Love your enemies

Last Sunday we heard Jesus’s challenging words from his sermon on the plain: “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Today, we hear what Jesus said next, and it doesn’t get much easier.

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again…. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”

How are you doing with all of that? If you’re anything like me, the answer is probably, “not great.” The words we heard this morning are some of the most challenging words in all of scripture.

What does it really mean to love your enemy? What does it mean to forgive? What does it mean to give, expecting nothing in return?

Before I get there, let me start with some things this scripture passage doesn’t mean.

First, beware of anyone who uses Jesus’s words as a weapon. “You have to forgive me because Jesus said so. Besides, what I did wasn’t that big a deal.”

That’s not the Gospel. That’s gaslighting.

This passage has often been used to tell people who are being abused that they should stay with the person who’s hurting them and to tell the oppressed that they should keep quiet and put up with oppression. But that isn’t what Christian forgiveness actually looks like.

Jesus’s words about loving our enemies also don’t mean that we should turn a blind eye to cruelty and injustice—or that we should pretend that justice isn’t important.

Today’s Gospel passage comes from the Gospel of Luke. Today’s Gospel comes from the same book where Mary sings of a God who “has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” A God who “has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” A God who “has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”

Today’s Gospel comes from the same book where Jesus begins his public ministry by quoting from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

If Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, his command that we must love our enemies can’t possibly have a meaning that would in fact be bad news to the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed.

One fascinating thing about loving your enemy is that it actually works pretty well as a tactic for social change. Every nonviolent resistance movement in history has employed it. There’s no better argument for the rightness of your position than the willingness to respond to abuse with patience and love.

It’s important to remember that Jesus’s words tell us how we should respond to injustice directed at ourselves. Jesus doesn’t have much to say about how we should respond to injustice directed at others. I suspect that the answer to this particular riddle is that we ought to stand side-by-side with the oppressed—and maybe even stand in front of them, making ourselves a target in their place. But that’s a hard thing to do.

Jesus’s words about loving our enemies don’t imply cowardice or weakness. Loving your enemy doesn’t mean that you should let fear guide your actions.

Jesus doesn’t say that we should turn the other cheek for fear of what might happen if we were to fight back.

He says that we should turn the other cheek because that’s how God acts: for God “is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”

Loving your enemy doesn’t mean that you surrender all power to those who hate you.

Quite the contrary, in fact. Jesus says, “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Mercy is the privilege of the powerful—not of the weak.

There’s nothing easy about loving your enemy. But there’s also nothing weak about it.

Jesus’s words are sadly not a recipe for a conflict-free life. Loving your enemy and forgiving wrong isn’t about sweeping evil under the rug. There’s an assumption that underlies Jesus’s words: we will have enemies. That there will be people who hurt, curse, and abuse us. People will steal from us and take advantage of us. We will have real evils to forgive.

Christian forgiveness isn’t about making nice, pretending that we weren’t hurt, pretending that a wrong never took place. Christian forgiveness places the truth at the center. “That was wrong. That was terrible. The truth is what it is. And still I forgive.”

I’ve said a lot about what loving your enemy and forgiving wrongdoing don’t mean. But what might it actually look like to live as Jesus asks us to live?

Loving your enemy in the way Jesus teaches requires strength. It requires courage. You can’t love your enemies if you’re afraid of them. The choice to love your enemy comes from a place of strength. If you respond to injustice with love, you take away all power from those who want to hurt you. Loving your enemy means saying something like this: “no matter what you do, you can’t force me to hate you. You don’t have that power.”

And so let me read Jesus’s words one more time.

Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again…. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”

May God give us the faith, the courage, the strength, and the trust to live the whole of our lives in just such a way.