Love your enemies - it will drive them crazy!

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. In Nomine +

"Suggestions for you” on Instagram is an interesting thing. Once it showed me a sign saying “if you are looking for a sign, this is it”. A statement while slightly nonsensical, was none the less true! Another time, and more relevant to this sermon, the app showed a sign which cleverly suggests: "Love your enemies—it will drive them crazy."

Jesus’ ethical teaching is higher than this example because love of enemies is not a consequentialist ethic, hoping that the other person will change.

Love of enemies is rather an expression of the divine character and not on the basis of any hoped-for results. God makes his sun rise and the rain fall on both the just and unjust.

I once read this story: A young American schooled in the martial arts was riding a bus one day in Tokyo, Japan.

He and the other passengers are suddenly threatened with a drunken, cursing, knife-wielding man who has hopped on the bus. The chap trained in marital arts is ready to neutralise the man. But as he positions himself to strike, an old Japanese man pushes past him. The old man smiles warmly at the man with the knife and softly asks what is causing so much hurt in the man's life. Disarmed by the old man's compassion, our culprit drops his knife and begins to sob. Between his sobs he tells of how his wife has died and the loss has left him feeling unstable. As the our correspondent leaves the bus at the next stop, he sees his potential opponent gently listening to the old Japanese man who is telling him of how he has also recently lost his wife and how bad he also feels.

The Japanese man was operating out of a Buddhist perspective. Our narrator had instantly objectified the knife wielder as an enemy who threatened his own self security. In contrast, the elderly Japanese man saw the threatening person as hurting and as a part of himself since both were mourning the loss of a loved one.

In Buddhism, the goal is to see one's self as connected to the rest of creation. The karma of wishing evil on another will only bring evil on the self.

Likewise for Christians, one important motivation to love enemies is that loving our enemies is the only way to prevent taking on the very characteristics we hate about them. You become what you hate.

And Scripture teaches that if God had not loved us while we were his enemies, we could never have become his children.

Loving means wanting good for them. You don’t have to like them or trust them.

The enemy may be:

the business partner who defrauded you

the boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, who cheated on you

the customer who lied to have you fired

I’m known in certain circles for not being a massive fan of St Paul the Apostle. However, he does say one thing in his letter to the Romans that I profoundly try to live by (but fail miserably to far too often - indeed, I failed again at an event I went to on Tuesday): "Do not repay anyone evil for evil.... Beloved, never avenge yourselves.... If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink. . .. Do not overcome evil by evil [means] but overcome evil with good."

St. Paul also commands to feed a hungry enemy and to give water to a thirsty one.

Notice that when Jesus gives some examples of how to love our enemies forgiveness isn't one of them. He says do good to them, bless them, pray for them, offer the other cheek, give food and water to them, let them take from you, do not ask for restitution. But he doesn’t say "forgive.” Why not? The answer may be because the mistreatment and violence is still going on, either because of ongoing issues, or artificial molehills made into mountains by various current debates.

Consequently, you can also love your enemy while assertively standing up for personal and civil rights, including protecting yourself and others, and expressing thoughts, feelings and beliefs in direct, honest and appropriate ways. (And also, and perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to agree with someone to love them!)

Part of our testimony should be: I’m grateful for my friends AND my enemies for they are all a part of my testimony.

Al-Anon (the network for relatives and co-dependents of addicts) meetings mention this line as part of the closing words: “Though you may not like all of us, you'll love us in a very special way, the same way we already love you.”

I will, however, perhaps for the first time in this chapel, quote from Madonna (not Our Blessed Mother, but that eternally young pop artist who officially becomes an OAP this year):

"The cross is a very powerful symbol and it symbolizes suffering, but it also is connected to a person who was loving and sharing and his message was about unconditional love. I tried to take a powerful image and use it to draw attention to a situation that needs attention. For me, we all need to be Jesus in our time. Jesus' message was to love your neighbor as yourself and these are people in need."

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. In Nomine +