Seeing Only Siblings
Theological Truth: To love those who hate us isn’t a strategy to make us holy or secure peace (though it does); it is to pattern our lives in the ways of God who is merciful to all of his children.
Come Holy Spirit, and kindle in us the fire of thy love. Send forth thy Spirit, and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of thy earth. Amen.
I remember one of my first days at my previous church. I was unpacking boxes and getting settled in my new office. The desk drawers were basically empty. The contents were gone but the hanging file folders were still there. A label on one caught my eye: “Hard Sayings of Jesus.” Though it was empty, I can guess some of the contents:
“I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Mt. 10:34)
“Let the dead bury their own dead.” (Mt. 8:22)
Or what about when Jesus declines to heal the Syrophoenician woman’s child by telling her, “…it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” (Mk. 7:27)
If you’re keeping a similar collection in your office, feel free to add today’s bulletin to the file. The difficult lesson we just heard from Jesus isn’t so much hard to understand, so much as it seems impossible to do…and impractical…and unsatisfying…and unpopular. Love your enemies. And then, as if to give specific examples so that his listeners know he’s serious: do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who abuse you. The command to follow in Jesus’ footsteps just got a lot tougher. So while I like to respond to our more fundamentalist brothers and sisters with the pithy expression that we take the Bible too seriously to only take it literally, today —like it or not— we have to take it literally. We must love our enemies.
Why would Jesus demand that of us? It might help by remembering how difficult it would have been for Jesus, too. Throughout his book, Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman reminds us that as a poor Jew living in Roman occupied territory, Jesus had no rights, no power, no citizenship, no access to justice. “If a Roman soldier pushed Jesus into a ditch, he could not appeal to Caesar; he would be just another Jew in the ditch.” (p. 23). In other words, Jesus had real enemies. And not only Roman soldiers, but also fellow Jews who were collaborating with Rome by collecting taxes, thereby inflicting more pain and financially facilitating the occupation.
Have no doubt, enemies filled the world Jesus inhabited. He saw firsthand the intoxicating sweetness and the illusory power of hatred. He would have been familiar with the zealots whose lives were fueled by their bitterness….but so were there deaths. Jesus chooses another way. He doesn’t succumb to the limited choice of either fight or flee. He commits to embodying the Word of God…the ways of God…the way of Love. Thurman imagines Jesus saying, “You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God…Hatred is destructive to hated and hater alike. Love your enemy, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven” (p. 24-25).
Being children of our Father in heaven is both the reason for loving our enemies and the path to loving our enemies. In this season after the Epiphany, Jesus has been revealing who God is and manifesting how God operates. Today Jesus reminds us of God’s mercy to all whom God has created. “[God] is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Lk. 6:35b). Matthew’s gospel adds, “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Mt. 5:45b). Why would God do that? Perhaps it’s because God regards all of us as beloved children made in his image and likeness. Always has and always will. God has no “former” children.
So, it stands to reason, we have lots of brothers and sisters. In essence, Jesus is saying we don’t have enemies, we only have brothers and sisters. We can be angry with our siblings….sometimes very very angry …but they are always our brothers and sisters. To be merciful as our heavenly father is merciful, is to accept the reality that our lives are always and forever connected. We are part of a whole. We are not a single thread, but part of an elaborately, intricately woven garment. It doesn’t mean we condone bad behavior, or overlook it, or deny that it hurt us. But it is to live with an expectation of familial connection. That’s how Joseph treated his brothers.
The reading from Genesis drops down inelegantly in the Joseph saga. To recap, Joseph is the favored son of the (now) elderly Jacob. Jacob loved Joseph so much (remember the “technicolor dreamcoat”?) that his brothers despised him. So much so in fact, that they barely refrained from killing him, settling instead to sell him into slavery, hence Joseph’s presence in today’s reading in Egypt. The brothers come to Pharaoh begging to buy bread, and not having any idea that their brother is alive, let alone the Egyptian power-broker deciding their family’s fate. Joseph has not forgotten his father and his family. Once he clears the room and is alone with them, he tells them who he is and immediately asks, “Is my father still alive?” (Gen. 45:3). Joseph loves them and forgives them because he remembers his Father and knows that with a common father, they are not enemies, but brothers.
When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, to bless those who persecute us, and to pray for those who abuse us, he is inviting us to embody the ways of God, the Way of God’s love — offered to all of God’s children, all of our brothers and sisters, all of us. What if we operated out of that mindset? What if our common connection to and through God was our default view of each and every person we encountered? What if, when we caught ourselves seeing someone as our enemy, we intentionally reminded ourselves to see them as brother and sister?
Impossible? It would seem so for us humans, but not for God. With God all things are possible. Maybe that’s why Jesus taught us to pray by addressing God as “Our Father.” Not just Father. Not my Father. OUR Father. Pray that every day this week…and several times throughout the day…and especially when hatred and bitterness creep in, focusing on the reality and implications of naming God as Father of us all. OUR Father. It will help us appreciate the wideness of God’s mercy. It will keep us mindful of our connection to our brothers and sisters. We will be better equipped to love our enemies because they are also and always our brothers and sisters.
— The Rev. William “A.J.” Heine, Rector, Trinity Episcopal Church of Staunton
Readings on this day: Genesis 45:3-11,15; Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38
