with seeing people not as obstacles, but as beloved children of God. It starts with believing in the kind of mercy and compassion that we ourselves have already received because in the end, Jesus tells us, the measure we give will be the measure we get back.  And when we have received so much mercy and compassion than we can ever deserve from a loving God.

In November of 1957, Dr. King, at the age of 28, delivered the sermon Loving Your Enemies. In it King describes how hate distorts us, while love provides a way forward. That hate brings about destruction, while love is redemptive and builds up. What is remarkable to me is that King still believed this after he had been arrested unjustly during the bus boycotts and after his home had been bombed in January of 1956.  Dr. King could preach the sermon, Love Your Enemies, because he understood that in God’s heart there are no enemies, no hatred, no darkness. Jesus rejected hatred because he knew that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to the heart, and death to our relationship with God. To fully embrace love is to truly reject hate and the desire for revenge, an approach that is counter to the cultural and political environment we now find ourselves in. How then shall we put this command to love your enemies into action? Jesus answers, “Do good.” That requires that we end the cycle of violence and retribution. Jesus caused us to be concerned about the people beyond the narrow boundaries of group and tribe or political party. Doing good includes feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty. clothing the naked, giving shelter to the stranger, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, and fighting for the oppressed.

Now to be clear, loving our enemies does not mean that we surrender to or remain silent when confronted with injustice.  We must challenge injustice and oppressive systems. We must stand up and speak out to power for what is right and good and just and true. But we do not fight hate with hate. For hate is an evil and dangerous force that scars the soul, as King put it. We do not meet violence with violence. We love our enemies so God, so God might have a little window to shine God’s light into the darkness of fear and pride and ignorance and prejudice and hate of the other’s heart. On this last Sunday in Black History Month, it is important to remember that Jesus’ radical command to love our enemies was at the very heart of resistance, seen dramatically during the violent and turbulent struggle of African Americans for civil rights in this country.  And while many think that the fight for civil rights only took place in the fifties and sixties, the struggle for freedom and equality reaches back to the first enslaved African person who landed on these shores 400 years ago. In his book Across That Bridge, the late John Lewis capturing the struggle of 60 years ago wrote, “Love is the willingness to sacrifice, to be beaten, to be killed for the betterment of society rather than live out your life in silence. The civil rights movement above all, was a work of love”.

That view of society that is exclusionary is not part of the religion of Jesus. The religion of Jesus makes the love ethic central. This is the ethic that moved leaders of the movement to inspire so many to face violence, death, threats, and imprisonments with nonviolent response. Turning the other cheek during this time was not an act of weakness. It required great courage and great inner strength. And while many of the gains for African Americans came through court decisions and hard-fought legislative victories, it was the mobilization of people committed to Jesus’ command that ultimately led to a movement that would radically change the social, legal, and political landscape of race relations for generation. But we now stand at a critical and pivotal point in our common life as these advances and protections are being dismantled and wiped away. It is the ethic to love that we now must gain. We must gain actively embrace during these days of uncertainty as an increasing number of our fellow citizens and lawmakers espouse a view of society that is exclusionary, generally targeting people of color, women, the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A community, immigrants and religious minorities, as they seek to turn back the pages of history and return to America before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history.

Beloved, we have much work ahead and it will not be easy. So hold on to love. Hold on to love. We have been reminded this day that without love, whatever we do is worth nothing. Jesus says to you who are ready for the truth, “love your enemies”.  The way of Jesus is always one of love that seeks to free the oppressed and tear down barriers that divide the children of God. That’s you and that’s me. We must have the audacity to believe this way of love is possible. Only this love will create a society built on truth, compassion, and justice. May it be so.  Amen.