Love your enemies - Confound the world !
Tonight’s gospel reading (Luke
And I want to think this evening about each of these things briefly. Firstly Jesus says Love your enemies. Around the world today there are many conflicts going on. This country it seems has as many enemies as anyone, and on individual levels many people know of others whom they regard as enemies. Jesus says – love them !
From his death bed, a husband called to his wife and said, "One month after I die I want you to marry Sammy." "Sammy! But he is your enemy !" "Yes, I know that ! I've suffered all these years so let him suffer now." That may be a joke of course, but actually it is the way that many of us view enemies. We may not hate them, we may not want to really hurt them, but getting one over them occasionally still seems to be a fun thing to do…
But confounding human standards – Jesus says love. Oscar Wilde actually gave another reason to love your enemy when he said, "Always love your enemies …
nothing annoys them so much."
But loving our enemies is done for no other reason than that Jesus told us to, and that is how he wants to shape the world – a world that he wants built on principles of love and joy and peace and justice for all.
So loving enemies is not just about accepting them, or tolerating them, it is about feeling care and compassion – it is about doing something out of the ordinary for them. It is about looking and working to build a relationship with them.
Secondly Jesus says we must not judge or condemn… Actually I rather like people watching – I like to look at people and try and make some sort of judgement about them. Sometimes to my shame I might even make an unfavourable judgement based on how a person looks or immediately condemn a person as dull or nasty and so on.
But judgement and condemnation are not things for us – they are for God alone. Jesus keeps our instructions very simple – love, love and love a bit more. But of course the words may be simple, the practice is something totally different. It is natural for us as imperfect people to make judgements about others, and to even condemn people because we don’t like the look of them or the sound of them.
There have been many books written about how to deal with someone we meet regularly who we don’t like – in depth studies however do not change the command of Jesus to LOVE. Judgment and condemnation are God’s department – we are simply in the sales department telling others about his love, and showing to others our love.
And thirdly and continuing to compound the standards of the world today, Jesus says forgive… Most reasonable people will, if someone says sorry to them, accept the apology, but how well do we really forgive someone who has hurt us. We may say we forgive, we may even work at getting back to a reasonable enough relationship with a person, but ultimately we do not forget, and that is an essential part of forgiveness.
When Jesus offers to wipe our slates clean, they are wiped clean and not just covered up for use at a future date. As we are called to mirror the life of Jesus on earth today, we are commanded to forgive with no strings attached !
And finally I want to think about Jesus’ instructions to build our houses on firm ground. Every one of us has been given the gift and the responsibility of freewill, and yet we all too often forget the privilege that comes with that. In recent weeks many of the readings have centred on a message of taking responsibility and making decisions, and this is another one.
I am not a building expert by any means – but I am told that many new houses built today are of a far inferior standard to those of years ago – one of the things that makes them so different apart from the thickness of the walls is the depth and strength of the foundation – things weren’t built to last as long as they once were. And that can be so true of our relationship with God.
We must build our lives and our Churches on the firm foundation of Jesus – learning from him as we seek his guidance and his love, and displaying his power out into the world. We can’t build a strong Church based on anyone else, and we can’t even build a base for our own lives without him.
And so Jesus confounds many of the standards by which we live today, and whilst many people argue the case for contemporary standards to shape the Church, these are the standards by which we must live – they are non-negotiable, and it is on these things that the Christian Church and on our lives must be built.
I’ll finish with one more short story. A preacher, in his Sunday sermon, used “Forgive Your Enemies” as his subject. After a long sermon, he asked how many were willing to forgive their enemies.
About half held up their hands. Not satisfied, he harangued on for another twenty minutes and repeated his question. This time he received a response of about 80 percent of the congregation whom raised their hands.
Still unsatisfied, he lectured for another 15 minutes repeated his question.
With all thoughts now on Sunday dinner, all responded except one elderly lady seated in the rear.
“Mrs. Jones, are you not willing to forgive your enemies?”
“I don’t have any.”
“Mrs. Jones, that is very unusual. How old are you?”
“Ninety nine.”
“Mrs. Jones, please come down in front and tell the congregation how a person can live to be ninety-nine, and not have an enemy in the world.” This little white-haired lady tottered down the aisle, very slowly, and then turned around and said: “It’s easy, I just outlived them.”
We can live our lives making enemies, we can live our lives judging and condemning others and so on, but ultimately even outliving all of those people won’t help us to be right with God – the choice we have is simple ‘Follow God or don’t follow God.’ May we be inspired by God to choose the former. AMEN
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