Love Your Enemy

Day 11

Love Your Enemy

‘You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’

Matthew 5:43-45

 

Sometimes this compass is so astonishingly upside down! How can it possibly point to true North? The directions we are accustomed to navigating life by dictate in our veins retaliation and revenge: From playgrounds to families to communities to government policy, when we take a hit we hit back. It’s a matter of pride, of reflex, of not looking weak, of saving face. This is simply (post the fall) how our world works. How we are programmed to think our world works. 

 

 

And then from this dusty backwater town of Galilee in walks this Jewish Rabbi, and He sits down on this hill top and He points us to a New Horizon. Yes, He says, this is how you have thought it works, its been what you’ve been told and what you’ve lived. But now, let me help you reorientate your compass to the true north of My Kingdom- because the compass this world has given you has been faulty all along.

‘You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’

Matthew 5:43-45

It feels so strange it must be wrong, it feels so unnatural, it can’t be true. It feels like weakness, it feels like losing, and we all want to win. We fight to win.

And this strange new Kingdom way, it is losing, in a way. Choosing to lose. Jesus’ way is losing the battle of worldly power-games, pride, retaliation, unforgiveness and vengeance, but winning the battle for our own human souls. Winning back the image of God within us.

‘Jesus presents a third option: we can fight not with physical force but soul-force. We wield the power of love against the powers of hate and violence. Our Lord calls us to join the fight. Better to fight than to be afraid. But Jesus’s disciples meet brute force with soul force; we meet hatred with love. Engage in the only form of combat that can truly defeat the enemy—by converting him into a friend. After all, your life and his are utterly inextricable. It is an illusion to imagine that you can wound the other without wounding yourself. For you and your enemy are inseparably one. This is the great soul and world healing lesson of the Sermon on the Mount.’*  Rev. John J. Thatamanil, MDiv, PhD

Jesus’ true north takes more soul strength, true courage and self control than our natural inclination towards reactive retaliation. It takes so much inner strength to choose His Kingdom path that if we live His way, we cannot help but be transformed in the process. 

And it works.

Mahatma Gandhi in India applied Christ’s teaching of overcoming evil with good in India in his  struggle against the oppression of the British, with revolutionary results. Martin Luther King Jr later studied Gandhi’s journey and came to this conclusion…

‘Prior to reading Gandhi, I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationships. The “turn the other cheek” philosophy and the “love your enemies” philosophy were only valid, I felt, when individuals were in conflict with other individuals; when racial groups and nations were in conflict a more realistic approach seemed necessary. But after reading Gandhi, I saw how utterly mistaken I was. Gandhi was probably the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force on a large scale.’ * Rev. Martin Luther King Jr

From Gandhi to the American Civil Rights Movement history has proven that what Jesus taught us on the hillside that day works. It works with large social injustices as well as our small personal relationship challenges. It works because it ensures that human dignity rather than human reaction governs the response. 

It works because in the long run, love always wins over power. 

But it is not just because it works socially and ethically that we must live this teaching urgently and practically as followers of Jesus. This is not simply a good social programme or an effective approach to conflict resolution. 

Jesus’ words reveal something much deeper at work…

‘But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.’ Matthew 5:43-45

We don’t love our enemies because it’s a good idea. We love them because in doing so, we are reflecting the family culture that we belong to, we are operating by the playbook of our Kingdom family- this Kingdom family Jesus came to earth to establish. We are living like and looking like we are  children of your Father in heaven. Because we are.

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:12-13

‘See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ 1 John 3:1-3

Jesus didn’t just come to earth just to die and become our saviour. He came to earth to live God’s Kingdom into being all around us with every word He taught us and every choice He lived. Jesus came to earth to teach us what it means to be God’s children.

Loving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us is how we do things in our family.

‘When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals – one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.’And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.’

Luke 23:33-34

 

 

Martin Luther King Teaching on Love Your Enemy

 

 

Journaling The Journey 

Who is your enemy?

Do you usually ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’? 

How can this become a practice in your life? 

If this did become a practice in your life, how do you think your attitudes, outlook and relationships might grow and change?

What does this passage say about God’s heart?

 

 

Today’s Hillside photograph was taken on Davaar Island off the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, UK. 

References

*1 “Western Christianity Must be Reborn on the Sermon on the Mount” Rev. John J. Thatamanil, MDiv, PhD, Professor of Theology & World Religions Director, Insight Project: Theology & Natural World, The Anglican Church of St. John the Divine, February 20, 2022

*2 King Jr, Martin Luther. The Radical King (King Legacy) (p. 45). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.