“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.” (Luke 6:27)
Loving our enemies. Seriously. Who or what comes to mind when you think of that word – “enemies?”
My wife had tears in her eyes, I wanted to scream, and my senior neighbor response was helplessness. Susan was contacted by a lady upset because she had to moved out of her apartment. Social services referred her to an emergency hotel. However, the hotel would not allow her to bring along her emotional support companion kitty. In tears, this lady surrendered her kitty to the officers at the animal shelter.
My vison is to make our farm into an educational resource center for students and faculty. However, the legal litigation attorneys could not find a way to make this land available without fear of a potential lawsuit if someone got hurt on our land.
The neighbor’s mailbox was demolished by a state snow plow. I contacted the state highway supervisor and he apologized but reported: “it is a privilege for any home owner to put a mailbox along the side of the road and if a plow destroys your mailbox the state has no obligation to replace it.” Seriously.
Jesus I believe is our spiritual mentor, but this teaching might be his toughest to swallow. After all, people need to pay for their crimes or the state when it wrecks our mailbox, don’t they? Are we supposed to let the bad guys just get away with being bad? If we can’t strike back, are we to choose to let ourselves be abused?
I think one of the hardest things for us to do as Christians is balance justice with God’s mercy. The truth is, it’s never going to be about who “deserves” mercy. We can’t let people or the system go around denying our right to have an emotional companion animal without trying to do something about it. But why does Jesus ask us to love enemies or a system that denies my dream to use our land as an educational center. He tells us to ignore insults and abuse, pray for persecutors, give to beggars, and forgive the misdeeds of others?
If we take the first steps to love our enemies and those who hate us, Jesus tells us, “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” God’s mercy knows no bounds, no boundaries, no conditions. The sun shines on the just and the unjust. The rain pours down on the good and the bad. God is an equal opportunity provider of mercy. We are to be merciful as God is merciful – in just the same measure as we want God to be merciful to us.
Jesus is really asking, “Do you want to spend all your energy hating your enemies? Or do you really want to follow me and become children of the Most High?” Can we begin today to take one small step toward the kind of reconciliation Jesus knows is the only way forward for us all? Can we begin to love our enemies and pray for those who hate us? And if not now, when?
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends for it’s easy for this Gospel passage to be dismissed as impossible. To hear Jesus’ words as an ideal that is unrealistic to achieve. Instead, Jesus invites us to humble ourselves and to admit how hard this is. To let go of our impulse to hold onto the hurts and the pains that justify our hatred for someone else. Instead, to sincerely and genuinely let Him, and His love enter in. Letting Him guide and direct, challenge, and heal us not just into loving an enemy – but more importantly forming us into being His faithful disciples.
