The older I get and the longer I preach, the more I collect a list of subjects that are awkward to preach on. Prayer – because which of us can say we pray enough? Evangelism – because we know we struggle with that. Giving – because it’s often thought unseemly to talk about money.
I think I might add today’s theme to that list. Who wants to be told to love their enemies? Wouldn’t many of us rather turn up the dial on the furnaces in Hell for those who hate us and hurt us?
I may be doing some of you an injustice. Perhaps you have only serene and beatific thoughts about your enemies. But not all of us do.
I have certainly had to wrestle with this text this week. I contemplated getting out an old sermon on the passage and just modifying it. But the best one I found was tied to a particular item in the news at the time.
And so instead I bring to you the three questions that have been at the heart of my struggle to submit to the words of Jesus here this week:
Who is Jesus addressing?
Who are the enemies here?
How do we love our enemies?
Firstly, then, who is Jesus addressing?
I ask this question, because sometimes Christians want to apply Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (as it is in Matthew’s Gospel) or the Sermon on the Plain (as it is here in Luke) in a rather flat way to national life. They want to make the teaching of Jesus into national policy.
But that is not what Jesus is doing here. He has no vision for a Christian nation. There is no such thing, in contrast to aspirations from Christians on both the right and the left of politics. The Christian nationalists in the USA who have swung behind Donald Trump misunderstand the Gospel itself when they think they can make America more Christian by gaining political power and passing certain laws. That is legalism, not the Gospel.
And of course it’s rather awkward for some of their politics to find that the Jesus they invoke in their prayers taught some things that really don’t fit their political vision at all, not least here. They would probably dismiss this as ‘dangerous woke nonsense.’
But the Christians on the left of the political spectrum who might leap on Jesus’ teaching here and campaign for a nation state that is committed to pacifism are equally wrong. You cannot force the teaching of Jesus on those who do not bow the knee to him as Lord.
I do not say that to justify warmongering nations. Of course not! But we need to recognise that the group of people Jesus is addressing here is his disciples. When you read the Sermon the Mount or the Sermon on the Plain you realise Jesus is talking to his disciples. However, others are listening in.
Hence, in other words, Jesus addresses his followers, who together form a colony or outpost of his kingdom in the world. But others are listening in and watching us. The world will notice how we respond to the challenging teaching of Jesus, such as we find here.
So it’s important for us to get a handle on what it means to love our enemies, because the world knows that Jesus taught this, and it is watching to see how his disciples live it out. We will damage Christian witness if we ignore it, or if we explain it away.
Yes, even in these times when religion is less popular, the world is watching Christians. Just consider the damage to the Church of England caused by the safeguarding scandals lately. A recent survey showed that now only 25% of the population consider it trustworthy. For those of you who grew up thinking the church was a respected institution, please consider that.
Let’s take the challenging teaching of Jesus seriously, then. Including this ‘love your enemies’ stuff.
Secondly, who are the enemies here?
We begin to answer that by saying, it is anyone who hates us.
They may hate us for our faith. We know that millions of our brothers and sisters around the world pay a massive price for their faith, sometimes the ultimate price. In the last week, there have been reports that terrorists beheaded seventy Christians in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Not a week goes by without news of a similar atrocity or other forms of persecution against Christians appearing in my email inbox.
Our enemies may hate us, regardless of our faith. Some of the context here may well be Jesus imagining what the occupying Roman soldiers did to ordinary citizens. Yet we are not simply citizens of our nation, we are citizens of heaven, and our calling is not only to live by the laws of the land (insofar as our faith allows us) but to live by the law of God. In a properly constituted society we may wish to have recourse to the law against such people in order to protect others, but we are called to guard our hearts against hatred.
Or we may simply here be dealing with people who are not naturally in our orbit – our family, our neighbours, our colleagues, our friends, and so on. I say that, because of the way Jesus mentions giving to beggars (verse 30). We would not naturally label beggars as enemies in the conventional way. Yet Jesus calls us to show generous love to them, too.
And this example may have something to teach us about the recent public argument between JD Vance, the new American Vice-President, and Rory Stewart, the former British MP. Vance claimed,
There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.
Vance seemed to imply that love of people further from us, especially around the world, came a distant last, and he based it on the Catholic concept of ‘ordo amoris’, which says there is an order or sequence of who you love. He probably misrepresented Catholic teaching, and Rory Stewart fired back at him, accusing him of a ‘bizarre take’ on the Bible, which was ‘less Christian and more pagan tribal’. Heaven only knows where Mr Vance would put loving your enemies. A distant last, at a guess. It may be natural and easiest to love those who are nearest to us first, but Jesus upends so many social conventions, and we need to listen to him.
Thirdly, how do we love our enemies?
Jesus sets out the range of what he calls us to do in verses 27 and 28, before he gives any specific examples:
27 ‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
How do we do this? I just want to give you a few examples.
In one town where I served, a bookshop in the High Street began overtly promoting occult books and practices associated with them. Many Christians faced with such a situation would have defaulted into aggressive protest mode. They would have organised petitions and boycotts and maybe contacted the local media. They might have requested a meeting with the manager and angrily demanded the withdrawal of the books. They might have gone on a prayer march and cast out demons.
But not the group of Christians who discovered this incident. They turned to prayer, but not of the angry kind. Instead, they prayed that the bookshop would be blessed. If the bookshop were blessed, they might not need to resort to promoting spiritual darkness.
These Christians had been influenced by a preacher who once said, ‘In the celestial poker game a hand of blessings always outranks a hand of curses.’
Or take the experience of one of my relatives many years ago. He was dating the girl who would later become his wife. However, his girlfriend’s mother disapproved of him. He wasn’t good enough for her daughter, in her opinion. His job did not rank as highly professionally, and he was less educated than the girlfriend.
My relative shared his frustrations about this with a friend at church. And his friend made a suggestion.
‘When you leave your girlfriend’s house each evening, say ‘God bless you’ to her mother. You won’t be able to feel mean towards someone you are blessing.’
My relative bristled at the idea. But he tried it – starting by saying it through gritted teeth. But eventually – it worked. Blessing changes relationships for the better.
One last story: one year while I was training for the ministry in Manchester, a married student and his wife invited me (still single then) to their flat to celebrate my birthday. My birthday meal? Beans on toast!
My friends offered to call a taxi for me to get home, but I declined and chose to walk back.
Big mistake. For on the journey back to the hall of residence a teenage thug mugged me, breaking my glasses and causing minor damage to my eyes.
Another student, himself a former solicitor, took me to the police station and stayed with me while I was interviewed and made a statement.
While I am sure this teenage thug was known in the locality, no-one was ever arrested.
However, people asked me what I would have done if the criminal had been. Would I, as a Christian who believed in and preached forgiveness, have pressed charges?
My answer was that provided I was sure no hatred remained in my heart towards the mugger, then yes, I would consent to the laying of charges. For me – and you may see this differently – this held together both the call to love and forgive my enemy and the need to uphold justice and protect other members of the public.
Conclusion
There may be one final question nagging in our minds: why should we love our enemies?
Because, says Jesus, this is what God is like. As he puts it:
Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
We have been brought into the kingdom of God by divine mercy towards us who were his enemies due to sin. Yet God still loved us, his enemies, to the point of his Son dying on the Cross.
If we are to respond in gratitude and imitate our Saviour, then we too shall learn to show practical love to our enemies.
Big Circumstance 