Feb 23, 2025
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord; my strength and my redeemer. Amen.
Show of hands, friends. How many of you came to church this morning thinking, “I really want to be challenged today”? Anyone? Me either. And yet, here we are smack dab in what might be Jesus’ most difficult teaching. Love your enemy. I want us to take a moment and think about our worst enemy. The person you wouldn’t want to be in a room with for even one minute for fear of what you’d say or do. Maybe it’s someone you know personally. Maybe it’s someone who wouldn’t know you from Adam…
And now Jesus has done the unthinkable. He goes beyond the ethical standards of the day—to love those who love you. That’s easy, Jesus says, but God expects more from his followers. So he commands us—not suggests or recommends—but commands us to love our enemies. The people we despise most in the world. And on top of that, the Greek word our Gospel writer uses—agape—doesn’t mean romantic love, or friendship, or liking, or even lukewarm indifference. It means whole-hearted care and concern. It means an unconditional desire for the beloved’s well-being. All while expecting nothing in return.
On the face of it, loving our enemies—loving them to the point of unconditionally caring about their well-being—seems more like “bad advice for the foolish” than it does “good news for the world”. It runs against hundreds of thousands of years of the human instinct for self-preservation. It runs against our desires and our will. Against our very human nature. Certainly against so much of what’s happening in the world around us.
Modeling this kind of love is so hard that it makes Christianity seem hypocritical—because the gap between this kind of love and acceptance and forgiveness and what we can actually offer is so incredibly huge. We fail time and time again to live up to the standard.
And yet, Jesus commands it. Because for Jesus, this isn’t an ethical issue. We don’t love others—even those most difficult of people—because it’s the right thing to do. Because it’s what “good people” do. That waters the Good News of the Kingdom of God down into nothing more than a moral code. It’s a code that we can follow and become better people—kinder, more generous, more loving. But the Gospel of Morality does nothing to transform us.
Jesus commands this kind of love because this kind of peacemaking transforms us. It transforms us as we share in the very character of a God who extends radical love to all. It transforms us because loving others in this way liberates us—and all those we extend love to—from the dark forces that seek to prevent humanity from experiencing life as God intends. Kingdom Life that can be experienced in all its richness and vitality here and now. And in the Kingdom of God there is no place for vengeance or retaliation.
So, how do we move from our natural instinct to match blow for blow and word for word? How do we live our lives responding to hate and bitterness with grace and kindness, instead of returning the hurt we receive with yet more hurt? How do we experience the Kingdom of God as a present reality instead of some far off promise of another world?
There is no church program—no self-help book, no set of rules—that we can follow and learn to love like this. We don’t have the power within ourselves to do it. Only God’s grace can transform us into people who can love in this way. Because what changes us and allows us to love our enemies is a grace greater than our sin, greater than our best intentions, and greater even than our hard work.
And God has promised to transform us. We weren’t the only ones making promises at our baptism. Or every time we renew those promises. When we promised to love our enemies by resisting evil, we said “I will, with God’s help”. When we promised to love our enemies by seeking and serving Christ in all people. When we promised to love our enemies by striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being. Our response was always, “I will with God’s help”.
My friends, those are not empty words. God is party to those promises. And we know that when God makes promises, God keeps them.
“Be merciful”, says Jesus, “just as the father is merciful”. God practices a love that is not limited to how others respond to God. God shows mercy and grace to you, and me, and everyone, unconditionally. It’s a sign of God’s radical love. And that grace and mercy and love transforms us. Slowly. Quietly. Often, we don’t even notice it. But as God’s love works more and more inside us, we become better able to show love and mercy to others. When our experiences with the Holy One transform us, then we can, with God’s help, follow in Jesus’ call to show love even to those we feel least deserve it.
And when we’re transformed in this way, the reward Jesus promises us isn’t a bulging wallet or full garage or self-esteem. It’s not even getting our ticket punched to a glorious afterlife. Our reward is entrance into God’s kingdom as a present reality here, and now. Our reward is a life filled with God’s abundance for ourselves and for others. So, my friends, bask in knowing that you are loved by God with reckless abandon. Let that love and grace transform you. And as you walk, grace-filled, along that narrow and difficult path—as you love whole-heartedly—know that you will be rewarded in ways you cannot yet begin to imagine. Amen.