Love your enemies

A sermon preached at St. Barnabas Church, Cambridge, 15th September 2002, at a 'remembering September 11' service

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God." "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.'But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matthew 5 vv 9, 38-48

INTRODUCTION
At a wedding I was at recently, the father of the bride, who had flown in from Australia, told us that he had to get up at an "unChristian hour" to catch his plane. My girlfriend Rachel pointed out to me what a strange idea of Christianity that was. It reminded me of the famous gaff by Warren Austin, US delegate to UN, who once offered a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem by suggesting that "[The Arabs and the Jews] should settle this problem in true Christian spirit." And isn't that the popular idea of Christianity- being reasonable and nice? The passages we have read tonight- "Blessed are the peacemakers", "turn the other cheek", "love your enemy" - they seem the sort of things that it would be impossible to disagree with, what nice people do.

But when we come to the carnage of September 11th, are they so useful? Would we dare urge someone to 'turn the other cheek' when she had heard her loved one scream down a mobile phone as the hijackers slit the throats of air stewardesses in front of little children to gain access to cock-pits, and then career the planes into Skyscrapers? When we recall the nightmare scene of people throwing themselves from windows in order to avoid being consumed in fire, and their bodies bouncing down the collapsing walls to their death, does 'love your enemies' sound like anything but an obscenity? These phrases seem to ignore grief, and deny the basic human desire for retaliation. That principle recently catapulted singer Toby Keith to the top of the US charts with a song called 'The Angry American' celebrating the US attack on Afghanistan. The lyrics go "Man we lit up your sky like the Fourth of July/… You'll be sorry that you messed with the US of A / [ ] we'll put a boot in your ass / It's the American way."

And just how unrealistic Jesus' statements are is shown by considering other reactions to September 11th. In Palestine some people celebrated in the streets. A friend showed me a text message from an Uzbekistani, "Did you see what happened? Tee hee hee hee hee! I am ONLY sorry for the people who died. Otherwise, I am so glad." Why? In his unpleasant speeches, Bin Laden talks about Palestine and Iraq. Britain helped create Israel after invading Palestine, and at the moment we are supplying more arms to Israel than we have done to any Israeli government ever. Israel has built up a fearful nuclear arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, yet the US is its biggest military backer. The US has been Israel's greatest supporter in defiance of the United Nations call 35 years ago for it to leave the occupied territories. On the other hand, the US and UK used the UN to evict Iraq from Kuwait in a matter of months in 1991 when that suited our interests (as we are currently supporting other tyrants now). We have continued a low-level war ever since. In 1998 Denis Halliday resigned as the UN Aid co-ordinator for Iraq in protest, saying that: "We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that. It is illegal and immoral."

Or take the Chechens, some of whom also joined Al-Qaeda. In its war against Chechnya's Muslim separatist rebels, the Russian government illegally used a type of bomb against civilian populations that creates a mid-air fireball, forming a vacuum that sucks peoples' lungs out as it kills them. Whilst this was happening, Tony Blair was enjoying a night at the opera with Russia's president Putin. Yet he is planning a war on Saddam Hussain at the moment allegedly to disarm its 'weapons of mass destruction.' He was a dictator that the West once supported when his wars served our interests. Wherever I have travelled in the Muslim world, I have encountered anger at these double standards. Could we dare look these victims and their families in the eye and say 'love us, do good to us, pray for us, and seek our best'?

So, Jesus' words are impractical and offensive. How have Christians applied them over time? The historical record is a shameful one. For example, in 1099 the Crusaders captured Jerusalem and slaughtered 10s000s of people, and as they waded in their blood that flowed through the streets, they praised God with sincere hearts that he was using them to build Christ's kingdom on earth. Or in 1898 US President McKinley spent a night in prayer in the White House seeking God's will, and believed God told him to invade the Philippines to help US business; the genocide he unleashed killed half a million Filipinos. Or in a sermon during the First World War, the Bishop of London called for the nation's manhood to "band in a great Crusade… to kill Germans. To kill them… to save the world; to kill the good as well as the bad; to kill the young men as well as the old; to kill those who have showed kindness to our wounded… and to kill them lest the civilisation of the world should itself be killed."

Far from being 'nice', it would seem that the words of Jesus we have read today are quite the opposite: unnatural, unrealistic, and offensively hypocritical; do they have any relevance in the real world? I believe that in these words of Jesus we see a stunning description of the character of God and a call to discipleship that offers the greatest hope for our own lives and our suffering world. So, please take your Bibles, and turn with me to our passage, Matthew 5 v 38-48, and let's look at what Jesus said we should do to our enemies, why we should do it, and how he put it into practice.

1) WHAT JESUS TAUGHT
So, how did Jesus teach us to respond to our enemies? Well, let's look at what he told us not to do. He identified three responses, which are equally the basis of getting ahead in the world and of modern warfare. The first is in verse 38: "'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' In modern language, that's a proportional response, a sensible law, designed to limit brutality. But Jesus absolutely rejects it: "if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Secondly, in verse 43, Jesus reminds us that the common human response to being attacked is hatred: "love your neighbour, but hate your enemy." Hate not only involves actions like suicide bombing, assaulting Muslims in the streets after September 11 or dropping bombs on them, but all the language that supports that. Through government propaganda, newspapers, films, sermons, and pop music, our enemies are depicted as evil, irrational, without morals and beyond forgiveness. This makes us feel like we are the only victims and have a right to kill them. But Jesus teaches the opposite: "but I tell you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you."

Finally, the third response when faced with enmity is to stand by your friends and hope they'll stand by you. Jesus summarises this attitude in verses 46-47 as only loving those who love you, or only greeting those who greet you. Again, we are used to slogans like this in modern warfare: 'an attack on one is an attack on all', 'standing shoulder to shoulder', etc. Jesus sneers at this response- he says that's what godless pagans and tax collectors do.

No, we are told to love our enemies, seek their good, ask what their interests are, pray that God would bless them. It's that simple. The great Danish Christian thinker Søren Kierkegaard once said that Christianity is not difficult to understand, it is so simple that even a child can understand it. No, what is difficult is to put it into practice, and so to avoid that, he said, theologians write great commentaries trying to explain why Jesus didn't mean what he said.

2) WHY JESUS TOLD US TO LOVE OUR ENEMIES
So, secondly, why did Jesus tell us to love our enemies? Simply because it is in the very nature of God to, and Jesus commands us to be like him: "Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect" (v48), "that you may be children of your father in heaven" (v45). What does he do? He is good to call, however undeserving: "He causes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (v 45). And that means us! Jesus spent most of Matthew 5 up until these verses rejecting the idea that we are good enough for God. We think that we're able to judge others, that because we haven't killed anyone we are more holy and deserving of God's favour than Osama bin Laden or Myra Hindley. But in v.21-24, Jesus shows us that if we have even secretly been angry with another human being without reason and hated them, we are in danger of the very fires of hell because the root is the same. "Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point is guilty of breaking all of it", writes James; and Paul declares that "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Until we get God's view of ourselves as sinners, we have no chance of understanding why Jesus tells us to love our enemies and be peacemakers and why that makes us children of God. We like to think that we are generally good people. But the Bible declares that "all our own good deeds are like filthy rags" before God. We as individuals and a race, as a church and a country, have continually rebelled against our holy and just maker, who created us to be like him. But, as Paul declares in utter amazement in Romans 5v8, "God has shown us how much he loved us- it was while we were still sinners (or enemies as he says in v10 ) that Christ died for us!" It is simply God's grace that makes us his children and gives us eternal life; nothing we ever could or have done. And that is why we are to love our enemies, imitating the boundless love of God for us.

3) HOW JESUS PUT THIS INTO PRACTICE
But Jesus was not just giving us lofty, moral ideals; these words are nothing without the preacher. So, thirdly, look how he did this in his own life. He faced violence and oppression like most of us have never known. The rulers of the land tried to kill him by massacring all new-born babies, and Jesus would have grown up with this legacy of hatred. He began his public ministry in highly charged revolutionary times; people were looking for a military saviour to free them from the Romans. As the messiah, everything he said and did was intensely political.

He was continually tempted with the option of holy war, to use power and violence. That is the temptation Satan offered him in the wilderness; he resisted being crowned king by the crowds; in Luke 13 people rush with the news of a terrible atrocity committed by the authorities against civilians, they are excited, this could be the spark for this king to rebel: but he doesn't, he warns them to look at their own sin; he calls Peter 'Satan' for trying to prevent him going to his death; as he entered Jerusalem he wept that they "did not know the things that made for peace", prophesisying that the Jews would not love their enemies but hate and fight them, and miss the kingdom of God in the process; he demonstrated love to the enemies of his people- the collaborating traitors like tax collectors, he made despised Samaritans the heroes of his stories, even praised the faith of the Roman soldier. When finally arrested, Peter took out his sword and struck one of those who had come to kill Jesus. But Jesus healed his enemy, warning his followers that "those who live by the sword, will die by the sword." He practised what he preached, showed that our enemies were to be overcome through love not hatred.

And this took him finally to the cross. Miroslav Volf, writing from the experience of his native Croatia being over-run by its enemies and engulfed in a war of tit-for-tat massacres, says that with his death Jesus breaks the cycle of violence. The only person ever completely justified to strike back didn't, but hung on the cross loving his enemies and praying "father, forgive them." This had nothing to do with being a passive doormat- he stood up to evil and violence wherever he encountered it in imaginative and fearless ways, but refused to be shaped by it into responding likewise. His was the ultimate example of non-violent enemy love.

The disciples didn't get this during is lifetime; like us, they preferred to hate and kill. Only after Pentecost did they understand. Peter was later to write "Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps… When they hurled their insults at him he did not retaliate, when he suffered, he made no threats" (1 Pet. 2). An example to follow- the cross is the very model of how we respond to our enemies. Or, "Whoever claims to live in Him, must walk as Jesus did" said John in 1 John 2 v 6. He wanted to call down fire to destroy the Samaritans, but was later sent by the church to baptise those very Samaritans into the family of God. Jesus nicknamed him a 'son of thunder', but he is known to us as the 'apostle of love.'

Jesus called God, 'my father', and tells us that if we love our enemies and become peacemakers we too will become 'children of God.' - who wouldn't want to be that? It sounds like Christmas everywhere. But Jesus dared to call God, 'my Father', and left family and friends, was ridiculed, and considered unpatriotic, and in the end was executed in agony as a criminal. Jesus did this for us, his enemies. There is nothing 'natural' about this. It is supernatural love, that reached out, sought us, disarmed and wooed us when we were enemies. And as his Spirit lives in us, we discover the tremendous power of that same love, and are liberated to love our enemies in ways that we previously thought of as unnatural or unrealistic. Paul calls this the 'gospel (or 'good news') of peace.' That is good news indeed, good news for a world of suicide bombers and superpowers trapped in a cycle of self-righteous violence, and good news for sinners like you and me in need of a saviour.

OBJECTIONS
Before we finish, I am aware that these words tonight may have provoked many questions. Now is not the time to look at them all, but it may be helpful to think about three common objections.

a) Personal not political
The first common objection is that Jesus wasn't saying anything about society or politics, he was just teaching us private, personal religion. As we have just seen, his whole life and teaching contradicts that idea. Even the examples Jesus uses of 'walking an extra mile' shows that he was thinking of military occupation, as a Roman soldier had the right to force anyone to carry a load for one mile.

The idea that we can ignore what Jesus taught us if our enemies are really nasty or a government tells us to is very dangerous, and has ruined the testiminy of the church through the ages. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that when he heard someone say that religion and politics shouldn't be mixed, he wondered what version of the Bible they were reading! Martin Luther King wrote from jail to the white Christians opposing him that the early church was once a powerful voice for transformation by challenging violence, but now had become "an arch-defender of the status quo." We at St Barnabas' need to ask, 'Which are we?'

b) The church has always allowed violence
Secondly, some people say that the church has always allowed warfare. However, the early church didn't. No, it preached the type of enemy love that Jesus and the apostles did. Church father Tertullian said that "If we are commanded to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate… Christ, in disarming Peter, unarmed every soldier." They also practised it. For example, in the mid-3rd century the Christians in Carthage had been subjected to a ten-month period of persecution, but they did not fight back. Then there was a deadly outbreak of disease. Many people fled, but bishop Cyprian preached a sermon where he said "there is nothing remarkable in cherishing merely our own people… we should do something more than heathens, overcoming evil with good, and practising merciful kindness like that of God, we should love our enemies as well." So the Christians stayed and treated and fed their suffering persecutors. This led to a great growth in the church. It was only later, three centuries after Christ, that theologians developed the 'just war' argument to allow them to support the wars of the Roman empire and gain political influence. Many historians argue that that marked the start of the spiritual decline of the early church.

c) It doesn't work in the real world
As we saw earlier, another common objection to Jesus' teachings is that they just don't work in the real world. Now, certainly, there have been many cases where Christians have been martyred for refusing to fight and kill their enemies, but God uses that too for his glory, and their blood is the seed of the church. But I could stand here 'til midnight giving you opposite examples.

For example, in the 1960s Polish and German bishops began a process of reconciliation. These two countries still had bitter memories and unresolved issues from World War 2, and were then in a nuclear stand-off as communists and capitalists in the Cold War. Many influential groups in their home countries roundly criticised the Christians for being unpatriotic, for disregarding injustices of the past, and for seeking forgiveness. That's very difficult to do when your country regards itself as the victim and the other guys as despicable enemies. Nonetheless, this began the process of dialogue and understanding that was to lead to final peace treaties in 1990 and 1991.

Or take Martin Luther King, who led the non-violent civil-rights movement that abolished legal apartheid in the USA. He prayed constantly for his enemies; "I love you. I would rather die than hate you", he declared to those opposing him. In recent years non-violent citizen protest has brought down many brutal tyrants like General Pinochet of Chile.

Or take Nicaragua in the 1980s, where the USA was backing a terrorist group, the Contras, who were trained to destabilise the government by killing civilians, particularly doctors and teachers. Most Americans had no idea this was happening. Ordinary American Christians like us went out to Nicaragua, and acted as human shields to protect those that their government regarded as enemies. 5,000 took part, taking their annual holidays doing this, risking their lives, and returning to spread the word in churches and the US media about what their government was doing. When the US congress finally voted to stop backing the Contras, the State Department blamed the churches.

Christians are doing this now in Palestine. I heard a recent example of 60-year old US peacemaker in Hebron, who came across an Israeli army patrol surrounding a shivering Palestinian boy. The boy had been there five hours, and was freezing cold. The soldiers tried to move him on: the man sat down, took some of his clothes off in solidarity, and the soldiers got embarrassed and released the boy! I think it may have been this sort of imaginative and disarming 'clowning around' that Jesus was advocating when he told us to 'turn the other cheek', give our shirts to our enemies, and walk the extra mile.

"It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting", said G.K. Chesterton: "it has been found too difficult, and not tried." Do we have the faith to dare try it? CONCLUSION
As we draw to a conclusion, I want to ask the question that many have been asking in the newspapers over the past few days: how did the world change after September 11? For the families of those who died in America and Afghanistan, the world changed for ever, and we sorrow with them all as God surely does. But, on the cosmic level, nothing changed. No, the world changed decisively in AD 33, when death lost its sting, the grave its victory. Our task is to interpret September 11, like every other event in our lives, in the light of AD 33.

Jesus' challenge cannot leave us unmoved. The Jesus who loved us as his enemies and gave his life for us, calls us all to turn from our sin and freely invites us to walk from death into life and enter his kingdom and become children of God. We do that by loving our enemies, by copying the God who abundantly pours out his goodness on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. All Christians are called to be peacemakers: but how do we do that?

Firstly, through praying, thinking, and talking about this as a church.

The legacy of violence in the church has been immensely damaging, shaming the message of the Lord of Life in the eyes of the world. Konrad Raiser, General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, has recently called for the church to ditch 'just war' theory and move its traditional non-violent testimony back to its centre. The Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops has declared that, "War as a method of settling international disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ." More and more workers in the Muslim world report back how damaging our militarism is to the advance of the gospel there, as Christians are seen as an enemy of Muslims. Something is happening across the world-wide church that we need to be part of.

But there may be many people here tonight for whom this interpretation of Jesus' words may be disturbing. I believers in our church and elsewhere whose faith I look up to in awe, who have taken part in wars. Maybe there are others here who work in the arms industry or military, or have been victims of abuse and violence that has scarred them to this day. We need to listen to each other's stories sensitively, and try and make sense of them together in the light of the story of Jesus and the reality of the cross.

Secondly, through action.

Jim Wallis, an American Christian preacher, said recently that September 11th could be a 'teachable moment' for us, a time to understand and critically evaluate what our governments do in our name; to demand massive economic reconstruction not hunger relief, a just peace settlement for Israelis and Palestinians, and an end to policies that hurt the Iraqi people not their leader.

He suggested two concrete steps. Firstly, he thinks that the British voice is the most important one in the world at the moment, as Tony Blair is the only major world leader who supports Bush's plans for a war on Iraq. The Anglican bishops have, along with other Christian leaders, opposed those plans; there may be some here tonight who feel it appropriate to join them in pressuring our government. If so, there are special buses going from Cambridge to London on September 28th for what may be the largest anti-war demonstration in a generation in this country, the day before the Labour Party conference.

He also suggested that we can join those peacemakers in Palestine like the stripping 60-year old I mentioned earlier. Perhaps we would consider taking our summer holidays in Palestine next year with a Christian peace organisation, then coming back and telling what we have seen. Here at St Barnabas' we have taken the first steps through projects such as the reconciliation walks and our ongoing engagement with local Muslims since September 11th: we need to take that further.

Thirdly, all of this needs rooting in corporate worship, here on Mill Road and in our home-groups. As we worship together, we proclaim 'Jesus is Lord', the most political statement we can make, confessing our ultimate loyalty is not to any government or the United Nations, but to him. We delight to be part of his peacemaking kingdom that spreads over all the world. In worship, we come to see reality from the perspective of Jesus' teachings not the TV news or government spin-doctors, and we cry out to God in prayer for the world.

Finally, through proclamation. The command of Jesus to 'love our enemies' gives us great hope. We have no reason to be confused each time a war happens: far from it, we have a marvellous message to proclaim to an aching world, a message of God's abundant and overwhelming and undeserved love that reconciles people to God and each other. The agnostic philosopher and anti-war campaigner Bertrand Russell, who said that he built his life on an unyielding despair, issued a statement with Albert Einstein that said "those of us who know the most are the gloomiest about the future." They were quite wrong. The prophet Isaiah foresaw the future. He had visions of the coming Messiah, who would be born in Bethlehem and die for the sins of the world, who would cause the swords to be beaten into ploughshares, and would roll up the blood-stained army uniforms and burn them in the fire along with the warrior's boots. Looking seven centuries forward through time he called Jesus "The Prince of Peace", and said that when he came those walking in darkness would see a great light, and of the increase of his government and peace there would be no end. This started with Jesus' first coming, is ongoing, and will be completed when he finally returns on the last day and death is forever swallowed up in victory. In the meantime, the incredible invitation and thrilling command to all of us here tonight in our broken and hurting world is to love our enemies, take up our crosses, and follow him in building that kingdom. Amen.