Love your enemies (it will drive them crazy)

 ‘… Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.....’ (Matt 5:48)

Matthew 5:38-48 (Year A: 2^nd Sunday before Lent Sunday 19^th February 2017)

“I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies” is a phrase we use in the English language (at least in Ireland anyway). The implication is that something is so bad that you would not wish it on ‘your worst enemies’.  The implications of this is that you might wish lesser calamities on ‘your worst enemies’ including enemies below the head of the queue!  Speaking to us today through the good news of Matthew Jesus has news for us ….  wishing any bad on your enemies – worst or otherwise is not acceptable among Christian disciples.  More than this, we are actually bidden to LOVE our enemies.  Now, what does that mean? It means that we ought to speak, act and think only and ever for the GOOD or our neighbour including our ‘enemy neighbours’ – even the ones who abuse us, speak ill of us, disrespect us, jeer us, put us down and seek to harm us some of the time or most of the time or all of the time (if any of us is blessed not to have such people in our lives then we are blessed and if we do we are also blessed but in a different way because such persons are a gift and a challenge for us to go forward in love).  How do we know what is good for our neighbour in choosing to think, speak and act? Therein lies the challenge for Christians who want to take their religion seriously.  Not for no reason did God say to us through his prophet:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.’ (Deuteronomy 6:5)

And the same point is taken up in Matthew 22:37:

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’

with all your mind….

'Loving' our enemies to bits (literally)?

Over the centuries some theologians have struggled to rationalise situations where people literally kill each other in wars deemed to be ‘just’ while loving their enemies to pieces (literally). Now, it is easy to pontificate on these matters from a keyboard or comfortable lounge. Situations vary and circumstances dictate.  Pacifism is all very well when there are other choices. But, how do we take the commandment to love our enemies as ourselves even in situations of war and great danger to others?  Not to kill someone who is certainly in the process of committing multiple murders (for whatever reason) could be tantamount to being party to murdering many because one did not act in a given moment to prevent what was clearly imminent.  I give this extreme situational example merely to demonstrate that moral questions are never simple or black and white even if the underlying principles are.

Continuing with the Sermon on the Mount in Chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel the reader encounters more disruptive advice. Not only is liturgical life disrupted according to the preceding verses (‘..first go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift..’) but so also is ordinary everyday life in organisations, families, politics, media, neighbourhoods, churches, trade unions and every other walk of life.

Spite, resentment, anger and revenge leading to more spit, resentment, anger and revenge … and so on.  Human behaviour is cyclical and so his human history – the story of human behaviour.  However, it is not always like this and it is not inevitable. Reconciliation is possible – at least sometimes, somewhere and for somebodies.  This particular section of the long ‘Sermon on the Mount’ is as counter-cultural and subversive as the Gospel stories go. Not only are we bidden to ‘turn the other cheek’ but to ‘love your enemies’. If this were taken literally along with the prohibition on the swearing of oaths the entire court and judicial system would either grind to a halt or become dispensable in favour of reconciliation tribunals. Alas, that’s not the way it works. And even in church communities and organisations it is not unknown for Christians to sue each other on grounds of honour, property or Right Teaching.

But what’s the story in the face of bad behaviour?

In the face of bad behaviour, untruths and injustices what are we invited to do? Answer with more bad behaviour? No, we are bid to ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘go the extra mile’ and ‘giving a shirt in addition ..’ This sort of response risks destabilising organisations and situations. It is not the way the real world works, it might be claimed.  The guiding principle of realpolitik is hitting back, pre-empting, covering your own interests and if this does not work wheeling, dealing and ultimately cutting a deal and moving on.  Instead, Jesus is telling those who will listen that we should let go and let live. Why? Surely, it is not right to refuse to stand up to injustice? Surely, we must act sensibly to defend our good name and reputation against attack that is unwarranted?

It is easy to miss the point here.  The Sermon the Mount is not a call to passivity, submission or collaboration in unjust situations. Rather it bids us to reach beyond the immediate situation to the other person or persons who deserve our deepest respect even if we think they are by far in the wrong. By always wanting what is best for the other as well as one self (the injunction is to love the other as oneself). In this sense turning the other cheek and going the extra mile can be an act of defiant trust and freedom.

The Love Covenant incarnate

A scholarly examination of the relevant passages and parallel passages in the ‘Old Testament’ (there was nothing ‘old’ about when Matthew’s gospel was being written up around 80 A.D.) shows Jesus as going beyond the Law to fulfil the Law. In other words, he was speaking and living in such a way as to reveal the core meaning of the Law and, ultimately, the Love Covenant between God and his chosen people who – as it now turns out – is everyone who is open to Grace regardless of ethnic, social or other identity background.

Matthew writes ‘pray for those who persecute you’.  Luke spells out the same point as follows (6:27-28):

‘But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.'

‘Pray for those who abuse you’. That’s a strong expression. Now, in case there might be any misunderstanding or misapplication of this phrase, those who abuse – whether emotionally, physically or otherwise – must be confronted and corrected publicly if necessary. But, we should still pray for them and love them because to love is to be free of that hatred that we might experience but which we do not allow to conquer or control us. Love the transgressor but not the transgression.  And where some transgressions have wrecked untold misery and suffering on people the transgressor should face the full consequences of the law. The churches have a much less than glorious record in aspects of abusive human behaviour for which they now pay a high price in loss of trust and association.

Easy in theory, hard in practice

We need to focus on what we can do in the here and now to help spread the positive news of God’s love.  Once we give into hatred we are allowing someone else to control us including our behaviour and thinking. This is easy to say and quite another matter to apply in practice.   Having passed through a martyrdom of violence, discrimination and hurt there are hundreds of thousands of people alive today and living on the island of Ireland (and some abroad) who have witnessed terrible things in their own lives as a result of the conflict (let’s call it by its real title of ‘war’) over the last three decades of the 20^th century. Those of us who directly escaped the direct experience of all this will never know the depths of human suffering in that complex ethnic, religious and political conflict. And the seeds of violence and hatred are still present in Irish soil.  Remembering and acknowledging may be healing. However, it can also keep alive seeds of deep resentment, fear and animosity. We should be vigilant about our own hearts in the first place.

The ultimate point of living is to live fully and completely. This is the real meaning of ‘perfect’ or ‘teleios’ in the scriptural Greek indicating completeness. For ‘holiness’ in religious discourse we might consider using the word ‘wholeness’ as well.  To be holy is to be one and to be whole. The late Cardinal Cathal Daly (1917-2009) once wrote:

The saint is the sinner who stubbornly refuses to stop trying.

Dom Mark Ephrem Nolan, Abbott of Holy Cross Abbey in the beautiful valley of Kilbroney in the Mourne mountains, spoke wisely a few year ago about the demands of love for our enemies:

To love our enemies means to allow life to circulate between us. It means to listen to our enemies and speak with them, to look at them, to try to understand what is happening within them. To love our enemies begins with our prayer for them and this is often a slow process. In many circumstances, to forgive is beyond our strength. Ultimately it can only be a gift from God, a grace to ask for in prayer, a gift to receive and share.

Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is specially suitable for those of us who may have picked up some attitude from a religious system of pure good works meriting reward in proportion to deed done. This picture of God as Chief Accountant is a distortion. Yes, God is just and to be feared in love.  But, God is above all compassionate and kind. It is through the benevolence of God that grow in wholeness and in the unique person that God wants each one of us to be.  When we are truly ourselves then we are whole. Life is a journey of growth in wholeness.