A sermon on Matthew 5:43-48, preached on Sunday, July 14, after the attempted assassination on President Trump:
“Love Anyway, Love Because”
There’s an old story of a preacher who was finishing an impassioned sermon on today’s passage (Matthew 5:43-48), “Love your enemies.”
He looked out at the congregation and asked, “Will you go out into the world and love your enemies?”
Roused by the Holy Spirit, every hand in the congregation went up except for one. She was an elderly woman in the front row.
The pastor paused and looked at her. “Why can’t you love your enemies?” he asked.
She shrugged, “Pastor, I can honestly say I have no enemies.”
The pastor didn’t buy it. “Remind me again how old you are?” he asked.
“Pastor,” she replied, “you know I’m 96.”
He nodded. “Yes! 96 years old and no enemies? That’s impossible. How could you have lived that long without having any enemies?”
The little lady stood, turned to the congregation with a smile and answered, “I outlived them all.”
It would be hard to live our lives–even a life shorter than 96 years–without having or making any enemies.
A lot of us use the word enemy pretty loosely, so let’s be clear: A person who annoys you is not your enemy. A person you dislike is not your enemy. An enemy, strictly and biblically speaking, is someone who rises to the level of hatred. An enemy is someone you would gladly see hurt. Enemies, thankfully, are rare but seemingly unavoidable.
When I think of enemies, I remember a teacher years ago who was mean, really mean, to my daughter, to the point that other teachers at the school described stepping in to try to protect her. I think of a boss who’d get me alone in his office to cuss me out. I had to pray–a lot–to not let my anger become hatred. It was personal.
When Jesus spoke to those crowds on the hillside that day, preaching what we now call the Sermon on the Mount, the word “enemy” was personal, of course.
Every person there could have thought of someone they might have wanted to see in pain. We all could. A neighbor, a family member, a former friend, a co-worker, someone.
But the word “enemy”was also used then to describe a kind of group hatred. Culturally, the ancient Jews were very loyal to their tribe. They had a sort of insider-outsider mentality that was completely normal at that time in the ancient Middle East.
Those Jews on the hillside, as a group, would have been taught to hate the Roman authorities, Samaritans (we have a whole parable about hating them), and others.
Jews in that time took their identity as God’s chosen people seriously, after all, and they did everything they could to protect it. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, for instance, as the number of Jesus’ followers continued to grow, the Jewish liturgy included a prayer, “For persecutors let there be no hope, and the dominion of arrogance do Thou speedily root out in our days; and let Christians and minim perish in a moment, let them be blotted out of the book of the living and let them not be written with the righteous” (Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew, a commentary, volume 1, 268). There were many who wanted followers of Jesus to just disappear.
I fear that this is the point that many Americans have reached. Many Americans sincerely wish that that other candidate and the people who support that other candidate would just disappear. And they’re willing to go to great lengths, even violence, to make it happen. Yesterday’s assassination attempt is sufficient evidence.
We don’t know why that 20-year old man took a rifle to the rally yesterday and shot at former President Trump. The motives will emerge over time, even as conspiracy theories swirl. Let’s not jump to conclusions. John Hinckley Jr shot President Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. People do bad things for really bizarre reasons.
Here’s what must matter most to us: We as Christians in the United States must not participate in the hatred. Not in words, not in actions, not even in thought. If there was even a moment when the thought crossed our minds–”I wish the bullet hadn’t missed”–we’ve got work to do. If there was even a moment when we wished that another bullet might be pointed at President Biden, we have work to do.
Our political parties are affiliations, not tribes, and our first allegiance, always, must be to our Savior Jesus Christ who transcends every tribe or tongue.
Love your neighbors, and that includes your enemies. All your neighbors and all your enemies.
And that’s really the bottom line here. By teaching us to love our enemies, Jesus is teaching us to love everybody. Everybody.
This command lifts all qualifications on who you should love.
We don’t have to wonder–
- Well, do I have to love the boss who fired me? The answer is yes.
- Do I need to love the people in that other political party? Yes.
- Do I need to love the coach who made my kid doubt himself? Yes.
- Do I need to love Cowboys fans? Yes. (That’s a joke.)
We don’t have to feel warm fuzzies toward them. We don’t need to agree with them. We don’t have to even spend time with them if we don’t want to. But, we are being called to sincerely hope for, pray for, and act in the best interests of all of them. Jesus is calling us to really want what is best for them. All of them. Love everybody.
Jesus is not being naive. He’s not saying that the things people have done to us are okay. Bad people are still bad. Mean people are still mean.
In the words of Travis Kelce’s girlfriend–
Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate; Players gonna play play play play play; Fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.
Love them anyway. Because God loves them anyway. Jesus is not asking us to do anything God is not doing daily.
After all, God loves us anyway. God wants us, provides for us, leads us, at every moment to what is truly best for us–
Even when we’re mean, when we turn away from Him, when we hate, and when we’re the enemy we so despise in someone else.
Love anyway, because God first loved us.
I know this is an absurdly hard teaching. I know what some of you have faced. I know what some of you have had to forgive or are still trying to forgive. I get it.
Jesus, of all people, understood what it felt like to have hatred turned on him. Those Pharisees and Sadducees and the temple leadership hated him so much that they did make him hurt.
They beat him, stuck thorns in a crown around his skull, dragged him through the streets carrying the cross on which they’d execute him, drove those nails into his hands and feet and left him to die where everyone could watch.
Yeah, Jesus knew about hatred. And still he loved. Do the same, he told us. Love anyway.
Like everything else he taught, he didn’t expect perfection overnight.
Now, if you’ve read through to Matthew 5:48, you know that Jesus later tells the people, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) Here’s where a little knowledge of the original Greek language helps.
Perfect is the word teleios. The word typically means complete or finished. When Jesus was on the cross, for instance, and said, “It is finished,” he used a form of this word. It’s a word that describes the finished product while assuming the process that precedes it. It assumes the transformation that leads to completeness. “Be perfect,” says Jesus as a command. “Work at it. It’s a process. Work at becoming more and more like your Father God, who is already complete, Who is All in All.” (Bruner, 276).
Growing up into the likeness of our Father God is a process. It’s a process, for each and every one of us. Choosing to love our enemies, that’s a big part of it.
It’s worth noting that, when Jesus gives this command to love our enemies, he commands it in the plural. It’s not “you,” “you,” and “you,” love your enemies. It’s “y’all, love your enemies,” so that–together–we’ll be children (again plural) of our Father in heaven.
When we live this counter-cultural way of sincerely hoping for, praying for, and acting in the best interests of every person, we’re going to know God as our Father, and it will be that warm, fuzzy kind of love we have with the people in our families who really love us. By loving our enemies, we get to know the love of God better and better.
It’s no small thing. Knowing God’s love, knowing His approval and his affection, is like gasoline in our heart’s engines. When I get worked up about something, or anxious, or tired, or annoyed, I try to stop and take a deep breath and say to myself, “God loves me.” God loves me, in this moment, in this place and situation, without qualification, so it’s all going to be all right.
And, ironically, that’s what loving our enemies–together–moves us closer to knowing–each one of us.
I have an idea that it’s part of why God calls us into churches like ours. Here we are, sitting and praying together, despite all our differences. Maybe we can’t stand someone who is here. Maybe we’re really mad. Maybe we just don’t understand why they do the things they do and believe the things they believe, but here we are, paying attention to God together for this hour a week. It’s one of the ways we practice loving our enemies.
I remember a Sunday, years ago, watching a woman praising Jesus not 15 feet away from the man who had fired her four days earlier. Love anyway.
If that’s not counter-cultural, if that’s not what our nation needs right now, I don’t know what is.
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