Love Your Enemies
This is a slightly amended version of a sermon I delivered at Altrincham Baptist Church on Sunday 3rd March 2024. It is using chapter 5, verse 43-48 in the Gospel of Matthew.
Love Your Enemies
Twenty years ago this April, a film was released that would go on to have a monumental cultural impact. Indeed, this year a remake was released – bringing this landmark film to a new audience, complete with musical soundtrack this time.
Of course, the film I’m referring to is: Mean Girls. The 2004 original, written by Tina Fey and Rosalind Wiseman, was, if you’ll allow me, so fetch. That joke is going to fall flat on its plastic face (and another one there) unless you’ve seen either of these Shakespearean-like epics.
If you’re unfamiliar with this tales of teenage woe, a brief synopsis: Cady ends up at a US High School following years of home education. There she encounters, for the first time, cliques and people who say one thing, but mean another. It’s a classic tale of what happens when you prioritise popularity over integrity, and the pitfalls of the very human need to be amongst people who look, sound, and think like us.
It's in our nature to be tribal people, baked into our DNA to ensure that, when times get tough, we protect our own and the species survives. So, whilst of course it’s not a bad thing to want to socialise with someone who has a shared music interest, or to feel a shared kinship with those who grew up in the same part of the world as you, it can lead to a tribalism that pits one group against another.
Church (other religious bodies too, I have no doubt) at its best, finds a way to navigate this. United by something bigger than us, we come together for corporate worship, shared lunches, prayer groups, and social activities, with people who perhaps we might not normally have built a relationship with.
Of course, the opposite is also true: church can also demonstrate some of the worst kinds of behaviour, pitting music preferences, theology, even seating options, against one another. Faith communities have faced division for reasons such as registering for same-sex marriage, for wanting to call a woman to be their minister, or for asking questions as to how the building is used, and by whom. And if I’m honest, the times I’ve served as a Deacon in Baptist churches, the most controversial issues were seemingly banal – like what colour a wall should be decorated, or which tables we would be replacing the old ones with…
Christians may be familiar with the command to not only love God, but to love our neighbour as ourselves. If we had a catchphrase, strapline, or mantra for our faith, it could probably be this. You may then deduce, as indeed the 1stCentury Jews and their ancestors did, that this command must then have a counterbalance – if you are loving a specific group, who then might you be hating?
Whilst this was never a command under the Jewish scriptural laws, the idea of loving your neighbour but hating your enemy became baked into the society of the day. This is particularly of note when we recognise that the concept of neighbour didn’t just mean those who were in your block of flats, who lived on your road, or whose children went to the same school as yours, but rather it held deeply weighted significance in terms of Jewish identity. For the 1stCentury Jew, under Roman occupation, your neighbour was your kin, your enemy was the occupier.
Yet there are several examples in the Hebrew Scriptures where the exact opposite of enemy-hated is called for, as in Exodus 23:4-5, Deuteronomy 23:7, and Proverbs 25:21-22.
Yet, the idea of feeding, caring, nurturing your enemy was as radical then as it is now. Over the years, righteously “hating” your enemies has become baked into the mainstream of Christian thought. However, that is not how Christianity began – it’s origins as a radical sect, following the way of a peaceful Messiah who came not to build empire, but to be killed. Yet, with the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, under Constantine in the early 300s AD, a shift towards what would eventually become the Just War Theory of Augustine had begun. A gradual mission creep away from the dynamic words of a rebel rabbi, of loving your enemy, towards the justification of empire and death.
There may not be a more visceral example of this than the justification for the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Whilst these crimes against creation were credited with bringing World War II to its final close, the devastation that it caused can never find absolution in a rigorous understanding of the Christ who was crucified.
What you may not know about the bomb that decimated Nagasaki is that firstly, the pilot of the plane was Catholic, that secondly: the eucharist and a blessing for the bombing were given prior to the air assault, and thirdly: that it’s likely that the pilot used the Nagasaki cathedral as a landmark of where to target the deadly weapon, Nagasaki being the then home to the majority of Japan’s Christians.
The Chaplain who blessed the soldiers and officiated mass before they departed, Fr. George Zabelka, later repented of his actions and complicity – but at the time he remembers:
“I was certain that this mass destruction was right, certain to the point that the question of its moral- it never seriously entered my mind. I was “brain- washed” not by force or torture but by my Church’s silence and wholehearted cooperation in thousands of little ways with the country’s war machine.”
In the same interview, he goes on to share of his change of heart and how he sought forgiveness:
It seems a “sign” to me that seventeen hundred years of Christian terror and slaughter should arrive at August 9, 1945, when Catholics dropped the A-Bomb on top of the largest and first Catholic city in Japan. One would have thought that I, as a Catholic priest, would have spoken out against the atomic bombing of nuns. ([Members of] three orders of Catholic sisters were destroyed in Nagasaki that day.) One would have thought that I would have suggested that as a minimal standard of Catholic morality, Catholics shouldn’t bomb Catholic children. I didn’t.
I, like that Catholic pilot of the Nagasaki plane, was heir to a Christianity that had for seventeen hundred years engaged in revenge, murder, torture, the pursuit of power and prerogative and violence, all in the name of our Lord.
I walked through the ruins of Nagasaki right after the war and visited the place where once stood the Urakami Cathedral. I picked up a piece of a censer from the rubble. When I look at it today, I pray God forgives us for how we have distorted Christ’s teaching and destroyed His world by the distortion of that teaching. I was the Catholic chaplain who was there when this grotesque process begun with Constantine reached its lowest point—so far.
Fr Zabelka’s powerful words continue:
Until membership in the Church means that a Christian chooses not to engage in violence for any reason and instead chooses to love, pray for, help, and forgive all enemies; until membership in the Church means that Christians may not be members of any military, American, Polish, Russian, English, Irish, et al.; until membership in the Church means that the Christian cannot pay taxes for others to kill others; and until the Church says these things in a fashion which the simplest soul could understand— until that time humanity can only look forward to more dark nights of slaughter on a scale unknown in history. Unless the Church unswervingly and unambiguously teaches what Jesus teaches on this matter it will not be the divine leaven in the human dough that it was meant to be.
“The choice is between nonviolence or nonexistence,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, and he was not, and I am not, speaking figuratively. It is about time for the Church and its leadership in all denominations to get down on its knees and repent of this misrepresentation of Christ’s words.
Communion with Christ cannot be established on disobedience to His clearest teachings. Jesus authorized none of His followers to substitute violence for love; not me, not you, not Jimmy Carter, not the pope, not a Vatican council, nor even an ecumenical council.”[1]
For Fr Zabelka, who later returned to Japan as an invited attendee or a pilgrimage, it became apparent that any attempt to justify war was a deliberate attempt to alter Christ’s words. Of course, hatred of our enemies, or striving to love them, is not limited to the acts committed in war. Whilst huge numbers have experienced armed conflict first-hand, many have not, and so whilst we likely can think of several contemporary conflicts when language of war is invoked, it perhaps might make us feel one step removed from language of enemies and violence. Yet, what if the enemies we create are to be found not only on the battlefield, but in our country, church traditions, even in our own hearts?
Science Fiction often shines a light on our human experiences, particularly those which are negative, and I’d argue that none more so than Star Trek. I will proudly state that I am a big Star Trek fan, and that Deep Space Nine is the best of the franchise to date. Having begun a rewatch of the entire series recently, I was struck by an episode of the first season. “Battle Lines” features outcasts on a prison colony moon (it is Sci Fi, after all) who were stuck in a loop of endless and merciless violent conflict. Whilst the two warring sides are virtually the same people, they can’t remember anything other than fighting one another – and are indeed kept this way by those of their species on their home-world as a reminder of the perils of violence and conflict. Even when their plight is explained to them by outsiders, and an opportunity to break the cycle given to them, they refuse – unable to see past the hatred and mistrust they have for one another. The unique catch to this otherwise familiar tale of cyclical hatred, is that the presence of a deliberate technology in the atmosphere reanimates every fallen soldier shortly after their death: there is no end to their rage and aggression for their enemies, with each return from death only fuelling their zeal for revenge.
Whilst we may not be trapped in physically violent cycles quite like this, perhaps you might be able to identify emotionally destructive patterns that follow a similar movement. A very live example for me, and friends and colleagues of mine currently, is in the life of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, specifically the conversations regarding the inclusion of LGBT+ people in the church, and the accreditation of ministers who are in same-sex relationships. At the end of this month, Baptist Council deliberates on the results of a national consultation surveying the views of ministers, and the members of churches. However, this work has not occurred in a vacuum, and it is the result of decades of public and private efforts to create a space for LGBT+ people in the life of the Baptist Union of Great Britain – a space for me, and people like me.
For some reason, this divides emotionally and spiritually as if we were indeed at war. The way in which I have been spoken to and treated by those who deem me as sinful, and my theology broken, at times has been beyond demoralising – and I am not alone in this. And whilst I would not choose to use the word “enemy” to describe those whose theology differs from mine; we have been pitted against one another in a conflict that ultimately harms the church and the kingdom.
But there is a better way. A more Christlike way.
Hating, or making an enemy of those who have done the same to me, or to you, is the simplest, yet most harmful path. I believe that for the kingdom to grow, we must learn to love one another again – even in our difference. I must love those who refuse to take communion with me, because I am gay, and they must love me – because that is what Christ has asked of us.
Hatred and the attempted destruction of our enemies, on the physical, emotional, or indeed theological battlefields, only leads to the kind of cycle I referenced seen in that episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It prevents us from seeing, even when directly offered, a way out – a way back to love[2].
This is a hard thing to hear, and it’s something that I’ve been dwelling on for several years now – reflections that have come to a clearer form in the post-pandemic period in which we saw a lot of the worst attributes of our collective humanity. In the work that I do, I understand that these challenging words have a profound impact on those who have been harmed, and that the ask for those who have lived through, or continue to live through, cycles of violence – emotional, spiritual, or physical, is huge. To encourage us, I would add that as with all things, we know we are people of grace – that there is no condemnation from me, or more importantly from God, when we are in moments, days, weeks, or years, where moving to a place of love for those who are against us is possible.
For the times that we cannot love our enemies, we must know that we are still loved.
However, to take this seriously, I might practically offer three ways to begin to adopt an approach to loving your enemies day to day, but also the global scenarios that create hatred in us all:
1. Speak well of them,
It’s easy to condemn, to judge, to mock, or to gossip. It is far harder to find the good, to exhort the kind, and to find something to appreciate in those to whom we find ourselves opposed. This week when you find yourself defaulting to unkind words, search for something positive to share instead.
2. Do well to them,
If you thought that was hard, try feeding them like Proverbs encourages. Or at the very least, choosing deeds that do not harm, but build-up, even love. If someone cuts you up in the queue at the supermarket, let them move ahead of you; if there is someone whose behaviour you often find challenging at work, make them a cup of tea when you next see them. Little acts provide practice for bigger opportunities.
3. Pray for them,
And perhaps the hardest of them all. You don’t need to pray that God gives them everything they want, or indeed – doesn’t do that, but rather turning them, and your feelings towards them over to God, so that God can work a redemptive act in your heart and theirs. It is not a magic wand, but the act of praying is an act of restoration. Pray that your heart is softened, and that theirs might be too.
In my own heart I have noticed the need in recent years to pivot away from enmity turning instead towards love. I can’t say I have it down to a fine art yet… but if I am, and indeed we are, to take Christ’s call seriously, we can no sooner ignore the call to love our enemies, than we can to love God[3].
[1] The full interview from which the quotes above were extracted can be found here: http://www.centerforchristiannonviolence.org/sites/default/files/media/resources/essays/FrGeorgeZabeklaInterview02.pdf
[2] The original sermon also included this, which some but not all readers of this may find useful:
The verses from Matthew end with a resounding challenge: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” No pressure then. However, there is truth here that we reminded of. God demonstrated the ultimate act of love for those in enmity against him by the sacrifice of Jesus of the cross, for before that redemptive act we were indeed enemies to God – the corrupted nature, what you may want to call sin, of the world preventing restoration and reunion. Yet even in that state of enmity, God demonstrated love for us – sending Christ. In that perfect example, we are called to follow, to love perfectly, or strive too, just as we have been loved.
[3] The sermon concluded with a call to share in the Lord’s Prayer with one another.