Enemies

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 6

“To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, giftwrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.

31–34  “Here is a simple rule of thumb for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you; then grab the initiative and do it for them! If you only love the lovable, do you expect a pat on the back? Run-of-the-mill sinners do that. If you only help those who help you, do you expect a medal? Garden-variety sinners do that. If you only give for what you hope to get out of it, do you think that’s charity? The stingiest of pawnbrokers does that.

35–36  “I tell you, love your enemies. Help and give without expecting a return. You’ll never—I promise—regret it. Live out this God-created identity the way our Father lives toward us, generously and graciously, even when we’re at our worst. Our Father is kind; you be kind.

37–38  “Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults—unless, of course, you want the same treatment. Don’t condemn those who are down; that hardness can boomerang. Be easy on people; you’ll find life a lot easier. Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”

Introduction

When I was in kindergarten, I remember one day that I dressed up as Superman to go to school.

I want to be very clear about this: There wasn’t some kind of dress up party or Halloween celebration or anything like that.

I was and am just a colossal nerd.

But when I got on the bus in the morning, the school bully named Rocco was waiting for me.

Can we just admit that there’s no better name than Rocco for the villain of this story?

No you’re not, yes I am.

Next thing I know I woke up in the nurse’s office.

Maybe Rocco had kryptonite in his pocket?

Now Rocco and I eventually made up and actually became pretty good friends for a while in high school, but still...

I bring that up because I think that’s the last time in my life that I had a true honest to goodness enemy.

Which makes it easy to try to avoid this teaching from Jesus, doesn’t it?

It makes us want to assume that this passage is about someone else.

But I think if we listen pretty closely to this, we can realize that there’s something in this for us today as well.

Bible Breakdown

Still aimed at the disciples

One of the things that we discussed last week was that this teaching wasn’t directed at the crowd that’s all around Jesus.

It’s meant for anyone, then or now, who would call ourselves disciples or apprentices to Jesus.

I hope that includes you and I, but it’s important to remember that this message isn’t for everybody.

To those who are ready for the truth.

There are some who are ready to hear this.

There are some who are up for the challenge that Jesus is laying out here.

There are some who are ready to push to the next level of their faith.

And, Jesus seems to imply, there are some who are not.

Are we?

There’s a lot here!

Love and Hate

Again, I really love the way Eugene Peterson translates all of this:

Let your enemies bring out the best in you, not the worst.

Now again, I don’t think a whole bunch of us have a Rocco that we could label as our enemy.

But I’m betting there are people that annoy us to no end, right?

If you work in an office, does Karen in HR bring out the best in you, or the worst?

If you are a Republican, does your neighbor with a Joe Biden sign bring out the best in you, or the worst?

If you are a Democrat, does your neighbor with a Donald Trump sign bring out the best in you, or the worst?

If your family is kind of dysfunctional, does Aunt Sally bring out the best in you or the worst?

To be very clear, none of this means that we have to cave on our values.

You don’t have to agree with the office gossip to be kind.

You don’t have to become a liberal to be a kind conservative any more than you have to be a conservative to be a kind liberal.

And you don’t have to endure emotional or psychological abuse to be a loving member of your family.

But it is to say that we don’t have to resort to meanness, name calling, malice, or vengeance when someone disagrees with us.

The Myth of Redemptive Violence

Jesus then turns to one of his hardest teachings.

If someone strikes you on the cheek, give them the other also.

If someone asks for your cloak, give them your coat as well.

What Jesus is trying to teach is the myth of redemptive violence.

If someone hits me, I will feel better or have some sense of justice if I hit them back.

Ask just about anyone who has been the victim of violence who has tried this, it’s just…not…true.

Violence in return for violence simply cannot make anyone feel better about themselves.

This is true of countries and war.

This is true of criminals and the death penalty.

This is true of individuals like you and me.

Again, this isn’t to say that you don’t stand up for what you believe in and who you love.

But you don’t stand up with violence.

And what Jesus teaches, he puts in to action later in the story.

When the Roman army arrests him, puts him on a sham trail, and threatens to take his life, Jesus could have done a lot of things:

He could have had his disciples fight back, but instead he healed the ear of a soldier.

He could have protested and raised a fuss loud enough to start a riot, but instead he stayed silent.

He could have called down legions of angels and asserted his authority, but instead he died for your sins and mine all the while whispering “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

This is a hard teaching. No two ways about it.

But we still have to take it seriously and wrestle with it for sure.

The Golden Rule

Then Jesus repeats something that actually isn’t unique to him.

The Greek philosophers that proceeded Jesus all had some version of the Golden Rule.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Talk about a simple message that is ridiculously impossible to live in to!

It is simple enough that we teach this one to the youngest of children, right?

I can still hear my dad’s voice saying “Do unto others son…do unto others.”

And yet, Jesus spells out how difficult it is.

We want to do unto the ones we love as we would have them do unto us.

We want to be generous to people that we assume will be generous back.

We want people who we feel are undeserving of our love to know it, and to be on the outs with us.

Jesus is being quite clear. When he teaches his apprentices to love everyone, the literal Greek word there translates as…everyone!

Kindness is king

In the wake of the 2016 election, a friend and I noticed something interesting.

In 2018, there was a documentary about Mr. Rogers called “Won’t you be my neighbor.”

Mr. Rogers was the theme of the mission conference we attended that year.

Shortly thereafter, American Treasure Tom Hanks played Mr. Rogers in a biopic.

And there were so many more news stories than usual about Mr. Rogers, seemingly every week we were treated to some behind the scenes picture of his life.

It’s almost like in the wake of all the division, all the anger, all the vitriol that was going on in our politics and cultural life, we all agreed that we needed to get back to something more pure.

Mr. Rogers is about kindness to everyone everywhere.

Mr. Rogers is about making sure that everyone knows they are loved, no matter who they are.

Mr. Rogers is about a genuine curiosity about the world, not a natural born suspicion.

And, because there are no original ideas, Mr. Rogers was borrowing everything he was doing from Jesus.

I know this for a fact, because while not everyone knows this, Mr. Rogers was in fact an ordained Presbyterian Pastor, who studied at the same seminary I attended.

Which made comparisons to past alumni kind of hard to swallow, but that’s a me problem!

What I think it says is that we all know that Kindness rules the day, even when the rest of the world around us seems to think otherwise.

Generosity wins

Jesus wraps up this section of teaching saying that generosity begets generosity, and I happen to know that he’s right.

A few months ago, we held the first stewardship campaign in a long time at LPC.

We essentially said that we want to do these things, to live in to our values of belonging and youth and family and experimentation and mission and life together, but to do this would require each of us to be generous.

And you know what? Everyone started being generous.

We don’t have an exact percentage because we were trying to compare to a COVID lock down and also because your pastor can’t do math, but there is a SHARP increase in the amount of offerings that have been given in January, both from envelops and loose offerings.

Because of that, we’ve been able to be more generous.

I got to drop off the offerings and supplies to resurrection power this week, and my word were they excited!

I got to see the joy on the faces of our NA brothers and sisters as we offered to help them out with their one year anniversary party coming up in March.

And our youth group continues to grow as more and more folks in the neighborhood catch wind of what we’re doing.

Generosity begets generosity, doesn’t it?

Jesus says in this passage Help and give without expecting a return. You’ll never—I promise—regret it.

I think in the last few months around here, we can pretty clearly say he’s right, isn’t he?

That’s not the way the world works!

When I get push back to this teaching, people will often say “Yeah, but that’s not the way the world works.”

The world prefers to hate their enemies.

The world prefers the ways of violence. It’s a violent world out there.

The world says forget the Golden Rule, it’s all about looking after number one.

The world says that kindness is weakness.

And the world says that he who has the most toys at the end wins.

This stuff from Jesus is nice and all, but it’s not the way the world works.

And you know what, they’re right.

It’s not the way the world works.

But it is the way the kingdom works!

Jesus says that it’s exactly right that this isn’t the way the world works, because the world is broken.

We are called, those of us who take seriously the call to be apprentices of Jesus, to participate in the kingdom.

The kingdom works much differently than the world.

The kingdom cannot tolerate hate. There’s only room for love.

The kingdom does not engage in violence, and sees redemptive violence for the myth that it is.

The kingdom is all about treating others the way we ourselves would like to be treated.

The kingdom is about kindness over anger.

The kingdom is generosity that begets generosity that begets generosity.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a kingdom I want to live in.

Apprentices

Name our enemies

Our friends in NA would tell us that the first step in solving any problem is admitting their is one.

I’m guessing that many of you are like me, you assume that with the absence of a Rocco in your life, you don’t have any enemies.

But if we’re honest, if we dig a little deeper in to this thing,

There are people we harbor ill will toward, aren’t there?

Maybe it’s because of a disagreement.

Maybe it’s because of an unbalanced power structure at work.

Maybe it’s because of some wound that they inflicted on us somewhere along the line.

Maybe it’s something I haven’t thought of yet.

But I’m betting if we expanded the definition to cover these people, than most of us have enemies.

Who are they?

We are most likely to move on to the next step if we can say with certainty who our enemies are.

But then of course we have to move on to the next step.

Love the unloveable

What does it mean to love our enemies now that we know who they are?

The word in Greek here for love is Agape, which is a fascinating word.

It means to place the wellbeing of the other above ourselves.

A new mother shows agape to her children when she wakes up in the middle of the night to feed and change them.

A husband shows agape to his wife when he turns off the big game to do the dishes.

Jesus shows us the ultimate example of agape when he goes to the cross, gives away his life, so that we can have ours.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you should give up your life for the Karen in the office...

But what can you do that will cost you something to love another?

Maybe it means hanging in there on a conversation you have absolutely no interest in having.

Maybe it means showing respect to a totally out of touch boss.

Maybe it means asking genuine question of someone with whom you disagree, rather than just lambasting their argument.

Again, this doesn’t mean that you cave on your positions or your sense of justice.

But it does mean that we can act like little detectives, looking for ways to love our neighbors and enemies, and set their needs above our own if even just for a short time.

Make sure the that includes ourselves

In some of the work that I’ve done in pastoral ministry, it is beyond clear that some people’s biggest enemy is themselves.

Our thoughts can sometimes turn toxic, beating ourselves up for the smallest of mistakes.

Or regretting some of our life’s past choices

Or wondering if we could ever be deserving of love.

When Jesus says that we need to love our enemies, I am convinced that this includes ourselves.

God has decided that of all the things that have been created, the world needed one of you too.

Jesus has decided that you are worthy of love, who are you to disagree with that!

Jesus has decided that you are worthy of agape, giving his life for yours, to make sure that you would enjoy forever with him.

We are called to love our enemies, no matter how big or how small, and no matter whether they occupy the space out there, or the space just beneath our chest.

Because no matter who you are, no matter where you’ve been, and no matter what you’ve done, you are worthy of love.