Love Your Enemies
Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.
Wow, that is a hard line to hear.
Last week we heard about
how we are called to love one another,
and we hear that regularly.
But now Jesus takes this one step further,
almost outrageously a step further.
It is not just love those who are around you.
He says, “Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.”
It does not sound reasonable to our minds.
We might intellectually think,
“Oh yeah, that is good”
but when we actually come to do it,
ooh, now that is hard.
Whatever the other is,
whatever enemy we have,
whoever we are tempted to dislike greatly or maybe even hate,
we are called to love them.
Jesus reorders life.
He quotes the golden rule.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
That was in the Book of Deuteronomy
as one of the laws of the Lord.
But he takes it a step further.
He deepens it and calls his disciples,
the ones who call themselves Christian,
to have a higher standard, a deeper reality.
He says it is not enough,
to love just your family.
It is not enough to love those of your extended family,
your community, even us as Christians, as Catholics.
It is not enough even to love just our nation or our tribe.
It is not enough to love all those
in whatever order you might think they are.
There is no hierarchy here.
The Lord is not saying that, the Lord is very clear.
The highest standard is that you love everybody,
and he gives us the most difficult of all to do.
He says to love those who do not follow you,
who you do not like.
He uses the harsh word of hate.
It is a hard thing to hear,
but that is the call for all of us to be this type of Christian.
That is what we are called to do.
The question is how could we possibly do that,
what does that look like?
How could we do that?
The good news is he gives us the steps right away.
He does not leave us hanging.
He says, to be kind and merciful,
just like the father is kind and merciful to you.
He says, “You can only give what you have.
But you have received this as a gift, so now pass it on.”
He is saying the only way
which we can do this is to receive
what the Lord has given us
and to then pass that on,
to receive the gifts that God has given:
his love, primarily, his mercy, his kindness.
Then we are called to love again.
We can quickly give ascent to it.
But it is hard because you say,
“How do I be kind and merciful
then as the responsorial says, to be kind and merciful?”
Let me give you an example.
I just got back from Los Angeles Religious Education Congress,
and we had some may some really awesome sessions there.
One example was from a book
we have read at the mental health group called,
“Spiritual Practices for the Brain” by Anne Kurtz Kernion.
This a wonderful book if you ever get an opportunity to read it.
She highlights some really powerful research,
that indicates we are wired for kindness,
that we have actually evolved in our kindness.
So when we are not kind,
in a sense, we are a little bit more like our ape brothers and sisters.
When we are not kind, that is what we are like.
We are closest to our ancestors a long time ago
when we are not kind.
Kindness is an evolved state of being.
Empathy is an evolved state of being.
And how do we know that?
Because the strongest survived.
The fittest survived.
We have heard that phrase right?
Who is that? Charles Darwin.
But we know what he meant by the strongest?
The strongest in kindness,
they were the ones who survived.
And the reason why, because in the Savannah,
if they were selfish, they left them out there on their own.
Go after that animal. Yeah, go ahead.
You have it.
You take that one on your own
and that animal will take him.
The strongest survives when they were kind
and they gathered together and
they fought together in the savanna to survive.
Think kindness equals survival.
Empathy equals survival.
Mercy equals survivor.
It is our evolved state of being.
If we have a temptation to give back
or retaliate against something,
we want this or we want that,
I want my pound of flesh.
I want my revenge.
Just think that you are going back to
our ancestors on the Savannah who did not survive.
See we are the evolved ones
that Christ came into the world and showed the way.
Kindness and mercy is what we are called to share.
We know that it is instinctively part of who we are as human beings.
It is our survival.
We must continue to do it to everyone,
not just my family, not just my community,
not just my tribe, not just my country,
but my whole world.
We are one family made in the image of likeness of God.
It is God who gave us the gift is God
who is kind and merciful to us.
And so all we are doing is receiving
and passing it on.
Kindness and mercy is instinctually our evolved higher state of being.
It is what we are called to as Christians
to be merciful and kind.
Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.