‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’, says Jesus in today’s reading (Matthew 5:43-48). It is part of Matthew’s collection of the sayings of Jesus we call the ‘Sermon on the Mount’.
It is relatively easy to love our neighbours, people like us, people who like us, people to whom we can turn for help in times of trouble. But every one of us finds it difficult to love an enemy, someone who has harmed us in some way, or seeks to do so, whatever the reason.
It is important to understand what ‘love’ means here. In Greek, it is the word agape, which means a deep concern for the good of the other that reaches out, even if it receives nothing in return. It is not sexual, physical love (eros), nor is it the mutual love of intimate friendship, nor that between marriage partners (philia).
Our God is love in this ‘agape’ sense. He loves us, and desires what is good for us, whether we are good or bad. As Jesus puts it, ‘he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’. Jesus is teaching us that we can only be good human beings, can only be ‘children of our Father in heaven’, if we imitate God’s love, and that includes loving our enemies.
And is it so unreasonable to love, to care for, to have genuine concern for our enemies, and pray for them? My enemy may hate me, but what do I gain from hating my enemy back? Anyone who hates suffers mentally, doing more damage to himself or herself, than to the supposed enemy. And if my enemy harms me, they harm themselves as well. If I have a true Christian spirit, I will reach out in compassion to that person. I will want that person to be healed, healed of their hatred, healed of their anger, and to learn how to love. Surely it is much better, and makes more sense, to pray for that person than to hate them back - to bring about healing and reconciliation, rather than deepen the wound on both sides.
What Jesus is asking us to do is not something impossible or unnatural. It is the only thing that can bring peace to me and hopefully, in time, to the person who is hostile to me. As we proclaimed earlier, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’. (Matthew 5:9)
Jesus tells us today, ‘Be
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’.
This is an ideal that we can only reach for with the help of the Holy Spirit. But it is a call to do our utmost to imitate
God in extending our goodwill impartially and unconditionally to every single
person. This is not just a commandment. When we reflect on it, it is simply
common sense, and it is as much in our own interest as it benefits others.
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