Our Sermons

Bible Passage: Matthew 5:38-48
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  February 9, 2020

The other day I was driving to the hospital for a visit and pulled onto the freeway, apparently a little too close to the car behind me than he thought necessary. Because for the next mile or so he stayed behind me flashing his brights and honking. Almost ironically, as he zoomed ahead I saw his back bumper was plastered with stickers all about tolerance and love. Deep in the human heart is this retaliatory, get-even kind of spirit, even if we might want to believe we have become more tolerant and civilized. Whether honking the horn or making a passive-aggressive remark, whether outright hatred, name-calling, or persecution, the 21st century is still an open range for retaliation. On social media the mob-mentality of Cancel Culture can ruin someone’s life overnight. In news and politics sides are drawn so quickly; enemies are marked and attacked immediately. This world can be a vicious place. That’s why I’m thankful to be looking at Matthew 5 today. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us to a surpassing quality of love. He asks us to do something incredibly powerful, precisely by being those who do not retaliate and, even more than that, love our enemies.  

We will focus on just the last six verses of the Gospel lesson today. Jesus says, 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ This is half a quote from Leviticus 19:18, part of our first lesson today. It’s what we commonly refer to as the ‘Golden Rule’:  “Love your neighbor as yourself”. Unfortunately by Jesus’ day the phrase had changed to “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy”. Love your neighbor, but not the Roman soldier. No, he’s here to break your kneecaps if you don’t follow Caesar’s law. He is not a neighbor. And not a tax-collector who extorts his own people for the Romans and fills his purse. He’s a traitor! Surely God doesn’t want us to love them. Remember at this time Jesus’ people have lived under the thumb of military dictators for almost three times as long as America has existed. Over 600 years, over half a millenia. They’ve lived under Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Rome—all of them terribly oppressive and violent. It isn’t surprising that they liked the phrase, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But Jesus picks up Leviticus 19:18 and explains it differently. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies. To love your enemies is the culmination of what it means to truly love your neighbor. The word “neighbor” literally means “one who is near”, whether friend or foe. And if God’s law is carried out to its fullest extent, if you really follow the Golden Rule, we must love anyone who is near to us, anyone we come in contact with, whether friend or enemy, kind or hostile without exception. Jesus says that the love God children display is a love without boundaries. Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Why?) so that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven.” This type of love isn’t an entrance requirement of heaven, but rather evidence of our faith. This is about children of God reflecting the character of their heavenly Father. 

So how do we know what God the Father’s love is like? Jesus says, “Just look at the weather!” For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Jesus notices that you can’t drive past one field which is growing healthy bumper crops and say, “Ah this farmer must really be a good person, God must love him!” And then drive past a blighted, dead field and say, “Uh oh, this farmer must be really bad. He must have done something terrible because God sure hates him.” Jesus says, “That is terrible theology!” (C.f. the entire book about Job!) Jesus observes that the farmer who is upstanding and pays his workers honestly gets the same weather as the farmer who is a cheat and a liar, who skimps on paying his workers and is terrible to his family. They get the same life-giving rain. They both get to see the beauty of a sunrise. (Note the perspective of Jesus: he sees every ray of sun as a pure gift of God’s grace. May we have such a God-saturated point of view as well.) Jesus sees God’s undeserved love in the weather. He doesn’t give to people according to how they behave. Now Jesus also firmly teaches that God will one day put all things right and hold every soul accountable for their deeds, but at this moment he recognizes God’s pure grace. God loves and provides for all people even if they hate him! And Jesus says that we should do the same; we should love our enemies. Children of God should love like God.

Now to really understand this I need to address a language barrier here. “Love” is kind of an unhelpful word in English. I love pizza, I love my children, I love my wife, I love God. Those are all different types of affection, but we say ‘love’ in each case. Not that helpful. “Love in english basically means that you prefer something, you have a warm feeling towards something. But the word Jesus uses here for love is “agape”. Now, this is a useful word. Agape refers to both an attitude and an action. If someone slaps you in the face, it would not be honest to say thinking about them backhanding you makes you feel all warm inside. No! Loving them means having the attitude of God, who loved us while we were still sinners and sent his Son to die in our place. With that attitude, you turn your cheek after you have been slapped and say, “It seems like you are really stressed, do you need to get any more out?” Agape love is an attitude and a resulting action. In the presence of an enemy, remind yourself that God loved this person enough to die for them. Therefore, you also should choose to love them regardless of what they have done and thus show yourself to be a child of your Father in Heaven.

This is why Jesus said, “pray for those who persecute you.” Because you can’t pray for someone unless you love them. You know it wasn’t covered by any major news outlet, but on December 26th this past year an Islamic Radicalist group in Nigeria, the Boko Haram, posted a video of 11 Christians being forced to the ground and beheaded. They posted it to coincide with Christmas. When I found out I was angry. I prayed for the families and for the those persecuted churches in Nigeria, and for all Christians who face terrible things for the faith I get to proclaim in safety each Sunday. But I had a hard time praying for the Boko Haram. And it was gnawing at me. I didn’t want their best, I just wanted them to be destroyed. But the problem was my nagging conscience knew I was not justified in denying them the love which God, and subsequently his children, has for them. And so, rather reluctantly, I sat down and prayed as best I could in love for those who murdered our brothers and sisters in Nigeria. 

Prayer for enemies is one of the deepest forms of love, because it means that you have to really want something good to happen to them. You can say things pious-sounding things about your enemy without any genuine desire that things go well with them. But prayer for them is in the presence of God who knows your heart. And prayer is interceding with God on their behalf. It may be for their repentance. It may be that they would realize the hostility in their hearts. It may be that they will be stopped in their downward spiral of sin, that their plans would be ruined even if it takes some serious calamity to do it. But the prayer Jesus has in mind here is always for their good. Our hearts should want their salvation and want their presence in heaven, their eternal happiness. So we pray like the apostle Paul in Romans 10:1 for the Jewish people, many of whom made his life very hard. He said “My heart’s desire and prayer to God is for their salvation.” That’s agape love. That’s the attitude which will lead us to actively love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

And this is also what will set us apart. There are some people whom we just feel compelled to love, to do nice, even selfless things for. I naturally love my wife and children and so I do things for them! (Most of the time.) But that’s natural, everyone does this. That’s even what Jesus goes on to explain: Indeed if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even tax collectors do that, don’t they? 47 If you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even the unbelievers do that? Everyone takes care of their own. It is easy to love those in our circle. That isn’t what sets us apart as Christians. Only God’s love will set us apart, will cause people to consider our example.

In this way Jesus teaches the fulfillment of the law: 48 So then, be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Easy right? Be perfect? “Uh ok, I’ll try but don’t expect much.” But the word for perfect here is “teleios” which, in the New Testament, refers most often to a child entering maturity or a state of completion. So “be perfect” used here isn’t necessarily the idea of never sinning, although that is certainly the requirement of God’s good law laid out clearly in other places of the Bible. Here “be perfect” is speaking of being complete in love. Love as a mature child of your heavenly Father. You know this word was also spoken by Jesus on the cross. “He said, “It is finished.” It is complete, perfect—the same word: teleios. Jesus loved us, people who were by nature his enemies, and died in our place so that we could become children of God. He asked God to even forgive the very men who pounded nails into his body. And through his perfect love we too are forgiven for the times our love has been selfish, for the times we have hated our enemies. Jesus showed us perfect love and empowers us to love in the same way.

[Show Picture of MLK in his yard.] This is my favorite picture of Martin Luther King Jr. It was a day in 1963 and someone had burned a cross in his front yard, the calling-card of the Klu Klux Klan. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, but he came out, and with his little boy standing beside him, bent down and picked up the cross. And then he began to say a prayer, specifically for the people who hated him, that they might understand the meaning of the cross and the one who died upon it. Unfortunately people often focus on Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader to the exclusion of the Christian faith which inspired him. And thus his most-published writings and speeches are those which speak specifically on race relations. But if you read some of his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, you’ll see that this man, who had lots of flaws as we all do, understood what it meant to love his enemies. There were powerful people within his own movement who wanted to retaliate violently in response to racist acts, but again and again Martin Luther King advised love. He once wrote, “The ultimate weakness of violent retaliation is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate… Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” –Martin Luther King Jr. The Strength to Love 

Jesus’ love has transformed you from an enemy of God to his friend. And now he sends you out with the Holy Spirit to love your enemies so that they too might become his friends. See them as an opportunity. So then, let us strive, though we are not perfect, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Let us love completely, just as our God first loved us. Amen.