Kill Them With Kindness

For pretty much this entire second half of the series we have been asking the question, “who is my neighbor?” and rightly so. How are we to love our neighbor as ourself if we don’t know who our neighbor is? But today, we are going to look at a different question that might make many of us very uncomfortable. Who is my enemy? You might brush the question off or avoid it because really Pastor Brian, I don’t have any enemies. There isn’t anyone in my life who is out to get me or make my life difficult. No one I know is actively seeking my demise. Well what about Russia, or China, or Iran or other countries who don’t like or even hate the United States? It might be easy or easier to call them our enemies. On the other hand does the average person in those countries actively seek our demise or are they just trying to live their life and provide a better life for their children just like we are for ours here in the USA? So maybe they aren’t exactly enemies.

What if we defined enemy a little differently? What if an enemy is the person next door that we can’t stand to engage with because they make us so upset by what they do or don’t do? I’ve told the story before that we didn’t get along with our next door neighbors right away because the very first time he came to introduce himself he complained about our dog barking all day long while we were gone because we let our dog stay in the backyard since the weather was nice. We had certain feelings about them until we got to know them better. While I never used the phrase they were my enemy because of the kinds of thoughts come up when you say the word enemy, I would say that they would actually fit what an enemy is if we define the idea more broadly.

I had a conversation with a member of a congregation I served one time and she had a hard time with another member in the church. Now, that’s never happened to any of you right? While she never used the term enemy, she didn’t want to have to interact with the person. She came to me and told me that in order to try to be peaceful, and be at peace, she was going to not talk to this person and would try to avoid this person so that nothing would happen that would cause them to engage with each other. She felt their conversations always left her feeling upset or irritated. So for a while she did just that. She avoided engaging with this person so that nothing would happen. Again we might not traditionally call these two women enemies, but for all intents and purposes they were. To be completely honest, until now, I never thought of this situation or describing it as enemies. I just don’t think in those terms, but now thinking about our conversation today, about loving our enemies, I look back and I think this is what it was. We might just say that we don’t get along with this person or that person, but if we don’t get along with them and avoid them like I did with my literal neighbors, then we are, in a way, treating them like enemies.

In Jesus’ time, it was taught that the verse about loving your neighbor, which we talked about when we first talked about neighbors, was narrowly defined to friends, family and literal neighbors. So it was a cultural tradition to not have to get along with or be neighborly to people who didn’t fit that narrow definition. So Jesus, in Matthew 5:43 calls out this false teaching and calls it what it is. By defining neighbor so narrowly and how we should only treat our neighbors with this kind of love and respect, then we are by Jesus’ definition, hating our enemy. And who is my enemy? Anyone who isn’t in that small circle of neighbor.

And in this conversation that Jesus is having with the crowds, he doesn’t even broadly define the definition of neighbor like I did a few weeks ago. Maybe the crowds weren’t ready for that just yet. Instead, Jesus allows the narrow definition to stand, but then he tells them that it’s not ok to hate your enemy. It’s not ok to hate those who are different from you, who don’t think like you, who don’t look like you. No, Jesus says, you must love them, even the ones who harass you. That doesn’t mean we have to endure the harassment or put ourselves in situations where harassment or whatever else it is that this enemy does to you, but it does mean that we are called to love them and pray for them, because if we do that we will show ourselves to be like the children of God that we are. Then Jesus goes on to say that we need to go beyond the prayer part of things. Don’t just pray for a change of heart, but be a part of that change. Love those you love, but also love those whom don’t love you. Greet those who harass you. Show kindness to all people because God does the same. God loves them even in their sin, just as God loves us even in our own sin. Because if we are only kind to our own neighbors then how are we any different than anyone else in the world? We aren’t. Yet God calls us to be. God calls us to be a light to the world that is not just hidden for our own to see.

This member of the congregation came back to me after a while and she told me that she was going to do something different. She wasn’t going to avoid this other person anymore. She said that she had started and would continue to pray for both herself and this person. Then she came to me a while later and she told me that through her prayers she felt a change. She felt a change in both herself and the other person. Just as scripture said she didn’t just pray, but once she felt that change she began to engage with her again. She said that their relationship began to mend. It wasn’t overnight and it wasn’t always easy, but through prayer and love she and this other woman were able to greet each other and talk to each other once again.

Not only is this what Jesus was getting at but it’s also what Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans. The Roman community was very diverse including people who were Jews and Gentiles along with people from all over the Roman Empire. There were lots of struggles, as we see in this letter and other letters Paul writes. But Paul doesn’t let them off the hook. He tells them that they need to love each other like members of your own family. Paul is telling them that despite all their differences they are to be neighbors to one another. He then goes on to quote Jesus by saying that we should bless those who harass us and that we should be empathetic with everyone. Be happy when people are happy, be sad when others are sad. One of the most important parts he says is that we should not repay evil for evil. It is so easy to want to get revenge on someone who has wronged us, but Jesus and Paul call on us to change the pattern of hate, to change the pattern of keeping our enemies our enemy. Love your enemy, feed them, give them something to drink, show them that we will not stand for evil, but that we will return the evil with love. An eye for an eye has and continues to be the norm in our world and it’s time we change that pattern the way Jesus called us to do it. Kill them with kindness… or in the words of Paul, don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good.

The only way that we can break a pattern of hurt in our world is to love our enemies. To show them that while we know that we are broken and they are broken that we are willing to love them in their brokenness just as we have been loved by God in our brokenness. When we love someone in spite of their brokenness perhaps they will see there is another way to be, another way to act, another way to engage with us and with others. When we love ourselves, our neighbors, and even our enemies, we are showing the world that there is yet another more perfect way. The way of God’s love for us and for all people. For we are all, unequivocally God’s children and therefore worthy of forgiveness, love, and grace. Amen.