Love Your Enemies

Luke 6:27-38

Imagine for a few minutes that you are in Syracuse, New York, in the fall of 1847. You are one of hundreds of people have travelled long miles to listen to international abolition activist and former American slave Fredrick Douglass.

He has held your attention powerfully, with humor and passion, truth and challenge. You’ve heard him repeatedly expose the sin and evil nature of slavery – both the experience and the institution. He has  shown us the flaws in the Constitution that support the institution of slavery and vividly illustrated how the church has stood hand-in-hand with slaveholders, endorsing the brutality, prejudice, and lack of concern for human suffering embedded in a slave-holding culture.

There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that slave-holders are his enemies, along with the great mass of Americans indifferent to their dependence on a slave economy, and the defenders of slavery in pulpits and legislatures. They are enemies of all that is right and good, and opponents of Mr. Douglass’ own humanity, freedom, and activism.

And then you hear him say:
“Since the light of God’s truth beamed upon my mind, I have become a friend of that religion which teaches us to pray for our enemies — which, instead of shooting balls into their hearts, loves them. I would not hurt a hair of a slaveholder’s head.”

That may have come as a surprise to many listeners. Fredrick Douglass makes it clear that he won’t defend the slaveholder from others or enforce slavery for anyone, but he has heard Jesus say to him what we heard Jesus say to us this morning, and to the crowds in the plains of Galilee thousands of years ago:

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Listen to that again: 

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who abuse you.

Give whatever anyone demands from you; don’t try to recover what the powerful take away.

Jesus doesn’t ask much, does he?

And these are dangerous words.

These are words that were preached to slaves to keep them in slavery. These words of Jesus have been given as peace-keeping advice to abused women and children over many centuries, sending them back into homes full of danger and despair. Words relied on by the powerful to smother any faith-fueled urge to rebel against oppression.

Those words are dangerous when applied by the powerful to the powerless.

And those words disturb the comfort of an effortless faith for the rest of us, requiring that we look honestly at the hatreds and the hurts of our lives that we’d rather not see, and seeing them, return good for evil.

That’s hard for me. I don’t think of myself as a person who has enemies. I have the privilege of education, skin color, wealth, and network that makes me relatively hard to exploit and abuse, so it’s easy to look at the world and see no enemies. And I don’t like disliking people, even though I sometimes do. Maybe you feel the same.

But there are hatreds in my heart. Hatreds that feed and are fed by political rhetoric, and hatreds that come from my fears of those who have the power to take away freedoms, privileges, and rights – or to destroy the image of myself that assumes I earned those freedoms and privileges all by myself.

Jesus wants me to face those hatreds, and actively love those who could hurt me.

And if that’s hard for me, how much harder must it have been for Fredrick Douglass? For all the other slaves feeling oppression in their bodies; longing and working for freedom? For civil rights activists and ordinary African-Americans being beaten or bombed, spit on or shot?  For students facing tanks, Native Americans facing guns and armies and the seizure of their lands, women and girls trafficked into modern day slavery by “boyfriends”?

Loving your enemies is extraordinarily hard.

Turning the other cheek is dangerously encouraging to the oppressor.

Except when we remember that Jesus is not telling us to force an artificial sweetness or peace into relationships of abuse. Jesus is not telling us to romanticize oppression or whitewash systemic evil with tolerant acceptance. Jesus is not telling us to love our enemies out of our own resources.

Jesus is telling us to love with God’s love, not our own feelings and efforts. 

To love with God’s fierce, uncompromising love that will not let our enemies sustain their sin.

Frederick Douglass doesn’t say so in that speech I quoted, but from other words and actions of his that I have read, I believe he learned to love his enemies too much to allow them to continue to hurt and destroy their sisters and brothers. Loved his slave-holding enemies with God’s love that seeks to save them from the grip of that shameful sin. Prayed to God for his enemies that they would be free from the tyranny they imposed and thought was protecting them.

Love your enemies, Jesus tells us, not as sinners do, but "as children of the most High, who is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, as your Father is merciful."

Not because it is nice to be nice.

But because God’s love insists on transforming hatred, evil, and death.
And it is God’s love, flowing through us, not our own feelings and emotions, that Jesus tells us to use to love and bless, give and forgive, and pray for our enemies.

Jesus isn’t telling us to do something he himself hasn’t done.

Over and over in the stories of scripture we hear how God returns good for human evil. Of how God loves us – deniers, takers, demanders and sinners who act as enemies of God through accident, indifference, fear or greed or vicious intent – loves you  and me with a fierce, powerful, persistent and uncompromising love. A love that insists on saving us from the grip of shame and sin – not because it hurts God, but because it hurts us. A love that refuses to let us hurt and destroy, or abuse and neglect, the gifts of our brothers and sisters whom God has given us.

We are loved with a love that wants to be shared, to flow through us, to heal us and to use us to heal others.

Love your enemies, Jesus says, not from your own righteousness, or as if love tolerates and ignores hatred and sin. That’s “love” that’s dangerous and deadly.

Instead, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, because that is the natural result of being loved in that very way by God. The natural consequence of entrusting yourself completely to the divine love that sees the denial, indifference, sin and greed and shame you and I and all of us turn toward God and returns generosity, blessing, abundance and forgiveness to transform our hearts and lives. 

That’s the love that resists slavery, refuses oppression, and raises new life from every death and tomb.

Amen.

Read more speeches and writings of Fredrick Douglass online

Signs of Favor

1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30

This is the day we’ve been waiting for: time for miracles, blessings, abundance, healing and strength and success – everyone will see God’s favor here!

Last week we heard Jesus proclaim that to his old neighbors in the congregation at Nazareth.

It’s a great day.

Or maybe not.

Because Jesus goes right on without hesitation, saying: You want some miracles, don’t you? Well, remember, there were many widows in Israel in the famine, and Elijah was sent to bring food and healing only to a foreign widow. Many lepers in Israel, and Elisha only cleansed that one rich arrogant foreign general.

It’s time for miracles, oh yes. But not for you.

Is it any wonder the congregation was suddenly furious at Jesus?
The local boy comes home, surrounded by tales of healing and miracles and power. He sits down in front of the congregation and tells them that God’s favor is being fulfilled right among them.

And then – while they’re all rejoicing in amazement – yanks the rug right out from under them.

You think I’ve come to bring God’s healing here? Oh, no. Think again. God’s going to give all that good news to the unrighteous.

They’re so furious they try to throw him off a cliff.

This is no way to preach your first hometown sermon. It’s like doing the whole wedding ceremony, and then announcing right before the big kiss that there’s no legal marriage and, by the way, the party’s off.

But somehow, this is what God wants Nazareth, wants us, to hear.

It’s going to be glorious!   But not for you.

The signs of God’s favor are going to be everywhere. But don’t look for them here.

I’m not really happy with Jesus myself, right this moment. It sounds like he’s saying God is not really all that interested in us; in the local faithful.

And in some ways, I’m fine with that. I can look around and see that there are plenty of people who need God’s healing more than I do; need God’s miracles and good news and success much more than I do, or we do. We already have signs of God’s favor among us.
But it’s not like we have no need of more.

There’s plenty of need for abundance and healing right in Moorestown. Plenty of poverty that needs good news. And boy would I love to see God’s blessing shining out of Trinity so strongly that no one can miss it.

I feel like that’s a good thing to want from God.   

First-century Nazareth wasn’t any different from twenty-first century Moorestown in those ways. And Jesus says no. Or at least, “you’re not getting what you’re looking for.”

And so does Paul.

He’s writing to a congregation in Corinth that’s gotten all wrapped up in looking for the spectacular spiritual gifts, powerful signs of God’s touch on someone’s life, clear indications of God’s favor for individuals and the community. They’re apparently getting jealous of each other over this, wary about why God gives the spectacular miracles of prophecy and speaking in tongues or healing power to some and not to others.

Now, I think it’s perfectly human and natural to want some signs of assurance that God cares about us, about me. Perfectly reasonable to want our congregation to succeed, to want people to be so impressed with God’s power here that they want some too.

In Corinth, though, it’s becoming a problem. They’re cutting each other down, getting braggy and pushy, or envious and spiteful. Their longing for the tangible proof of God’s favor, for miracles and wonders, has gotten toxic.

And Paul tells them to just cut it out. Stop wanting the sexy, showy spiritual gifts. Pay attention to what’s even more important: Love.

If I speak in tongues and know everything, he says, if I move mountains with my faith and do not have love, I am nothing but noisy nonsense. Love doesn’t need pride and pushiness and envy; love makes those things impossible.

We often read Paul’s great love poetry at weddings, because it’s true about what makes our marriages and deep relationships strong, but Paul’s not talking about couples. He’s talking about communities. About us.

We don’t need all those showy signs of God’s favor if we have love, he says. In fact, we don’t need any other signs of God’s favor because we have love.

Not the sweet feeling of romance for one another. We have the love of God.

And Paul is absolutely right: when you have God’s love, when you receive the love that God pours out before we ask for it or earn it, receive that all-encompassing, generous, miraculous belovedness – the love of God believing in us, hoping for us, enduring with us – envy and pride and bitterness are just impossible. Patience, kindness, honesty, generosity come naturally.

The single greatest sign of God’s favor, the only sign that even matters, is love.
The love we receive from God, un-asked and un-earned, and the way that love flows through us, becoming our love for one another, is the ultimate, eternal evidence of God’s favor.

That love isn’t shown through miracles and spectacular gifts. Paul tries to explain to his friends in Corinth that even the showiest miracles, even the most powerful spiritual gifts, are just temporary fixes, bandaids God gives for the world’s hurts or our own hurts, until the completeness of God’s kingdom comes.

Love – God’s love – is the only thing that’s eternal.

It’s natural to long for miracles when the world we live in is full of brokenness – from Congress to car trouble, untimely deaths and intractable problems to irritating colleagues and family who just need so much help. It’s natural to long for powerful demonstrations of God’s favor when the days are gray and the work is too much and we feel alone. Natural to think someone else is more spiritual, more connected with God, that someone else must shine with holy light.
It’s natural, but not necessary.

Because love is greater than all of that; love endures and abides and overcomes all. And love lives in the least spiritual and most outsider-ish and lonely of all of us, just as strongly as in the folks who memorize the Bible and lay claim to a history of miracles.

Jesus knew that, of course. Jesus lived that.

Jesus knew that all the miracles and healings and wonders that Nazareth longed for were temporary fixes, patches, for the world’s deep injuries that God has been working to transform and heal since the first ruptures of creation.

And he might be trying to tell his neighbors that when he reminds them of how God’s miracles go mostly to outsiders. When he tells them that the year of the Lord’s favor bursting forth in their midst doesn’t mean miracles for us, he might be trying to remind them that God’s love is already theirs. Not by earning or by asking, but because God chose to love Israel, to love us, entirely in spite of ourselves.

And that without that love, the miracles we wish we’d see, the unmistakable, glamorous shows of power, are just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. Powerful, but not what we actually crave.

That what we long for and need is, most of all, the long, slow, patient, kind, humble, generous, honest, trusting, hoping, eternal dailyness of the love God pours over and in and through us. The love God has already given, unasked and unearned, to Nazareth, and Corinth, and Moorestown, and you and me.