Loving an Enemy for Our Own Sake
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched
I Samuel 26: 2-23 I Corinthians 15: 45-49 Luke 6:
27-38
Introduction
Love
of a neighbor & an enemy
Christians
have a commandment to love a neighbor (Lk
Loving an enemy
wasn’t completely foreign to the Jews of the Old Testament. In today’s first
reading from First Samuel, David spares the life of his enemy Saul. David,
however, was special, and so was Saul. (Saul was God’s anointed before David
was.) Only God in the Old Testament regularly practiced love of enemies. For
the most part, the people of
In the New
Testament, however, Jesus puts his brethren straight saying, “You have heard
that it was said, `Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But now I tell you: do
not take revenge on someone who does you wrong” (Ex
In the New
Testament Jesus makes love of an enemy an unequivocal mandate. He doesn’t
simply warn us not to ruff up our enemies. He doesn’t simply admonish us to
eliminate our enemies as painlessly as possible. No! He says, "Love your
enemies, do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you and pray for
those who mistreat you” (Lk
Loving a neighbor who’s in need
Most of the time it is easy and even rewarding to love a neighbor,
especially one who is
in need. Jesus told us a classical
parable about a Samaritan loving a neighbor in need. Once there was a Jew traveling from Jerusalem
to Jericho. He was waylaid by robbers, who stripped him of his money and left
him half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest hurrying to the
The sun finally
set on that very long and arduous day, and the Samaritan arrived back home in
Another example
My sister who is 83 years
young lives in Alvin, Texas, 30 miles south of Houston, where a contingent of
500 refugees waylaid by the Katrina disaster in New Orleans, settled. She is small,
a bit bent over by her years but still drives a car. She likes to wear a funny
little hat which she knows everybody thinks is quaint. It draws attention and
elicits a variety of sweet remarks. She doesn’t like Wal-Mart because that
great colossus drove her out of her Merle Norman Cosmetics business years ago.
Naturally she has succumbed to the trend to demonize Wal-Mart over its alleged
employment practices and attitudes. Though she doesn’t shop at Wal-Mart on
principle, she will do business there when it’s notably more convenient
(financially, of course) to do so.
One day at a brand new
Loving an enemy who isn’t sorry
But
Christians have another commandment. “To you who hear I say,” says Jesus, “love
your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray
for those who mistreat you. If anyone hit you on one cheek, let him hit the
other” (Lk
Loving terrorists
9/11 is a terribly bland expression for an utterly
horrendous reality. That reality is nothing less than that apocalyptic event in
which two 747’s, as weapons of mass destruction, smashed into the Twin Towers
in Lower Manhattan bringing down not only mortar and bricks but 3 thousand
innocent human beings. The stark reality of 9/11 is nothing less than that
apocalyptic event which piled up a heap of destruction so mountainous that it
took a ten-month operation working day and night to haul away 2 million tons of
debris containing 20 thousand body parts. 9/11 is that event which suddenly changed
absolutely everything for us, so that nothing is the same anymore. 9/11 is that
event which ushered in an age of terrorism which now preoccupies us and robs us
forever of a simple abiding peace which we used to take for granted. 9/11 was
perpetrated by an enemy who hates us with a very deep unquenchable religious
hate.
Believe it or not, the gospel today enjoins us to
love that enemy! What in the world does it mean to love an enemy, especially if
he is not sorry! Bin Laden and his
fellow terrorists are not sorry. At this very moment they are hard at work trying
to plot an apocalyptic event that would eclipse 9/11. What’s there to forgive?
The Christian command to love an enemy is sometimes a muddled-up conception in
need of sorting out.
What in the world does it mean to love bin Laden
and his fellow terrorists, and do good to those who hate us, and bless those
who curse us and pray for those who have dealt with us so apocalyptically? What
does it mean to love them when they have even more in store for us? At most it
means resolving not to do to them what they have done to us. At most it means resolving not to lose our
humanity by turning ourselves into the terrorists that they are.
Sometime back there was a resolution afoot in the
US Congress which read, “Be it resolved that U.S. Congress designates September
11 as an annually recognized day of voluntary service, charity and compassion.”
What an incredibly counter-cultural way to pay back an enemy who caused such a heap
of ruination that it took a ten-month operation, working day and night, to haul
away 2 million tons of debris containing 20 thousand body parts! What an
incredibly counter-cultural way to pay back an enemy who isn’t a bit sorry for
anything! What incredibly
counter-cultural way to pay back an enemy by refusing to become a terrorist
like him!
A timely scripture for us
Today’s gospel commands us to love our enemies, to
do good to those who hate us, to bless those who curse us, to pray for those
who mistreat us is. For many of us who feel mistreated at Old St. Mary’s by
clergy and fellow Catholics who dismissed us as being “a parish within a parish,”
“a divisive element,” “Cafeteria Catholics” that Scripture is, indeed, timely. It
challenges us at this moment. So does a friend who writes,
We must not let what happened
to us degenerate into a badly thought out little rebellion that grabs a few
headlines, feeding self-congratulatory egos on one side of a fight and
self-righteous repressive urges on the other. … It is better to stand silent
like Jesus. The serenity that comes with being in the loving embrace of the
Father allows all kinds of stuff to roll off our backs, scarcely noticed. We must not kindle anger. Like Jesus, we must
help each other to put away our swords.
In
the same vein another friend challenges us, saying,
It would be
counterproductive to our spiritual well being and interests, and at odds with
our cherished liberal principles, to challenge ambitious or fearful hierarchs,
or to point to the “real” motives or passions that often underlie their hostile
actions. We should let them be, back away, or move to the side, praising and
loving them as we do, imitating Christ and preaching the Gospel by example, and
avoiding the temptation to defend our rectitude and rights, while laying bare
the frailties of our critics.
Conclusion
Loving an enemy for our own sake
At the end of the day, loving an enemy, especially one who isn’t sorry, is not primarily for the sake of the enemy; it’s primarily for our own sake. We need it more than the enemy does. Dr. Martin Luther King said that he was sticking with forgiveness and love because revenge and hate were too heavy a burden to bear.
They are, indeed, too heavy a burden. Revenge and hate mire us down so that we
can’t move on with our lives. They waste our energy on pay back instead of
spending it on service. They turn our gaze upon our offended selves instead of
upon the sufferings of humans and animals amidst the tragedies of nature. Revenge and hate poison our human spirit with a
negativity which can’t smell the roses and count the blessings. Worst of all, revenge
and hate can never well up into the warm hugs and kisses which forgiveness and
love can spontaneously generate in a
[1] Diaspora is a Greek word
meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered
colonies of Jews outside