Jesus’ Questions #2
Sermon for September 18, 2022, Pentecost 15C
Audio and video will be available after the service at the website of the Central Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith, AR.
Matthew 5:43—48
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Human beings of our species, Homo sapiens, survived because we outcompeted others for resources. Scholars tell us that one of the reasons we were so successful was that we evolved the capacity to cooperate. In fact, they call us super-cooperators (see SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed).
Technically we are “eusocial.” We can hunt together, share the spoils, and we can divide labor efficiently. Cooperation can be scaled up from clans and tribes all the way to vast kingdoms and nations.
But we also have the propensity to divide. We like being in groups, but we also like to identify groups that we oppose. We divide up people into us vs. them categories. There are those we love and those we hate. We have friends and we have enemies.
Once, Jesus said,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
What did he mean? Where did they hear that?
“Love your neighbor” is what you heard when the rabbi read Leviticus 19 in the synagogue.
But where do you hear “hate your enemy”? Well, you hear something close to it in Psalm 139:21-22 in which the Psalmist, in a virtue-signaling prayer asks,
“Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? …I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.”
So you could hear that in the synagogue also.
Hating the people in the other groups was happening in Jesus’ time, just like it is now.
For example, scholars believe that Jesus belonged to John the baptist’s community before John was rounded up and executed by Herod Antipas.
They also suggest that John may have been part of the Essene community that lived near the Dead Sea and used the Qumran caves.
That community was there because they opposed the people who were in charge of the temple in Jerusalem. They considered the aristocratic high priestly families illegitimate because they were not descendants of Levites.
There is always a justification for identifying others as the enemy. We call it “otherizing.” We can see how it worked at Qumran. They had a document called the Community rule. It began with this admonition:
“The Master shall teach the saints to live according to the book of the Community Rule that they may seek God with a whole heart and soul, and do what is good and right before Him, as He commanded by the hand of Moses and all His servants the prophets; that they may love all that he has chosen and hate all he has rejected…that they may love all the sons of light…and hate all the sons of darkness….”
(1QS 1—11)
So when Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ he was right; they were saying it. Otherizing has been normalized ever since we were running around wearing animal skins with bones in our noses.
So human history has been the story of both mass cooperation: the development of cities, monumental architecture and empires; and also of conflict, violence, and war. Jesus believed that it did not have to be that way.
Matthew put together many of the sayings of Jesus into a collection we call “The Sermon on the Mount.” Included are a series of antitheses in which Jesus says “You have heard that it was said…” and then counters what was said with “…but I say to you.”
For most of those antitheses, Jesus refers to teachings from the Hebrew Bible, even the ten commandments. So, “you have heard that it was said” refers not to what was said at the barber shop, but from Moses, who, according to the story, got it directly from God.
We should pause to notice how radical Jesus was willing to be. He was willing to say, “the Hebrew bible says X, but I say, Y.” Clearly Jesus was functioning in the role of a prophet.
Today we are looking at the antithesis to hating your enemy. Scholars agree that this next line is at the very heart of the teachings of Jesus.
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven”.
Love of enemies is what identifies us as children of God. Where did Jesus come up with this radical concept? Well, we know that Jesus was a person of deep spirituality. He was also a person of insight. He knew his Hebrew Bible, and he also observed the world of his experience.
Jesus came to the conclusion that God did not have enemies, and so, as God’s children, neither should we. How do we know God has no enemies? Because, Jesus said, look around:
“for [God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
Sun and rain are essential for farmers and it appears that they all receive them equally, without distinction. So, if God makes no distinctions, then neither should God’s children.
Then Jesus asks some questions to help people think it through.
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”
Jesus has begun to gather a community together. He has been teaching them, and by now they have come to think of themselves as his followers. Some have left everything to follow him. So he appeals to their sense of devotion and sacrifice.
He says, in effect, think about it: even unscrupulous extortionists, like tax collectors, love those who love them back. Even uncircumcised Gentiles who don’t even know the law of Moses, much less observe it, greet those who greet them, don’t they?
“Come,” Jesus is saying, “come follow me; I am calling you to a much higher standard. I am calling you, in fact, to
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
The word “perfect” is a bit misleading. In English, it sounds like it means, “never do anything wrong.” But in the original it means something more like: if you were an arrow, be a perfectly balanced, perfectly straight one so that you can hit the target.”
Be spiritually and morally well-formed. Be mature. Be your best self. Be, as Richard Rohr says, your true self, not your false self. Be who you are: children of God. Be a person who loves even her enemies.
But can you do that? Can you simply decide to do something that runs so counter to our impulses? Can you turn on love for enemies like a switch?
No, I believe it does not work that way. Love of enemies is the mature fruit of a life of spiritual practices which, over time help us overcome that impulse to otherize and to hate.
Spiritual practices help us deal with our egos, our pride, that part of us that gets offended, that part of us that gets its feelings hurt, that wants to get even. That part of us that has enemies to hate.
We start on the path of spiritual growth by learning how to love people that offend us and irritate us.
Then we move on to learning to love those who do not like us.
Then we learn to love those who are in opposition to our goals.
Finally, we learn to love our enemies. It is a long journey; probably a lifelong one.
That is why Jesus highlights the spiritual practice of prayer in this context:
“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Instead of wishing them harm, pray for their redemption. Pray that they will be happy, that they will be well, that they will be filled with kindness and peace.
Love of enemies is not an emotional condition, it is rather a commitment not to wish harm to someone or to a group of people. They might not agree with us, but we do not wish them to suffer. They may be trying to undermine us, but we do not respond in kind.
We may be active in non-violently resisting them, but our objective is not to hurt them personally. Love of enemies is the only way the cycle of violence stops.
One last thought. Though the love of enemies is at the very heart of Jesus’ teaching, it has not been the primary focus of the communities that have born his name.
The church’s great theologians spilled much more ink on doctrines like original sin and the Trinity than on the call to love our enemies.
It should be a scandal that the great creeds of the church which proclaim what Christians traditionally believe make no mention of love; not even love of neighbor, much less love of enemies.
How different our history might have been if the church had made love, including love of enemies, its main focus over the years. Is it any wonder that the institutional church is in such decline?
It doesn’t have to be that way. We do not have to otherize. We can, in our day, commit ourselves to being authentic followers of Jesus. We can be a community that is committed to keeping the main thing, the main thing.
And the main thing, according to Jesus, is love.
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