On Loving People Who ARE Our Enemies

A sermon on Luke 6: 27-38.

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash.]

A few weeks ago, I was talking with one of the members of our congregation about the frustration, and even pain, that this person experiences in loving people when those same people promote an ideology or celebrate policies they see as doing active harm.

It’s a theme I have heard from others as well, both here and in other areas of my life.

Questions of where to hold boundaries to protect one’s own mental health, and whether it’s even possible to talk honestly, much less vulnerably, across a seemingly impossible and ever-widening divide.

And there aren’t any easy answers to how to navigate this reality, because sometimes it’s friends we have known for decades, or family members that we desperately want to be able to spend time with without shouting or crying.

We can’t just walk away, but we also can’t just pretend like everything is OK.

The challenge is real, and it can be heart-breaking.

I know there is no advice or wisdom I could offer that would magically resolve this tension, but in the context of that conversation I did offer one  perspective-shifting phrase that I have found personally helpful:

“You cannot love your enemies if you don’t have any enemies.”

It sounds harsh, and maybe it is harsh. “Enemies” is a loaded label. We don’t want to apply it to people we love.

But it’s the word Jesus chooses. He is the one who tells us to love our enemies, and I have to believe that he understands how uncomfortable that juxtaposition is.

I have to believe that he anticipates how we will want to soften either one side or the other of the tension.

Either we will want to soften the command to “love” to be something more like “tolerate” or “don’t be actively hostile to.”

Or we will want to soften the meaning of “enemies” to “people we disagree with” or “those who take an opposing side”… labels that gloss over the possibility that the person in question might actually be dangerous to us, which is what the word enemy inherently provokes.

But Jesus says “enemies.” And that means he does, in fact, expect us to have enemies. He expects that there will be people who definitively fall into the category of those who seek to do us harm, whether maliciously or not.

And he amplifies this claim by the examples he offers: “those who hate you… curse you… mistreat you… hit you… steal from you…”.

People who really are enemies in one way or another.

And it is this category of people that he tells us to love in today’s gospel.

Friends, I cannot make this command easy.

But I can clarify something about what it is NOT.

Jesus is not commanding us to pretend like the impact of harmful actions is anything but harm.

Even if he tells us not to retaliate, Jesus does not require us to gaslight ourselves.

 In giving up our shirt as well as our coat he doesn’t demand that we also ignore the cold or hide our shivers.

In fact, in his instruction to “turn the other cheek” Jesus subtly invites us to do the opposite: to shine a light on the intended harm.

It’s an invitation that requires knowing the cultural context, so let me explain:

In the 1st Century Roman Empire, there were strict codes about social rank and the ways that you interacted with social inferiors versus social equals.

If you hit your servant (which was, unfortunately, legal) you would hit them with the back of your hand, which is the action implied by Jesus’ words about someone “striking you on the cheek.”

But it was deeply taboo to hit a social equal in this way. If two soldiers were to brawl with each other they must only hit each other with the flat of their palm.

So, consider Jesus’s instruction:

“if someone strikes you on the cheek…” (mime being struck with the back of the hand)

“offer the other also” (turn head so the new cheek is now facing the palm of the striking hand).

It’s a silent but powerful way of reminding your assailant that you are not their inferior. It is consent to be hit a second time, but to act on it your assailant must admit that they are abusing someone that they are supposed to value and respect.

From which, I think, it is legitimate for us to infer that loving our neighbors can coexist with making them uncomfortable by making them confront what they are doing.

We can do all the things that Jesus commands: do good to those who demonstrate hate toward us, bless those curse us, pray for those who mistreat us, give freely to those who take from us… while we ALSO tell the truth about the harm being done.

Love looks like refusing to return evil for evil… but it doesn’t look like accepting evil as good.

And this is why, in the context of relationships where my love for people rubs painfully against my distress at their actions, I find helpful guidance in the reminder that “you can’t love your enemies if you don’t have enemies.”

It clarifies that Jesus’s command requires me not only to love my enemies, but to do so without softening either side of the equation…

Without lessening my obligation to actually love people…

But also without downplaying the truth of the harm that I see.

And this means that it must be possible!

It must, somehow, be possible to face the truth of people’s harmful behavior while also seeing the truth of their belovedness. To hold those two seemingly paradoxical things in balance.

The how of all that is a little harder.

Again, I feel more able to confidently say what it is NOT: it is not “love the sinner, hate the sin.”

That is a phrase that I wish I could erase from the Christian lexicon. Because, in practice, in never translates as love for the very simple reason that people don’t experience themselves as being separate from their actions.

So, if you “hate” what they are doing, they experience that hate as being directed at themselves.

I think a much better standard for how to love people who really are acting like enemies is the one that Jesus offers us: “do to others as you would have them do to you.”

It’s a simple guide, but it requires deep self-awareness and honest reflection.

We can’t stop at the surface of what makes us comfortable and keeps the peace.

We have to look at all the factors and ask, “what if it was me?”

If I was doing or saying something that genuinely hurt or horrified someone I love, what would I want them to do?

Would I want them to stay silent, repressing the pain and feeding a well of resentment and distrust?

Would I want them to slowly pull back from being their true selves around me, limiting their vulnerability to keep themselves safe, but in the process limiting our relationship to the surface level?

Or would I want them to challenge me to do better?

Would I hope that they trusted me enough, and valued me enough, to risk the conflict for the hope of learning and growth?

I know my answer, because I have been on both sides of those conversations. I have been the one asking someone to do better and I have been the one confronted by her harmful actions.

And the results of both kinds of conversations have been a mixed bag. Sometimes they have elicited learning and healing, and sometimes not so much.

But even so, my answer to the question “what if it was me” is always that I would want someone to love me enough to challenge me.

Because I want to know if I am acting like an enemy to someone I care about.

And because I want to have a chance to do better.

And, most importantly, because that way lies love.

Thanks be to God.