“Loving Our Enemies(?!?)”

Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood on Matthew 5: 43-48
Feb. 5, 2017 at First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS

This sermon is going to require prayer before, during, and after. Please notice that we’re going to be sharing the Prayer of Jesus immediately after the sermon today and it’s printed in your bulletin. Let’s begin by praying:

Holy God of Love, you sent your son Jesus to us and he told us to pray for our enemies. All these years later, we have just one question about this: REALLY?

I mean, I know he said it very clearly. He did not stutter. And many who have followed in his ways have attempted it. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed it was possible. Even in his most difficult moments - up against the wall,  imprisoned, hated - Dr. King seemed to believe it was possible.

So we pray, O God of Difficult Commands, that you would open our hearts today. That you would “make a way out of no way” (1) for those of us who are skeptical of this teaching. That you would encourage those who “get it” l to help the rest of us understand. For we confess that we want to be like Jesus, but sometimes it seems awfully hard.

Help us. Please.

And Amen.

*****************

I feel utterly unqualified to preach this sermon. I’m just going to start with that. I also feel very cranky with myself for deciding that it would be important to include a sermon on loving our enemies as a part of this series. I want you to know that I fought the idea tooth and nail. I told God to go away, bug off. I told God it might get very uncomfortable for some of us and, quite honestly, many of us already pretty stressed out these days.

I became so frustrated, in fact, that there is a whole other sermon that I wrote earlier this week that is now on the cutting room floor. A whole other sermon where I confess that, really, I don’t see how it’s possible to love people who hate you, want you dead.

But here’s the problem: apparently it IS possible because not only did Jesus manage to do it, so did other people. This week I read not only the words of Jesus and the words of Dr. King but also reflections by King’s lifelong family friend and mentor, Howard Thurman. I listened to the words of the still-living-and-fighting John Lewis. And I discovered that all four men of these men of deep faith believed it is possible to love our enemies.

So I read and I listened and I read some more. And I prayed. I tried to find the common links.

I listened to John Lewis in a 2013 interview with Krista Tippett talk about his experience in Selma in 1965 (2). During that first attempted march from Selma to Montgomery, John Lewis was in the front of the march and was brutally beaten in the head by state troopers. He reflects on that experience, saying:

I thought we were going to be arrested and simply taken to jail. I didn’t have any idea that we would be beaten…..I thought I was going to die. I thought I saw death. I thought it was my last nonviolent protest. But before...I lost consciousness, I became deeply concerned about the other people on the march. But in all of the years since, I’ve not had any sense of bitterness or ill feeling toward any of the people. I just don’t have it. I guess it’s not part of my DNA to become bitter, to become hostile.

Tippett responds, laughing, “Well, maybe you trained your DNA a bit,” and Lewis concedes that he had had a lot of practice at this point. And that the words of Dr. King, in particular, the commandment to love, no matter what, had really sunk in. He remembers that King always said, “Hate is too heavy a burden to bear.”

Tippett asks him if he was able to truly keep his heart free of hate in that moment on the bridge in Selma, and in the years since. Lewis says that he has never felt any bitterness towards the men who inflicted the violence. He understood, even in the moment that they were “individuals carrying out an order.” She presses him further: so what about George Wallace, the one who ordered the attack? Lewis says, “I’ve never had any bitterness towards him or the officials.”

Lewis, like King, seems to have either the gift or carefully-honed-skill of refusing to allow anyone to become his enemy.

Instead, he said that he learned early on “you should never give up on anyone.” Even those who disagree with you, want you dead, have values that are abhorrent to you, do violence, seem to be possessed by Evil….even those people, Lewis says, you should never give up on.

King agreed. He truly believed that through the process of nonviolent resistance, rooted in love, God would create a way to heal not only those who were oppressed but those who were doing the oppressing. King said to his most bitter opponents, “One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall to appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.” (3). He believed: “Love transforms with redemptive power.”

King was able to love his enemies because he did not really see them as enemies.

He did not allow anyone to pull him “low enough to hate” them. Instead, he was able to separate their actions from their worth. They may have done terrible things, Evil things. But they were more than just the sum of those actions. He said, “there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” (4). He saw even white supremacists as human beings - beloved children of God - who were bound up in the grievous sins of their culture. They were being acted upon by forces of Evil and, thusly, were doing Evil. But they were not themselves Evil. They were still beloved children of God.

If an enemy is someone that we hate or despise or oppose vehemently, then it is difficult (if not impossible) to love them. But if we can somehow see ourselves as opposed to Evil itself with a capital “E” - If we can be opposed to other people’s actions and values…..while still remembering they are more than just the sum of those parts of themselves. If we can see them as people of possibility as Lewis did, then they cease to be enemies.

Because while others may strive to make us into enemies, we ultimately have the power to resist that relationship. They may seek to cast us as THEIR enemy, but we have the freedom to determine how we will see them. We can play their game, choosing to define them as enemy. Or we can refuse to call them enemy - instead opposing their values and actions - while simultaneously seeing them - their personhood - as real. We can condemn behaviors while still holding out hope for the redemption of the person trapped inside a cycle of violence and pain.

It seems there are at least two ways to love an enemy. First, you can love those who seem to be your enemies. Or second, you can cease believing that you have enemies. Or, as Dr. King says it, “we get rid of enemies by getting rid of enmity.” (5)

Now, this is not easy. I’m not saying it's easy. I’m sure it’s easier for some than others. And I do believe, as John Lewis noted, it probably gets easier if we have trained and practiced.

That is, it seems, where the second part of Jesus’s statement comes in. Notice he doesn’t just say, “love your enemies.” He says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” So when we don’t think we can follow in Jesus’s footsteps or King’s footsteps or Lewis’s footsteps….when hate threatens to overwhelm and we are tempted to allow someone to become an enemy, Jesus gives us another task: Pray for them.

I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus taught his followers how to pray right after unloading onto them all of these difficult expectations. Jesus says, “Look, I get it. This loving your enemies thing is really hard. So when you can’t quite get there, pray for them. And if you can’t bear to do that - if you don’t have the words to pray for them - then you can use these words anytime.

Pray with me: (5)
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.
Amen.




NOTES:

1. MLK Speech to the SCLC 1967. 
2. On Being interview: http://onbeing.org/programs/john-lewis-love-action/
3. Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love, page 51
4. Ibid, page 45.
5. https://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2015/01/19/martin-luther-king-jr-on-loving-your-enemies/35907
6. In our worship bulletin we have the following language each week right before the Prayer of Jesus: “Our Father” is the traditional way this prayer begins. For many, however, the traditional language is a hindrance to the intimacy of their relationship with God. You are invited to use whatever name for God you find most meaningful (Mother, Father, Creator, God, Friend, etc,). Together, our names for God will create a beautiful chorus reaching out to the Holy.