Abstract
If Jesus had only told us to love, everything would have been just fine.
It would have been fairly easy to convince ourselves that we are, actually, very loving people, accepting of others, full of good will, and always up for charitable acts of one sort or another, and that loving others wouldn’t be all that much of a problem. Of course, the extent to which our love would embrace others would vary. We’d love them all, of course, but to different degrees, according to how they stood in relation to us.
They’d be those who relate well to us. Same attitudes, outlooks, priorities, interests, allegiances, political persuasions, football teams, clubs, and so on. The sort of people we share recipes with and invite to dinner. Lots of warmth and affection. Drizzled with concern for their happiness and well-being. Here love is easy. No problem.
Then there’d be those who didn’t relate to us all that well. People who were really neither here nor there. We’d be ‘cool’ towards them, because they are cool to us. We’d maintain a discreet distance. Give them the half-smile and faint nod that lets them know we almost remember them, but blowed if we can think where from. Impeccable courtesy. Here love would be a little more challenging, but we’d be up for it.
And then there’d be the people with whom we didn’t get on very well, and somehow always managed to rub us up the wrong way. Just not our kind of person.
Here love would be difficult. But again, we could do it.
No matter how easy, challenging or difficult loving others turns out to be, it can be done. So if all we were commanded to do was to love, we’d be alright.
But what Jesus specifically says is, ‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who treat you spitefully.’
Of course, we could always deny any of this really applies to us. ‘Enemies? Me? You’re telling me I have enemies? I have no enemies. There is no one who hates me. I don’t know of anyone who’s cursing me. Or treating me spitefully. I’m not the sort of person who attracts hostility. I’m universally well-regarded. Even admired. So there’s no problem, for me.’
Yes, we could think like that. And maybe we’d be right. Maybe there’s no one outside the church right now waiting for us with a loaded thurible, or someone in a newspaper office tapping out sinister reports.
But there will be people, who although we may not actually call them enemies, or think of them as hating us, cursing us, or treating us spitefully, they just don’t seem to like us. They show no sign of pleasure when they meet us. They signal, in one way or another, that they would rather be anywhere but with us.
Have you ever been at a party, and you start talking to someone, and in next to no time they’re looking over your shoulder at the people behind you, and you know what’s in their minds—they’re looking for someone more interesting to talk to. And then someone new comes up, and they become animated. They are no longer bored. Life has begun again for them, when this different person comes along. They regard us as belonging to an uninteresting species, or something. And then what happens is that our affection for these people diminishes according to their attitude to us—or according to what we think is their attitude towards us.
And all this happens because we imagine ourselves to be standing at the centre of the world, with other people all around us, like concentric circles of decreasing intensity, ripples on the surface of a pond, all spreading out from us. And the trouble is, we can be trapped into thinking this is how it should be. It is inevitable, we say. How could we possibly love those who don’t love us?
But the thing is, because Jesus doesn’t command love in general, but love for our enemies in particular, this alters the picture of ourselves that we must have. Despite what we might think, we are not at a centre, with other people further and further from us, placed there by us, according to our idea of their attitude to us.
Which means we’re to take to ourselves the people for whom we have no time, and who, we think, have no time for us, but find us boring, idiotic, superstitious, out-of-touch—the very people we try to avoid. These are the people we are commanded to love, to do good to, to put ourselves at the disposal of. We are even to lend them our property, without expecting them to return it.
One thing’s for sure. It’s not a pleasant prospect. Getting to love our enemies. Is it actually possible for us to do it?
Well, yes. It is. We can do it. And we know we can do it, because people have done it to us.
We can remember how, when we were young and awkward, quite odd and a pain in the neck, there were people who overcame their displeasure of us, and treated us far better than we deserved. How they listened, and felt for us, and helped us, and gave us confidence.
And we know that even now, when we mess things up, let others down, make things harder for people instead of easier, and ride rough-shod over others, blank them out, can’t be bothered to listen, or to be charitable and encouraging, there are people who still come to us, tolerate us and accept us, and treat us far better than we deserve.
We can remember how they listened, and tried to understand us, and help us, and how they gave us confidence to put the past behind us, and to start fresh, again and again.
We can love, because it has happened to us. And because it has happened to us, it can happen through us. There is such a thing as love, after all. And God can motivate us into exercising it.
What’s more, we’re committed to believing that this love has no cut-off points. No-one is beyond its reach. It’s a love which is almighty, and in the end, with us or without us, it will bring everything to fulfillment, in the name of the One to whom we owe all glory, honour, praise and thanksgiving, today and to the end of time.