The Community of Matthew: Why should we love and pray for our enemies? Because that is what Jesus tells us to do

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… Loving Thy Neighbor may be one of the greatest commandments, but loving thy enemies is surely the hardest.

Sojourners Magazine, April 2017

To sort of piggyback on what we discussed last week about forgiveness, we return to the Sermon on the Mount and confront something that is even more challenging than saying that you forgive someone. 

These are the words that are found in both Matthew and Luke,

Love of Enemies.

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

44 But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,

45 that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

46 For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors* do the same?

47 And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same?

48 So be perfect,* just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Book of Matthew, Chapter 5

Love your Enemies

27  "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28  bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 

29  If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30  Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 

31  Do to others as you would have them do to you. 32  "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33  And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 

34  And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 

35  But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 

36  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Luke, 6:27-36

Martin Luther King understood this well

A Baptist minister and civil rights leader who espoused Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about this idea of having to love your enemies. He also says that this was not hyperbole on the part of Jesus,

So I want to turn your attention to this subject: "Loving Your Enemies." It’s so basic to me because it is a part of my basic philosophical and theological orientation—the whole idea of love, the whole philosophy of love. In the fifth chapter of the gospel as recorded by Saint Matthew, we read these very arresting words flowing from the lips of our Lord and Master: "Ye have heard that it has been said, ‘Thou shall love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.’ But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven."

Certainly these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions. And over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command. Many would go so far as to say that it just isn’t possible to move out into the actual practice of this glorious command. They would go on to say that this is just additional proof that Jesus was an impractical idealist who never quite came down to earth. So the arguments abound. But far from being an impractical idealist, Jesus has become the practical realist. 

The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.

Now let me hasten to say that Jesus was very serious when he gave this command; he wasn’t playing. He realized that it’s hard to love your enemies. He realized that it’s difficult to love those persons who seek to defeat you, those persons who say evil things about you. He realized that it was painfully hard, pressingly hard. But he wasn’t playing. And we cannot dismiss this passage as just another example of Oriental hyperbole, just a sort of exaggeration to get over the point. This is a basic philosophy of all that we hear coming from the lips of our Master. Because Jesus wasn’t playing; because he was serious. We have the Christian and moral responsibility to seek to discover the meaning of these words, and to discover how we can live out this command, and why we should live by this command.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Loving Your Enemies,” Stanford University, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, sermon on Nov. 17, 1957

If Jesus was indeed serious, and since both Matthew and Luke report his words very closely to that, how challenging is that for us in this life?

Father James Martin, S.J. explains the difficulty

Life is replete with those who do not get along with one another for a variety of reasons. Renowned Jesuit priest Father James Martin talked about the ways in which this can be a challenge,

Most of us, sadly, go through life with, for better or worse, and no matter how hard we try, a few people we may feel are our “enemies.” Or, more broadly, people seem to hate us. There are people whom we’ve offended and to whom we’ve apologized, but who refuse to accept our apologies. There are people at work who we’ve angered, who are jealous of us, or who have set themselves against us. There are people in our families who hold a grudge against us for some mysterious reason that we can never comprehend. 

And there are people who seem to dislike us or wish us ill for no good reason. It’s a sad part of human life.

And it’s a hard part of life. And sometimes, when we hear Jesus telling us to love our enemies, it seems to make things even harder.

Rev. James Martin, S.J., “How to love your enemies,” Huffington Post, May 29, 2011

Making this worse is that Jesus says that we have to pray for our enemies, for those who persecute us. This is similar to the father of the young woman who had difficulty forgiving Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Oklahoma City federal building. 

But there’s a problem: it seems impossible! How are we supposed to love our enemies sincerely? Are we really supposed to pray for ... whom? For people who hate us? For people who work against us? For people who want us to fail? It seems almost masochistic — a surefire recipe for psychological disaster …

But the word Jesus uses here is the third kind of love, agape, a sort of unconquerable benevolence or invincible goodwill. We’re supposed to agape our enemies. Jesus is asking us to agape people no matter what they do to us, no matter how they treat us, no matter how they insult us. No matter what their actions we never allow bitterness against them to invade our hearts, but will treat them with goodwill.  

So it doesn’t mean that we have to love our enemies the same way that we speak about “falling in love” with someone or the way we love our family members. It simply means we must open our hearts to them. 

And pray for them, too. In my experience, it’s easier to agape someone you dislike (or who dislikes you) when you pray for them. Because when you pray for them, God often opens your heart to seeing people the way that God sees them, rather than the way you see them.  And you can often have pity for people who may be filled with anger toward you.

Father James Martin, Huffington Post, May 29, 2011

Dr. King explains that many will just not like you, and we have to accept that, while still love them,

Now first let us deal with this question, which is the practical question: How do you go about loving your enemies? I think the first thing is this: In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. And I’m sure that seems strange to you, that I start out telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self. It seems to me that that is the first and foremost way to come to an adequate discovery to the how of this situation.

Now, I’m aware of the fact that some people will not like you, not because of something you have done to them, but they just won’t like you. I’m quite aware of that. Some people aren’t going to like the way you walk; some people aren’t going to like the way you talk. Some people aren’t going to like you because you can do your job better than they can do theirs. Some people aren’t going to like you because other people like you, and because you’re popular, and because you’re well-liked, they aren’t going to like you. Some people aren’t going to like you because your hair is a little shorter than theirs or your hair is a little longer than theirs. Some people aren’t going to like you because your skin is a little brighter than theirs; and others aren’t going to like you because your skin is a little darker than theirs. 

So that some people aren’t going to like you. They’re going to dislike you, not because of something that you’ve done to them, but because of various jealous reactions and other reactions that are so prevalent in human nature.

But after looking at these things and admitting these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something that we’ve done deep down in the past, some personality attribute that we possess, something that we’ve done deep down in the past and we’ve forgotten about it; but it was that something that aroused the hate response within the individual. That is why I say, begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stanford University, The Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Research and Education Institute, from sermon in 1957

Conclusion

The reality is that loving our enemies, even in the agape sense, is tough, but that is the standard that Jesus set for us. It is not just avoiding our enemies or saying anything nasty about them. 

It is loving them and praying that they will receive the same gifts as you will receive from God. 

Father Martin acknowledges the difficult of doing that from his time as a Jesuit,

Loving your enemies and pray for those who persecute you is hard. In my life I’ve found it probably the most difficult thing to do as a Christian. Many years ago, for example, I lived with another Jesuit who simply refused to talk to me.  He despised me.  And I couldn’t figure out why and efforts at reconciliation failed miserably.  No matter what I did, nothing changed his attitude. 

Father James Martin, Huffington Post, May 20, 2011

And we have to live our lives despite that. God gave each one of us free will, and we have to accept that not everyone will like or even tolerate us. 

This is a good message for us at this time of our history.