In our Gospel today, Jesus tells us to love our enemies, and the word he used for love had nothing to do with sentimentality, but rather it means “to want what is best for the other person.”
To want the best for our enemy is a difficult, disturbing and uncomfortable message. It is a message of turning cheeks and swallowing pride, of judging not and condemning not, of giving to takers, of blessing cursers, and of loving haters. It is a radical Message that calls for a radical conversion in you and I who, if we are honest with ourselves, don’t want to be converted.
Because that would be challenging. Because that would be uncomfortable.
However, you and I are not called to be comfortable. If we follow our Lord, we must be willing to NOT take the comfortable road, or the comfortable pew . If we follow our Lord, then we are called question and challenge those institutions that perpetuate hatred, greed, power, control, oppression. But that is not our greatest challenge. No, not by a long shot.
Our greatest challenge is that we are called to respond, not in anger, or hatred, or violence, but in love. And why is that our greatest challenge? Because if responding in love is to occur, then it calls us to change our own hearts first. It is all to easy to point the finger at others, be they people, or institutions, and direct our anger at them. It is much, much harder to look within ourselves to discover the seeds of that anger. And that is why loving our enemies is so difficult, so challenging.
So, how do we begin? I think that first and foremost, before we even start to “love others”, we need to understand others. This means developing the desire in ourselves to see things from others’ point of view, to think as they think, to understand as they understand, to feel what they feel.
This is not how most of the world operates toward enemies. They go to war with their enemies. They plan and plot their demise. They rejoice in their enemy’s failures. But that is not how you and I are called to operate. Loving our enemies is not avoiding them, or tolerating them or being indifferent to them. Rather, it is to NOT respond to their anger with our anger. It is to NOT to respond to their indifference with our indifference.
Jesus asks you and I to break the spiral of violence and hatred and negativity. He tells us that the cycle of hate, the cycle of revenge, the cycle of retaliation stops with us.
And Jesus calls you and I to make a very real, and very uncomfortable observation. That the real enemy, the only enemy, Is not out there ….It is within. It is the enemy within that leads you to point to another and blame. It is the enemy within that seduces you to take a side. It is the enemy within that causes you to be self-righteous . It is the enemy within that has you self-justifying your hatred.
And that’s a challenging and uncomfortable truth, because it calls us to destroy the first inklings of resentment before they turn into anger and hatred, because it asks us to tap into our own vulnerability and brokenness and to witness that same wound in our enemy, because it is uncomfortable to search our hearts and discover those whom we struggle to love … and then bless them.
To foster within ourselves a love that wants the best for others is a difficult challenge. A challenge that will cause us to change the way we see others, A challenge that will cause us to change the way we relate to others. A challenge that will cause us to change the way we act toward others.
Which leaves us with but one question ….. are you up to the challenge?