The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2022, Dr. Tamilio

Have you ever noticed that certain parts of Scripture just seem…too idealistic?  Let’s be honest.  It’s not blasphemy to point out the obvious.  Some of the things Jesus says just seem, well, too hard to even imagine, let alone practice.  Do we really love our enemies?  Seriously.  Do you?  Do you really pray for those who persecute you?  Do you?  I know I don’t, at least not often.  I sometimes offer private words for those I dislike, but most of them have four letters in them.  Don’t laugh too hard.  You do the same thing.  We all do.  Maybe it’s part of our culture.  Maybe it’s part of our animal instinct.  I don’t know.  But I do know that some of the things that Jesus asks us to do just seem virtually impossible.  When was the last time you took up your own cross and followed him?  When was the last time you plucked out your eye or cut off your hand because you sinned with it?  When was the last time you turned the other cheek or took that great big plank out of your own eye before removing the spec from your brother’s?  Right.  I didn’t think so.

If someone takes a swing at you, you automatically put up your hands to block the punch.  It is instinctual.  It’s self-defense — part of our self-protective nature.  Therefore, when we are in the presence of our “enemy,” whomever that may be, our immediate response is to be defensive.  I think that’s natural.  It is part of our basic survival instinct.  Kill or be killed is the law of the jungle, isn’t it?

There is something to be said about being cautious around those who could do you harm.  Don’t we teach our children to be cautious around strangers?  Don’t we encourage young women to know a bit about self-defense and to be careful when they are at parties to protect themselves against those who wish to do them harm or take advantage of them?  What’s all this “love your enemies” stuff?  Is Jesus serious?

There is no doubt that Jesus used hyperbole sometimes.  If we took his teachings literally, we’d all be walking around missing a hand and an eye.  Also, we know that Jesus set the bar very high.  The idea is that even if we do not attain perfection, we will be better off than if we did not try to reach it at all.

New Testament scholar Darrell L. Bock has an interesting take on this.  He claims that this passage, particularly the last three verses of it, “turns our attention from how we treat others to how we respond to them.  Love includes mercy, following God’s own example.  This attitude,” he writes, “produces a hesitation in judging others, as believers realize that God will treat them in the way they have treated others.”[1]  This coincides nicely with a point made by another New Testament scholar, William Hendriksen.  Hendriksen contrasts Jesus command with what the Jewish scribes of his day taught: love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  Hendriksen argues that Jesus emphasized the real intent of the Law with the emphasis being on love not vengeance.[2]

I like what N.T. Wright has to say about this passage.  He writes,

The kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity.  Think of the best thing you can do for the worst person, and go ahead and do it.  Think of what you’d really like someone to do for you, and do it for them.  Think of the people to whom you are tempted to be nasty, and lavish generosity on them instead.  These instructions have a fresh, springlike quality.  They are all about new life bursting out energetically, like flowers growing through concrete and startling everyone with their colour and vigour.[3]

I love the image of flowers growing through concrete.  I often ask, why is it that I have trouble getting grass to grow in my backyard, when all kinds of grass, plants, weeds, and even trees grow out of the cement jersey barriers that line every Massachusetts highway?

Here’s another way of understanding all of this.  Maybe Jesus is trying to teach us to look at ourselves objectively.  How are we seen by others?  We are not the paragon of virtue that we think we are.  (I’m preaching to myself as much as I am to you, by the way.)  We are not all that and a bag of chips, as that comical saying proclaims.  Think about it, though.  When we think of ourselves, we are totally subjective.  We see everything through our eyes and interpret it through our framework.  That’s just the way we are built.  Being able to see all od life (including ourselves) through the eyes of others is a gift, one that is not easy to develop.  Doing so, will serve you well in life.  Not only will it help you be open-minded, but it will make you realize that we are not as different as we think.

All people have hopes and dreams.  We all love and want to be loved.  We all want peace and to want health and happiness for our friends and family.  Less than six months before he was assassinated.  President John F. Kennedy addressed the graduating class at the American University in Washington, DC saying, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.  We all breathe the same air.  We all cherish our children’s futures.  And we are all mortal.”

The world is not better off if you respond to your enemy with hate.  All that does is make you feel better, and even that is debatable.  In the end, it throws negative energy into the cosmos — not to sound too Eastern in my thinking here.  It also hurts us.  Think of negativity as a thick, black, oily tar that we drink, and it seeps into every corpuscle of our being.  I believe it was Bert Ghezzi in his book The Angry Christian who essentially said that “Hating your enemy is the equivalent of you drinking poison thinking it will kill him.”  How true!  By not hating others, we are saving ourselves and dare I say even loving ourselves the way we should.

That is because we are all connected.  We may want to go it alone.  That’s the American way, isn’t it?  But I remember the John Donne poem that Harold Drake used to cite all the time: “No man is an island.”  Certainly, no Christian is an island, because we are to see ourselves untied in Christ and with one another.  We are bound together and in a covenant of love that knows no end.

“God is love,” as 1 John tells us: three, basic, monosyllabic words that speak one of the most profound truths imaginable.  Maybe being created in God’s image means that we are to be love as well, and that we are to love friend and enemy alike.  Yes, it’s hard, but as many a parent, teacher, and coach has said, “Anything that is worth it is hard.”  Amen.

[1] Darrell L. Bock, Luke, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 587.

[2] William Hendriksen, New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), 347-348.

[3] N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 73.