Beyond Barriers: Neighbor/Enemy

Matthew 5:43-48

Rev. Monte Marshall

We’re continuing to journey through Lent while exploring the theme:  Beyond Barriers.  We’re looking today at the barriers that hinder us from embracing the kind of transformation that’s urged upon us by Jesus in this morning’s text when he says, “love your enemies.”  Let us pray.  PRAYER

You heard the text.  Jesus is speaking:  “I’m telling you to love your enemies.  Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.  When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of pray.”  This translation is from The Message.  A more conventional translation may be more familiar:  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Some scholars have called these teachings of Jesus the ethical and theological heart of the gospel.  E. Stanley Jones called this teaching “the center of the whole.”[1]  Walter Wink wrote:  “It cannot be stressed too much:  love of enemies has, for our time, become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith.”[2]

All of this may be true, but let’s face it, to love the enemy is no easy thing.  Fight or flight is what comes naturally.  To love the enemy cuts against the grain—so it’s hard!  Some people even call it impossible. 

And we know how hard it is, don’t we?  Some of us who are followers of Jesus may even think it’s impossible!  We’re the ones who call these words about loving the enemy, good news!  But we know the barriers all too well because we bump up against them all the time.  And to be honest, our track record of moving beyond the barriers is not so good. 

In fact, I remember several years ago paying a visit to the Barnes and Noble bookstore in the shopping center at I-10 and De Zavala.  As I was looking over the titles on the shelves, one book in particular caught my eye.  Its title was something like:  The 100 Greatest People in History.  My curiosity was aroused.  I wanted to see who topped the list, so I opened up the book and looked at the table of contents.  Number one on the list was the prophet Muhammad.  Number two on the list was Sir Isaac Newton, the scientist.  Number three on the list was Jesus. 

Now I was really curious!  Why wasn’t Jesus higher up on the list?  To answer the question, I turned to the chapter on Jesus and lo and behold, I discovered that the authors had great respect for Jesus.  They too concluded that the ethical mandate to love the enemy is at the heart of Jesus’ teachings.  But the authors also concluded that the followers of Jesus had done such a poor job of practicing this most distinctive ethical teaching, that Jesus deserved no better than number three on the list of history’s 100 greatest people.  To put it another way, in the authors’ estimation, the actual impact of Muhammed and Isaac Newton in shaping people’s lives was greater than that of Jesus.  And it all came down to the difficulty Christians have in practicing what Jesus taught.

So we know the barriers, don’t we?  But just knowing the barriers is not enough. During this Lenten season, we’re seeking to move beyond the barriers and toward transformation.  So let’s go back to the text and look again for some word or thought or vision that might finally move us off dead center and beyond the barriers.

This morning’s text is in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.  Jesus is teaching.  Matthew portrays him as a new Moses.  So like Moses, Jesus teaches from the mountaintop. 

But Matthew also sees Jesus as one who has the authority to push the boundaries of commonly accepted Torah interpretations.  Jesus pushes the boundaries to paint a picture of life within the reign of God.   But he begins with that which is familiar to his audience: “the old written law, love your friend.” 

And it is true.  In the Torah—the first five books of the Bible, the so-called Books of Moses—love of neighbor is commanded, but the neighbor was understood to be a member of one’s own clan or tribe or people or nation.  And while there is no specific language in the Torah that encourages hatred of the enemy, there is, as this morning’s translation puts it, an “unwritten companion” that says, “’Hate your enemy.’”  Indeed, it can be implied from the Torah that it is acceptable to hate those not of your clan, or tribe or people or nation. 

There are indications elsewhere in the Old Testament, that hatred of the enemy was acceptable to at least some in Israel.  Psalm 139 reads:  “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?  And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?  I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.”  And it is certainly the case that hatred of the enemy has been widespread among many peoples and cultures, down to and including the present day.

It is hatred of the enemy that Jesus challenges.  “I’m telling you to love your enemies.”  Now please note that Jesus does not deny the existence of enemies.  Enemies are a given.  It’s the response to our enemies that counts.  And responding with violence to punish the enemy or eliminate the enemy is unacceptable.  And if it wasn’t acceptable to Jesus, why would it be acceptable to us?    

Jesus calls us to love the enemy—and when we do, we give expression to our “true selves,” our “God-created selves.”  Anything less is a distortion of who we were created to be. 

And when we love the enemy, we love like God:  “This is what God does.  God gives God’s best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless:  the good and the bad, the nice and the nasty.”  To settle for anything less by loving only those who are loveable or greeting only those who greet us, is to deny who we were created to be.

Jesus calls us to grow up!  Do any of us want to stop growing?  Do any of us really want to claim God’s love for ourselves while denying it to others?  Are any of us content to sell ourselves short—to deny who we are—and to live as if hatred is the best that we can do?  My brothers and sisters, we were made to live in God’s realm—to live generously and graciously toward others, in the same way that God lives toward us! 

Is this impossible to do?  No!  In my 2 ½ years as the senior pastor of this congregation, I have shared with you in my preaching, one story after another of people like you and me who have done what some have thought to be impossible—they have loved the enemy. 

I’ve told you about Corrie Ten Boom and the remarkable story of how she loved her enemies in spite of the atrocities inflicted upon her and so many others, including her family, at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. 

I’ve told you several stories about Prisoners of the Japanese during World War II in the Pacific who showed compassion to the men who had been their guards and brutal tormentors in the death camps of Southeast Asia and elsewhere. 

I’ve told you about an Armenian woman—a follower of Jesus—who nursed a Turkish officer back to health even though he had inflicted unspeakable horrors upon her and her family as part of the Turkish genocide against the Armenian people. 

I’ve told you about the Amish community in America that showed love and mercy to the family of a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of Amish school children.

I’ve told numerous stories of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.  I’ve quoted Dr. King:  “To our most bitter opponents we say:  ‘Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you.  Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you.  Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you.”[3]

I’ve shared with you one story after another to make the point:  Loving the enemy is not impossible!  And now I’m going to add one more story to the list, this one from Janice Mirikitani, the wife of Rev. Cecil Williams, the pastor emeritus at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco.

Janice writes:  “One of Cecil’s gifts as minister of Glide was to convince the congregation that unconditional love was the only way to confront violence.  We could be firm in seeking justice and in standing up to perpetrators’ attempts to engage us physically, but fighting back was not an option.  Retaliation would rob us of the humanity we hoped to share with those who were trying to hurt us.

“In the church, Cecil used the ever-emerging threat of confrontation as a platform to explore the value of nonviolence.  One Sunday a woman and three men wearing dirty leather jackets and bandannas walked in late to the 11:00 A.M., Celebration and sauntered down the aisle with a hostile ‘Try and stop us’ attitude while Cecil was delivering his sermon.  They had their backs to the church until they got to the front pews, where they turned around so that the whole church could see the big swastikas printed across the front of their bandannas.

“People gasped and waited for Cecil’s response, but he only nodded at the four as they sat down.  He continued preaching but very soon diverted from the sermon he had given at the 9:00 A.M. service.

“’There is a force here greater than hatred,’ he said, clearly referring to the swastikas.  ‘And greater than death.  That force is the Spirit inside you that says love is stronger than death.’  At that point, the four people got up and left.

“The next Sunday they came back, still wearing their swastika bandannas.  Again, Cecil merely nodded in their direction, but some people in the congregation stood up as if they had had enough of this and wanted a fight.

“’Sometimes folks may try to intimidate us,’ Cecil said, looking everywhere but at the four, ‘because they want us to do something violent.’  Then he talked about resisting our own urge to act violently by seeing the humanity in those who want to hurt us.  ‘If we give in to their brute force,’ Cecil said, ‘we lose and they lose.’  And out the door the swastika wearers went again.

“On the third Sunday they came back, but this time the men were clean-shaven, and they had all removed their headbands.  People spotted them walking down the aisle and started to applaud.  Cecil asked the four to stand and greet the audience, which they did, and there was more applause.  They were smiling, and so was the congregation.  No one begrudged them the ordeal they had put everybody through because we were actually proud of them, and of ourselves and our church.

“Afterward they told Cecil that the first two Sundays, they could not believe he had accepted them coming in with their symbols of hate.  They had wanted to shock people, but they didn’t really hate anybody.  They had some vague plan of exposing the church for its hypocrisy, but Glide was different.

“I think Cecil was the happiest of all of us.  We had just gone through an exercise of facing violence with the power of love, and there you had it; we won and they won.”[4]

My brothers and sister, it’s hard to love the enemy, but it’s not impossible.  To say that it’s impossible is an excuse that keeps us stuck in the status quo.  So what are we waiting for?  Isn’t it time to move beyond the barriers and toward the transformation that makes it possible for us to love the enemy?  Isn’t it time to grow up and be the people God has created us to be?  Thanks be to God.  Amen.