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God’s grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the gospel reading today for the text, please be seated. And in that gospel reading, Jesus says some pretty hard stuff. Love your enemy. It’s not an easy thing to do, is it? It’s not an easy thing to hear Jesus say to us either. But even in Jesus’s time, the people of Israel had plenty of enemies in their history. In the last 700 years before Jesus, the Israelites had the enemies of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and now the Romans occupy and control their land. Before all of them, there were the Egyptians, the Ammonites, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, and all the other “ites”; they were enemies of the people of Israel.
So the Jews of Jesus’ time had no love for the Romans much at all. So Jesus saying to them, love your enemies, was not too popularly received probably. And it’s not so popularly received in America today either. I mean, we so often live in a pretty mean society. People can get angry so easy, it seems. In fact, a satire website that I look at one day posted an article, and the headline said, “Being outraged by stupid nonsense replaces baseball as America’s pastime.” Funny because it’s kind of true.
We live in such a polarized world, it seems. We have to choose sides. It’s an us-versus-them mentality. It’s easy to have enemies in such a world, and it’s easy to not love them. Enemies must be defeated, right? General George Patton once said, “May God have mercy on my enemies because I sure won’t.” Now, I don’t mean enemies like those our nation may be at war with or somebody breaking into your house. All right, I’m talking about people that you actually know, people that you maybe see every day, people you maybe only see on social media.
Really loving our enemies and being merciful to them, it really doesn’t make sense in this culture. No, our enemy must be defeated. Occasionally we see loving our enemy kind of show up a little bit with mercy rules in sports, especially for kids, or in some movies or shows like Les Miserables, but it’s rare. You don’t see love for your enemy coming up too much today.
Now the Gospel reading today, to be sure, it’s got a lot of law in it, basically things that you’re supposed to do or things that you’re not supposed to do. We call that God’s law. But what the Gospel reading in part reveals to us today is that we’re not able to do this. We’re often in violation of what Jesus says here in this Gospel reading. We often fail at loving our enemy.
So why is this here? Why does Jesus want us to love our enemies? I mean, because it’s nice, is that why? Or maybe he was just kidding and just messing with us. No, I don’t think so. Why does Jesus want us to love our enemies? Because that’s how he treats his enemies. Yeah, Jesus has enemies, okay? And I don’t mean just the Romans or the Pharisees or other people in authority who opposed Him back then, or even people today who talk bad about Him or don’t even believe in Him. Those aren’t the enemies of Jesus I’m referring to.
I mean sinners. I mean you and me. Because when we sin, we show contempt for Christ and His values—His values of how we should live and how we should treat others, even our enemies. When we sin, we take on the world’s values. We do what the world says is right and what is wrong. We take on the world’s values whenever we steal or lie or don’t keep our promises or our responsibilities, calling in when we’re really not sick, taking things from the office that, oh, nobody’s going to notice that. Telling little white lies about people that are not, I’m sure nobody’s going to get hurt if I say that about them. Cheating on tests or intentionally deceiving others for your benefit.
When we do this, we abuse Jesus. Certainly, when we sin, we hate and curse and abuse Jesus. When we use His name in vain, literally, we’re cursing Him. And we abuse Jesus’ love and forgiveness by self-justifying our sinful behavior. When we sin, it’s like hitting Jesus on both cheeks. Our sinful thoughts, words, and actions—when we do those, we are enemies of God.
This is from James chapter 4: “Don’t you know that friendship with the world means opposition to God? Therefore anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” When we sin, we’re Christ’s enemy. And it doesn’t make sense, but He still loves His enemies. He still loves us.
And check out this good news from Romans chapter 5: “But God demonstrates His love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ dies for His enemies—for you and for me. See, in our sin, we are enemies of God. In our natural sinful state, we are enemies of God. Our sin is that bad that God sees us as His enemy, in opposition to Him. But in Christ, we aren’t them. In His forgiveness, we aren’t His enemies because Christ wants to destroy what is in us that makes us His enemies—our sin, our evil. As it said in the second reading, Christ wants to destroy every, I think it said, every power, every authority, every evil, including death.
And Jesus does that for us by basically being treated like our enemy. When He was here, He was arrested, falsely accused, whipped, spit on, and then suffering a very horrible and painful death on a cross to pay for the sins of His enemies—us—to die in place of His enemies. It’s His death that is truly His love for sinners—for you and for me.
And more good news, more good news from Romans chapter 5: “For if while we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more than having been reconciled shall we be saved through His life?” See, while we were God’s enemies, while we were sinners, Christ reconciles us, dies for us, takes that enemyness away—I guess that’s a new word—”enemyness.” Takes that away from us and makes us His children. Instead of death for us, His enemies, He gives us life. Life by His resurrection from the dead to give His enemies victory over their sin, destroying even death itself. What Paul talked about—Jesus destroying every power, every evil, every—sorry, I’m forgetting exactly what it said there. He’s destroying that, and even death. He’s giving us that victory over all of those things.
And from 1 Timothy 1, Paul says, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—to save His enemies.” Christ comes here to not only love His enemies but to save them, giving them eternal life. He came to save His enemies, to show them mercy. I guess we can be grateful that General Patton isn’t God because Christ shows mercy on His enemies. He loves them.
I mean, really, the only human enemy that needs to be defeated is us—sinners. Defeated by confessing our sin and receiving that mercy and forgiveness that Jesus gives. Even while we’re enemies, He does this for us. And so Jesus wants us to love our enemies because He does. He loves us. And maybe that’s the reason why we even have enemies to begin with—it’s so that we can love them and see God’s love for them as well. We can show that love to them and tell them how Jesus has loved us.
1 Timothy chapter 1 also states: “The very reason I was shown mercy so that in me,” says Paul, “the worst of sinners, Jesus might display His immense patience as an example for those who would believe in Him and receive eternal life.” See, His mercy to Paul, who calls himself the worst of sinners—the worst enemy of Christ—is so that Jesus can display that love through him to others who also then might believe in Jesus. And we can do that. We can love our enemies so that they can also know about Christ’s love for them.
I mean, we know that love. We’ve experienced it. We enjoy it. We love it. We know Christ blessing us, His praying for us, His turning the other cheek for us—loving our enemies. We show that same love to them. We can love them by doing good for them, blessing them, praying for them, and sometimes just kind of generally putting up with them. You know what I’m talking about.
Christians, this is one of the greatest things I think we have to do sometimes. We just put up with people, kind of absorb their abuse, we absorb their being enemies so we can love them and show God’s love for them. They need to hear that because today, again, so quickly people just jump to outrage. We go from calm to extremely mad. There’s nothing in between anymore. It’s just outrage. We even get outraged at nonsense, right? We’re so quick to attack our enemies.
Let’s stop that, okay? Lent is coming up. You want to give up something for Lent? Give up hating your enemy. Love them instead. Maybe don’t even see them as enemies anymore. See them as fellow sinners just like you. See them as fellow enemies of God who need to hear about His love. Even your so-called enemy—you never know what they’re going through in life, what’s really going on with them, what’s making them the way they are that you’re their enemy. They need to see something different, and people of God, we can be that for our enemy. We can be better than hating our enemy.
Well, it’s not so much that we’re better, but it’s that God is better than that. God loves them, and we can too. But there is something to be said that we can be better than that, than hating our enemy, but to love them instead.
A great example of that is in 2017 in Egypt, a Coptic Christian church was attacked by a suicide bomber there. Maybe you remember it in the news; that was a couple of years ago. Some days after it happened, a woman whose husband died intercepting one of the bombers outside of the church—he kept him from getting into the church, and it exploded outside the church, killing her husband.
She was being interviewed on an Egyptian TV station, and the interviewer, who I don’t believe was a Christian himself, I believe he was an Egyptian Muslim, was talking with her about it, and she said this. She said, “I’m not angry at the one who did this.” She said, “I’m telling that person, may God forgive you, and we also forgive you.” Believe me, she said, “We forgive you.” The interviewer, the show host, was speechless for about 10 seconds, which on live TV is an eternity, okay? Until he finally said to the camera, “The Coptic Christians of Egypt are made of steel.” He said, “If it were my father or anyone in my family who died, I could never say this. These people have so much forgiveness.”
But this is them, he said; “This is their faith and their religious conviction.” And then he said this: “These people are made from it. These people are made from a different substance.” I agree; you’re right—made from a different substance. The people of God indeed are made from something else—not of this world. We love our enemies, and we forgive them and show them mercy.
May you be people made from a different substance, St. Paul Lutheran Church, made from Christ’s love to love even our enemies. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
