Matthew 5:44 “Bless Enemies”

Last Sunday was truly a blessed day–yes, it was our annual meeting Sunday, which is always a blessing with the good food and fellowship; however, the second blessing came during the time of worship at the installation of Kahu Cheri out at Lihue Christian Church. I had a really nice warm feeling after that long day of blessing the church!

I was at home eating some leftover curry for dinner when a very long text came to my phone. It was from a member of another church asking how he could terminate another person from a committee of the Kauai Association UCC. This person who texted me had not been to the beautiful installation service. His heart was focused on dismissing another Christian brother.

I was so heartbroken. My first thought was “Why is he asking ME how to get rid of someone?” I guess he trusted my abilities with by-laws and Robert’s Rules of Order. Still, I did not want to be involved in whatever this was– or was about to become. I did not want to lose that warm fuzzy feeling I was having about the Association that evening.

I typed my response back: “Have you tried reconciling–going to that person as Jesus says in Matthew 18? Have you taken to heart the love of Christ that we are to have even unto our enemies?” So, I did not respond as he requested with the proper protocols for the removal of a committee member, but rather questioned where his Chrsitian heart was. What do you think? Did I ever get a response back from him? No, I did not.

In this world we have to question what to do with hate when we are confronted by it.

The verse right before the one that Berenice read this morning says that we are taught to hate. It says that we are told to love our own and hate others. This is to the best of my knowledge not in the bible, by the way; that is, we are never told to hate others in the bible. But, according to the bible as I just mentioned, we are somehow taught to hate.

To be sure, I do not believe that we are born hating. I did not come out of my mother’s womb and complain about the curtains! It is not our innate nature to hate at all. This fact has been confirmed by various studies, the last one that I am aware of was Yale in the 1990’s. In that study it was confirmed that we are born even tempered with a propensity towards goodness and happiness. If we are well nurtured after being born, then we should truly be happy and loving people with no hate in our hearts.

So, where does hate come from? The answer would seem to be that hate comes from hateful people. When we are first hated by another, that is when we learn to hate. This is the exact same understanding as to why bullies bully others–because at some point in life they have been bullied. Most abusers abuse because they have themselves been abused. WE hate because we have been hated.

Jesus commands us to love our enemies. This is stated in the first part of the line that this is a serious command: “Truly I tell you.” This is the “tell” as it might be heard by a child from the mother “I told you to eat your vegetables.” Jesus is telling us to do something. He is not just saying what his preference might be. This is in fact a command.

I am going to have to spend a little bit of breath on the word “enemy” here. And, I know that it is a common thing that pastors do when they are dealing with difficult texts simply to claim that the original biblical language just does not mean what we think it means. That being said, the word “enemy” here really does not mean what you think it means. I am not just saying that. It is really true. English has changed the meaning of the word in English since the bible was first translated. The word “enemy” is from the Old French “en - ami,” simply meaning one who is outside our circle of friends. The word that is used to denote what we think of “enemy” today in the bible is the word “foe.” If you are reading and run across the word “foe” then you see that as your adversary, one who stands against you. Your “enemy” as such is not an adversary per se but rather someone you have not even come to know yet.

The word in the Greek is “ek - thros.” “Ek” here means “outside of” or simply “away from.” And, “thros” means one who is considered by another. We consider our family to be close. We consider our friends to be close. We consider our colleagues to be close. However, there is a whole world full of people whom we have not yet even considered that we could be close in on.

You know, one of the scariest things you could ever do is go to a church where you know nobody at all. For the first time, you consider complete strangers. They are not your enemies. They are just the people you have never considered yet. Then, you realize that there is a whole bunch of love happening in the room! Maybe your whole life you have been told to hate and distrust the stranger, but here in church you begin to consider others that you have never considered before. You realize that there is no hate here. There is only love that seems to be everywhere falling as the Grace of God.

This is a super important point for the early church. In Matthew’s time people were coming to the church from all walks of life and ethnicities. The church was filled with slaves who were now leading worship for their masters! Jews and Greeks were breaking bread and taking the sacraments together. For the first time, perhaps they considered each other as being from God and blessed in the same way.

Our commandment from God today is actually two–is it not? The second part is to pray for or bless those who persecute you. The Greek term here is literally “those who suck the good life out of you.” I have always struggled with this. I think we all have.

When I was in middle school, in my class was a boy named Marc Ulves. I was never sure why he had it out for me, but boy did he have it out for me. He sucked the good life right out of me. I tried to avoid him as much as possible, oftentimes making roundabout paths to my classes if I knew he might be in the hallway waiting for me.

My prayer for him was “O Lord, let me not have to see him at all today.” In middle school there is always a pecking order, so he just liked to peck on me the most. He too got pecked on by others. As I said before: “Most bullies have been bullied themselves.”

What surprised me after all the hard times he gave me in school, at the end of 8th grade, he came up to me and wanted to sign my yearbook. He said he considered me to be a friend. Sometimes when we have experienced so much pain from others, we do not know how to love as is good and right. We think pain is love. In that moment I really felt sorry for him. He did not know how to love. Well, I did not let him sign my yearbook. He had wanted to be a friend, but he only knew how to show hate. I just turned my back on him. I knew Christ’s command, but the kid still scared me and made me feel hated.

He had almost taught me how to hate. We hate because we have been hated. And, we love because we have been loved. If we can somehow come to love those who hate us, perhaps the world can be won for Christ.

In Romans 5:10 we can read: “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. . . “ This text from the Apostle Paul makes the point that we might find ourselves as enemies to God. We might find ourselves outside the good graces of the Lord. Yet, God showed us how to love our enemies in that God could love us though we were estranged and in the sin of hate. John 3:16 “God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son!”

Saint Paul further writes in 2 Timothy 4:3-4 & 10, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into untruths. . . .For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me. . . .”

Demas was a friend and disciple of Paul. Yet, instead of accepting the love of Christ into his heart and sharing that love with others, he fell in love with worldly people and things instead. So, it strikes me that if we follow the command to truly love our enemies, even as God has done for us through Christ, then we will avoid the trap of falling in love with the world of hate that is all around us. If you love your enemy, then you have defeated hate. Don’t love this world for it is filled with hate; love your enemy and transform this world for Jesus.

Amen.