Loving our Enemies
7th Sunday after Epiphany, Year C
I can’t lie. Sometimes it’s really hard to love someone that’s done you wrong.
Why would Jesus tell us to do this? What kind of command is this? Is this part of the whole “be a good person” thing?
Maybe Jesus isn’t telling us to love our enemies so we can be good. He’s telling us this so we can be free.
Have you ever heard the expression “Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”? There are a lot of variations on this. Anne Lamott says “…not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”[1]
Now, there are some very legitimate reasons to be angry with someone. If someone has done an injustice. If someone has abused another. If someone has intentionally hurt another or assumed power over them. All very good reasons for being pissed off. Jesus himself showed anger when he encountered the money changers at the temple in Jerusalem. And for good reason. They were making a mockery of worship and taking advantage of the poor. But did Jesus hang on to that anger after he finished cleaning house? Nah. He had other things to do. Jesus knew better than to hang on to resentment. Remember, this is the same Jesus that also called out for the forgiveness of his enemies in the middle of his own execution.[2]
If we are resentful of even a single person over a long period of time then we fail to understand the amount of stress and negativity we will experience on a day to day basis. It takes a significant amount of mental and emotional energy to keep up aggression and hostility or passive-aggression that is needed to support a grudge. It does! (I know this from personal experience. Trust me.)
Loving your enemy or one who has done you wring doesn’t mean letting them walk all over you. It doesn’t mean letting your abuser use you as a door matt.
If we look at Matthew’s account of the concept of turning the other cheek, the writer is a bit more specific. Matthew’s account specifies the right cheek. So why is this important?
The scholar Walter Wink interprets the passage as ways to subvert the power structures of the time[3].
At the time of Jesus, says Wink, striking backhand a person deemed to be of lower socioeconomic class was a means of asserting authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma: The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed. An alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek, the persecuted was demanding equality.
In other words, don’t let someone’s insult derail you. We can demand justice while not responding with violence.
Turning the other cheek isn’t submissive. It’s defiant.
When I hear about loving your enemies I am reminded of that sermon that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr delivered at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on November 17, 1957.
If anybody knew a thing or two about loving enemies it was Dr. King. Just a year earlier his house was bombed by segregationists in retaliation for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He was at a speaking engagement when it happened. His wife and daughter were at home and fortunately they were not injured. That probably would have been a good time to quit but he didn’t. His family urged him to return to Atlanta but he wouldn’t do it. A large crowd gathered that night at his home but instead of charging up the crowd he plead with them to not respond with violence.
He stayed in Montgomery. He continued to fight for justice. In fact, the “Love your Enemies” sermon was written while he was in jail for committing non-violent civil disobedience.
Think about that. How do you write a sermon from jail about loving the people that put you there?
Dr. King preaches on Jesus’ commandment to love our enemies and suggests that while this is a very difficult thing to, it is both possible and essential for one to live as a good Christian or a good human being. It is a shining example of the philosophy of Nonviolence and Christian pacifism.
How does he suggest learning to love your enemies? Dr. King suggests that the first step is to look deeply at ourselves and to acknowledge that in each person we dislike there is still some good qualities that we can admire and love them in spite of it (“within the worst of us, there is some good”).
It is from this “Loving Enemies” sermon that we get his famous quote “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
This quote went “viral” on the internet, after the killing of Osama Bin Laden by the US government. While the mainstream news hailed the killing and many people celebrated the killing as a victory and even danced in the street, many others agreed with Dr. King, feeling that no death should ever be celebrated and that responding to violence with violence will never solve our world’s problems, but as Mahatma Gandhi, one of Dr. King’s primary sources of inspiration said, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
I am praying for those that abuse me. I am trying to do good by those that curse me. I am trying to bless those who profess hate.
Every single one of us is a beautiful child of God. Some of us just do mean, selfish things. Does that mean we should hang on to anger toward them? It’s just going to eat us up. Loving our enemy releases us from that prison of anger because loving our enemy flows from the heart of a forgiving God. The same God who in the book of Ezekiel[4] says, “I your God will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh”.
And that sounds a lot better than drinking poison.
[1] Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (1999)
[2] Luke 23:24
[3] Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (1992)
[4] Ezekiel 11:19
