All of our doubts and questions about love of enemies find their confirmation in the closing line of our text. “Be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect”. This closing line really is the key not only to our text but also to the entire Sermon on the Mount. Now what the church has done with these words for centuries is perhaps the very thing that you are doing with it right now. For it seems that there are fundamentally two responses to this call to perfection. The first response has been well represented by many “perfectionistic” spiritualities through out the history of the church that sought to reach a level of “sanctification” if you will, a moral and spiritual perfection. Perfectionistic preachers said if Jesus commanded us to be perfect then “sinlessness” must be possible in this life. But painful experience teaches us that there can be nothing more violent than the quest for spiritual perfection. The ideal of spiritual and moral perfection can become the sharpest blade wielded not only against the imperfections in ourselves but toward the imperfections of others. The other fundamental response to this commandment is to say, “well there you have it. Jesus is really talking about a heavenly reality that no one can fulfill”. It is the voice of the realist in each one of us that says; God knows we are not perfect and never will be. Love of enemies like all notions of perfection are heavenly notions with no place on earth. Maybe Jesus could do it but nobody can be perfect so let’s forget about all this business of loving our enemies.
If both of these interpretations are inadequate, as I am suggesting that they are, then how are we to understand this commandment? Be ye perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. A third alternative emerges in the suggestion made by a growing number of theologians that the words themselves have been mistranslated. A convincing case has been made that the words rendered in the RSV as Be Perfect, should be translated be compassionate. Let us take a moment to let that sink in and consider what an enormous difference one word can make? If this translation is correct, it changes everything. We are beginning to see that God’s essence is compassion. And because we are made in the image of God, we have within us a god given capacity for Compassion. In every moment of genuine compassion, we are dwelling in God and God in us. We have a God given capacity to empathize, to stand in someone shoes, to feel their joy, to feel their pain. Compassion is ultimately the recognition that nothing human is entirely alien to me. Under this rubric of compassion the notion of enemy vanishes and is replaced by someone who needs compassion and understanding. The enemy becomes someone who needs compassion. The Sermon on the Mount is not about otherworldly perfection. The Sermon on the Mount is about compassion. Be ye compassionate, as your heavenly father is compassionate. Love your enemies!
Can we take seriously the love of enemies? Well the early church took it seriously. And they had plenty of enemies. The Roman empire martyred multitudes of Christians and the only script they had as they went to their deaths were the very words Jesus uttered from the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do. St. Francis of Assisi took seriously the commandment to love our enemies. In the year 1219 Francis accompanied the Christian armies of the 5th crusade to the Holy Land. We know that the crusades to the Holy Land were ruthless campaigns of plunder and slaughter cloaked in the holiest of ideals. The church declared that to kill a Muslim was not only not murder but a religious act. In this context St. Francis crossed over to the other side, somehow passing unharmed into the very camp of the enemy. There he engaged in dialogue with the Muslim Sultan that resulted in the release of Christian prisoners of war. MLK and the civil rights movement took seriously Jesus commandment to love our enemies. There is a story from the Civil rights movement during the campaign in Selma. A gathering of leaders was electrified by the news brought by a messenger that just that afternoon in Montgomery a group of black students had been surrounded by police on horseback, all escape barred and cynically commanded to disburse or take the consequences. Then the mounted police waded into the students and beat them at will. When everyone heard that this had happened they began to march toward the infamous Sheriff Jim Clark and the Alabama state troopers. The situation was explosive. One minister stood up and said, its time we sang a song. And he opened with the line; do you love Martin King? To which those who knew the song responded certainly lord. Do you love Martin King he repeated over and over with each response the crowd sang certainly lord. And then the minister said, “do you love Jim Clark our sheriff? A stunned halting reply came back, certainly lord. Do you love Jim Clark? Certainly lord, Then another minister took the podium and said, Its not enough to defeat Jim Clark- do you hear me Jim? We have to love him into changing. And Jim Clark did change. Later he confessed that he had been wrong in his bias against blacks. Throughout the history of the church, there have been prophetic individuals and communities who have taken seriously the Sermon on the Mount and have turned the world upside down by loving their enemies.
Jesus is teaching us that it is not enough to pray for peace. It is not enough to work for justice. It is not enough to struggle for liberation of the oppressed. Justice and liberation are not enough for all too often these goals have brought about violent means that have only added to oppression and injustice. We must love the very ones with whom we struggle because God has not given up on our enemies. God continues to pour out life and blessings, sun and rain upon them. God continues to acknowledge them as God’s children. And so must we. This is the first principle in a spirituality of non-violence: We must learn to recognize and respect the sacred in every person. The second reason why we must love our enemies is the second principle of a spirituality of non-violence. Whenever we demonize our enemies or identify them with absolute evil, we inevitably turn a blind eye to our own complicity with evil. We can never say that the evil and violence that we see in our enemies, is only there. We must always remember that there can be and is evil in us as well. Alexander Solzshenitsyn, the Russian historian who experienced the Stalinist gulags, wrote, “ if only it were so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of one’s heart” Ghandi said, “ the only devils in the world are those running around in your own heart”.
What would it mean to take seriously the Sermon on the Mount and love our enemies? How would we begin to practice enemy love? I was talking with members of the 8th day service about what has happened to us since we began to pray for our enemies as a regular part of our liturgy. We remember that the first Sunday we did that not much was offered. We weren’t sure what to say. But gradually over time, Sunday after Sunday very specific prayers began to flow. More and more we found themes lifted up that are central to the Gospel of non-violence: 1) finding common ground. 2) Seeing ourselves in our enemy; 3) paying attention to the times when we behave such that we become someone else's enemy 4) praying that our enemies might become our friends, 5) seeing ourselves as complicit in those act and policies that our "enemies" carry out. Gradually the practice of praying for our enemies is changing the way we see our world. There is a story about the Buddhist leader, Ram Dass who had a personal shrine in his dwelling place where he kept pictures of the Saints that he most admired. He also confessed that he had an abiding hatred for Caspar Wienburger the secretary of defense during the Reagan administration. He decided that he needed to place a picture of weinburger in his little shrine. It jolted him every time he saw it there but little by little he began to recognize the sacred in a face of a man he hated as an enemy. We can begin to practice love of enemies even in the conflicts that we experience with one another, our friends. How we view one another in a time of disagreement? Do we demonize those who disagree with us? Do we refuse to engage in dialogue? Do we assume I know all there is to know about this issue? All of these responses fall short of the Gospel on Nonviolence.
The theologian Walter Wink has written that the ultimate religious question is no longer the question posed by the reformation how can I find a gracious god. It is instead, how do I find God in my enemy. There is no other way to God except through the enemy. In our time and place, Love of enemies is the litmus test of authentic Christian faith. An old rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day begun. Could it be asked one of his students when you can see an animal at a distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog? No answered the rabbi. Another asked, “ is it when you can look at the tree in the distance and tell whether it is a fig tree or a peach tree? No answered the rabbi. It is when you can look upon the face of your enemy and see that it is your brother or sister. Because if you cannot see that, it is still night.” Enemy love is the key to the survival of this planet. Either we discover the God who causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good or we may have no more sunrises.