Nov. 13, 2011

Background Scripture: Matthew 5:43-48

Devotional Reading: Matthew 22:34-40

It is sometimes said the Sermon on the Mount is the very heart of Jesus’ teaching and that Matthew 5:43-48 is the very heart of the Sermon on the Mount.

Strange then, that although there are lots of people who want to put the Ten Commandments on courthouses and other public places, I have never heard of anyone who was similarly determined to put any part of the Sermon on the Mount in a public place. Why is that?

For one thing, there is no other teaching of Jesus regarding relationships with other people that seems more difficult than this one: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemies.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you ...”

Because this seems to be quite beyond normal human beings, it is assumed that it is meant only for rare saints. Christians do not so much argue against this teaching as they simply ignore it: The less said, the better.

That is a dangerous reaction because it is a direct denial of what Jesus desires for all of us. He does not begin with “Some of you, the most spiritual of you, those of you to whom that has some appeal” – no, he addresses it to an all-inclusive, “You have heard …” and, “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Often, when Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said …” he is referring to a usually well-known teaching by one or more of the Jewish religious factions. But in this one, we do not know to whom or what Jesus is referring.

There are no Jewish scriptures that explicitly teach hatred of one’s enemies, although there are passages in which it may be implied.

So, when we ask where Jesus got this saying, the answer is “nowhere and everywhere.”

In our society today hatred is generally implied for those whom we think deserve it. Love of our enemies is still thought to be relegated to the saints, not ordinary Christians – although, if Christians are “ordinary,” they are not Christians.

Second, love of our enemies is not only thought unobtainable, but essentially not workable “in the real world.” Many are frankly repelled by this teaching. Novelist Herman Melville, in his novel Pierre, sourly defines the gospel of love as “a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets and by the beaks of hummingbirds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.”

When there is a choice of responding to our enemies by either love or hatred, hatred is the one chosen almost every time. So, why did Jesus saddle us with a teaching we feel we cannot and maybe ought not practice?

Before we jettison this teaching – and the Lord who goes with it – we need to try to understand what Jesus was actually saying. The problem is partly one of semantics, for he was not asking us to do the impossible, let alone something unwise.

The Gospels were written in Greek, a language much richer in shades of meaning than English. We use one word, “love,” while the Greeks used four, all with different shades of meaning. Storge denoted familial love. Eros signified romantic, sexual attraction. Philia was the affection of true friends.

Agape is not so much a feeling of love as it is a will to love, action and response not dependent upon what we feel, but what we want as the highest and best for others, regardless whether they respond with an equal love or even hatred.

Agape love, the kind of love that took Jesus to Golgotha, is not based upon feeling, but resolve. So we are not called to love our enemies because they are lovable, but because Jesus loved us – all of us – with a self-sacrificing love that was not and never intended to be necessarily reciprocal.

It goes beyond feeling the right thing to doing the right thing. You can do love without feeling love. Blessed is he who both does it and thus feels the love that does not seek limits but outlets.

The love of the Sermon is not out of reach for “normal people.” We do not have to be Mother Theresa to love that way; a love not based on the worth of the one loved. Let us not worry about others being worthy of our love, because most people need more love than they deserve. And if we love Jesus, then shouldn’t we begin to resemble him?

As to whether love can work, have we not demonstrated everlastingly that, as Daniel A. Poling put it: “Hate cannot destroy hate, but love can and does. Not the soft and negative thing that has carried the name and misrepresented the emotion, but love that suffers all things and is kind, love that accepts responsibility, love that marches, love that suffers, love that bleeds and dies for a great cause – but to rise again.”   

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with comments for Rev. Althouse may write to him in care of this publication.