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God’s grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, looking at the gospel reading today for the text, please be seated.
And in that gospel reading, Jesus says some some pretty hard stuff.
Love your enemy. It’s not an easy thing to do, is it? It’s not an easy thing to hear Jesus say to us
either. But even in Jesus’s time, the people of Israel had plenty of enemies
in their history. In the last 700 years before Jesus, the Israelites had
the enemies of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and
now the Romans occupy and control their land. And before all of them, there were
the Egyptians and the Ammonites and the Canaanites and the Jebusites and
and all the other ites, they were enemies of the people of Israel.
So the Jews of Jesus’ time, they had no love for the Romans much at all.
So Jesus saying to them, love your enemies, was not too popularly received probably.
And it’s not so popularly received in America today either.
I mean we so often live in a pretty mean society.
People can get angry so easy it seems.
In fact a satire website that I look at one day posted an article and the headline said
being outraged by stupid nonsense replaces baseball as America’s pastime.
Funny because it’s kind of true.
We live in such a polarized world it seems. We have to choose sides. It’s an
us-versus-them mentality. It’s easy to have enemies in such a world and it’s
easy to not love them. Enemies must be defeated, right?
General George Patton once said, may God have mercy on my enemies because I
sure won’t now I don’t mean enemies like those our nation may be at war with or
somebody breaking into your house all right I’m talking about people that you
actually know people that you maybe see every day people you maybe only see on
social media and really loving our enemies and being merciful to them it
really doesn’t make sense in this culture no our enemy must be defeated
Occasionally we see loving our enemy kind of show up a little bit with mercy rules in
sports, especially for kids, or in some movies or shows like Les Miserables, but it’s rare.
You don’t see love for your enemy coming up too much today.
Now the Gospel reading today, to be sure, it’s got a lot of law in it, basically of
things that you’re supposed to do
or things that you’re not supposed to do.
We call that God’s law.
But what the Gospel reading in part reveals to us today
is that we’re not able to do this.
We’re often in violation of what Jesus says here
in this Gospel reading.
We often fail at loving our enemy.
So why is this here?
Why does Jesus want us to love our enemies?
I mean, because it’s nice, is that why?
Or maybe he was just kidding and just messing with us.
No, I don’t think so.
Why does Jesus want us to love our enemies?
Because that’s how he treats his enemies.
Yeah, Jesus has enemies, okay?
And I don’t mean just the Romans or the Pharisees
or other people in authority who opposed Him back then,
or even people today who talk bad about Him
or don’t even believe in Him.
Those aren’t the enemies of Jesus I’m referring to.
I mean sinners.
I mean you and me.
Because when we sin, we show contempt for Christ
and His values,
His values of how we should live
and how we should treat others even our enemies when we sin we take on the
world’s values we do what the world says is right and what is wrong we take on
the world’s values whenever we steal or lie or don’t keep our promises or our
responsibilities calling in when we’re really not sick taking things from the
office that, oh, nobody’s going to notice that.
Telling little white lies about people that are not,
I’m sure nobody’s going to get hurt if I say that
about them.
Cheating on tests or intentionally deceiving
others for your benefit.
When we do this, we abuse Jesus.
Certainly, when we sin, we hate and curse and abuse Jesus.
When we use His name in vain, literally, we’re cursing Him.
And we abuse Jesus’ love and forgiveness by self-justifying our sinful behavior.
when we sin it’s like hitting Jesus on both cheeks our sinful thoughts words
and actions when we do those we are enemies of God this is from James
chapter 4 says this don’t you know that friendship with the world means
opposition to God therefore anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world
becomes an enemy of God when we sin we’re Christ’s enemy and it doesn’t make
sense but he still loves his enemies he still loves us and check out this good
news Romans chapter 5 but God demonstrates his love for us in this
while we were still sinners Christ died for us Christ dies for his enemies for
you and for me see in our sin we are enemies of God in our natural sinful
state we are enemies of God our sin is that bad that God sees us as his enemy
in opposition to Him, but in Christ we aren’t them. In His forgiveness we aren’t
then His enemies because Christ wants to destroy what is in us that makes us His
enemies, our sin, our evil. As it said in the second reading that Christ wants to
destroy every, I think it said every power, every authority, every
every evil, including death.
And Jesus does that for us
by basically being treated
like our enemy.
When He was here,
He was arrested,
falsely accused,
whipped, spit on,
and then suffering a very horrible
and painful death on a cross
to pay for the sins of His enemies.
Us, to die in place of His enemies.
it’s his death that is truly his love for sinners for you and for me and more
good news more good news from Romans chapter 5 for if while we were God’s
enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his son how much
more than having been reconciled shall we be saved through his life see while
we were God’s enemies while we were sinners Christ reconciles us dies for us
takes that enemyness away, I guess that’s a new word,
enemyness, takes that away from us and makes us
His children. Instead of death
for us, His enemies, He gives us life.
Life by His resurrection from the dead
to give His enemies victory over their sin,
destroying even death itself. What Paul talked about, Jesus destroying
every power, every evil, every…
Sorry, I’m forgetting exactly what it said there.
He’s destroying that, and even death.
He’s giving us that victory over all of those things.
And from 1 Timothy 1, Paul says,
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,
to save His enemies.
Christ comes here to not only love His enemies,
but to save them, giving them eternal life.
He came to save His enemies, to show them mercy.
I guess we can be grateful that General Patton isn’t God
because Christ shows mercy on His enemies.
He loves them.
I mean, really, the only human enemy
that needs to be defeated is us, sinners,
defeated by confessing our sin
and receiving that mercy and forgiveness that Jesus gives even while we’re
enemies he does this for us and so Jesus wants us to love our enemies because he
does he loves us and maybe that’s the reason why we even have enemies to begin
with it’s so that we can love them and see God’s love for them as well and we
can show that love to them and tell them about what how Jesus has loved us 1st
Timothy chapter 1 also in 1st Timothy the very reason I was shown mercy so
that in me says Paul the worst of sinners Jesus might display his immense
patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive
eternal life. See, his mercy to Paul, who calls himself the worst of sinners, the worst
enemy of Christ, is so that Jesus can display that love through him to others who also then
might believe in Jesus. And we can do that. We can love our enemies so that they can also
know about Christ’s love for them. I mean, we know that love. We’ve experienced it. We
enjoy it. We love it. We know Christ blessing us, His praying for us, His
turning the other cheek for us, loving our enemies. We show that same love to them.
We can love them by doing good for them, blessing them, praying for them, and
sometimes just kind of generally putting up with them. You know what I’m
talking about. Christians, this is one of the greatest things I think we have to do
sometimes. We just put up with people, kind of absorb their abuse, we absorb their being
enemies so we can love them and show God’s love for them. They need to hear that because
today, again, so quickly people just jump to outrage. We go from calm to extremely mad.
There’s nothing in between anymore.
It’s just outrage.
We even get outraged at nonsense, right?
We’re so quick to attack our enemies.
Let’s stop that, okay?
Lent is coming up.
You want to give up something for Lent?
Give up hating your enemy.
Love them instead.
Maybe don’t even see them as enemies anymore.
see them as fellow sinners just like you see them as fellow enemies of God who
need to hear about his love even your so-called enemy you never know what
they’re going through in life what’s really going on with them what’s making
them the way they are that you’re their enemy they need to see something
different and people of God we can be that for our enemy we we can be better
than hating our enemy.
Well, it’s not so much that we’re better,
but it’s that God is better than that.
God loves them, and we can too.
But there is something to be said
that we can be better than that,
than hating our enemy,
but to love them instead.
And a great example of that is in 2017 in Egypt,
a Coptic Christian church was attacked
by a suicide bomber there.
Maybe you remember it in the news,
that was a couple of years ago.
And some days after it happened,
a woman whose husband died
intercepting one of the bombers
outside of the church.
He kept him from getting into the church
and it exploded outside the church
and killing her husband.
She was being interviewed
on an Egyptian TV station
and the interviewer,
who I don’t believe was a Christian himself,
I believe he was an Egyptian Muslim,
was talking with her about it,
and she said this.
She said,
I’m not angry at the one who did this.
She said, I’m telling that person,
may God forgive you and we also forgive you.
Believe me, she said, we forgive you.
And the interviewer, the show host,
was speechless for about 10 seconds which on live TV is an eternity, okay?
Until he finally said to the camera, he said, the Coptic Christians of Egypt are
made of steel. He said, if it were my father or anyone in my family who died, I
could never say this these people have so much forgiveness but this is them he
said this is their faith and their religious conviction and then he said
this he said these people are made from it these people are made from a
different substance I agree you’re right made from a different substance the
people of God indeed were made from something else, not of this world. We love
our enemies and we forgive them and show them mercy. May you be people made from a
different substance, St. Paul Lutheran Church, made from Christ’s love to love
even our enemies. Amen. Now may the peace of God which passes all
understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
