What does it mean to love our enemies? As a Mennonite pastor, this is a question that I have struggled often with for Mennonites don’t believe in the practice of war or violence when dealing with the issues of evil. This summer I found myself preaching again on Jesus’ instruction to “love our enemies and turn the other cheek," but this time I heard this teaching differently. Because of my personal spiritual work within the Diamond Approach for the past 12 years, I found myself experiencing this text from a very different place. For me to love my enemies I realized that I needed to unpack my relationship with the experience of hate. Below is a sermon I preached in July to help my people at Mannheim understand more deeply what it now means for me to love our enemies. The village in Colombia was La Esperanza. Given its proximity to the Pacific Ocean, La Esperanza is a strategic area for the production and transportation of cocaine. For decades, many guerillas and military groups exercised threatening sovereignty over the people with landmines, forced disappearances and outright combat. The Colombian government had tried to stop this violence by placing soldiers within the village to resist FARC, one of these guerilla groups. And there was a major conflict between the government and the guerillas, each blaming the other for the violence and conflict that was happening. Then on April 13, 2015, something very violent and tragic happened. A guerrilla commando entered the Colombian village and attacked members of the Colombian army who were staying at the local sports arena. He killed 11 soldiers and 23 other people were wounded, nearly halting peace negotiations between the government and the FARC, the local guerilla organization. This violence introduced a new level of uncertainty and stigmatization for the members of the Mennonite Brethren congregation in town, Christ the Only Hope Mennonite Brethren Church. Some of these people lived next to the site of violence. These Mennonites wondered, “why are there people who prefer war? Why won’t people forgive?” (story taken from Mennonite World Confernece website: https://mwc-cmm.org/content/prayer-hope) At one level, the answer to this question is easy. Violence like this happens because of hatred. Hatred naturally arises within us when our survival or the survival of our loved ones are at risk. When a person is abused, they will naturally feel hatred toward their abuser. When a person feels deeply hurt, they will naturally feel hatred toward their offender. When a village’s safety is at risk, everyone in the village will naturally feel hatred toward those who are seen as the cause. For some, they will see the guerillas as the cause and hate them as an enemy. For others, like the guerillas and those who sympathize with the guerilla’s cause, they will see the government as the problem, so when news emerges that government soldiers have harmed or killed guerilla soldiers, these people will hate the government. In situations like these, we often find hatred flowing in both directions…like we do in Israel Palestine between the Jews and Palestinians. Or historically between Aboriginals and Settlers or now between Trump supporters and Anti-Trump supporters. The issue behind hatred is always about survival. People see their survival, their personal welfare, their way of life at risk. When we experience hatred, we want to cut off, annihilate, destroy all those who we feel hatred toward: they are our enemies, the source or cause of our hatred. And we quickly become attached to this hatred. We see all actions that arise from this hatred as just for these actions are experienced as acts of survival, protection, etc. When we become attached to our hatred, violence and war is inevitable. It cannot be avoided. So, you can see, why people chose war. When you are attached to hatred, war and violence seems like the only option. The idea of forgiveness and possible reconciliation is absurd. People think or may even say, “who would ever want to forgive their enemy? They need to be held accountable, not forgiven. And furthermore, if I have forgive them, I would have to feel the pain and hurt they caused me. No, I can’t do that. I won’t do that. That is too painful. I am going to make them feel my pain instead.” And more violence leads to more hate which leads to more violence and more hate. The cycle is unending, due to how quickly people become attached to their hatred. This attachment to hatred is very powerful and strong. It is within this context that I want you to hear our scripture for today. Luke 6: 27-38 “But I say to you who are willing to hear: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on the cheek, offer the other one as well. If someone takes your coat, don't withhold your shirt either. Give to everyone who asks and don't demand your things back from those who take them. Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you. “If you love those who love you, why should you be commended? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, why should you be commended? Even sinners do that. If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, why should you be commended? Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be paid back in full. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return. If you do, you will have a great reward. You will be acting the way children of the Most High act, for God is kind to ungrateful and wicked people. Be compassionate just as your Creator is compassionate. "Don't judge, and you won't be judged. Don't condemn, and you won't be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good portion—packed down, firmly shaken, and overflowing—will fall into your lap. The portion you give will determine the portion you receive in return." What does this scripture teach us about dealing with our hatred? Hmmm… Nothing is said directly except it is clear that we are not to take our hatred and destroy our enemy. We are to love our enemy. So what are to do with our hatred which naturally arises when someone hurts us or hurts a loved one or threatens our survival or way of life? In the past, the church has taught that all forms of hatred are wrong, that all forms of hatred is a sign of our human fallen nature expressing itself. So what do we all of do with this hatred that naturally arises in life but the church has taught us that it is wrong to feel. Even in many counselling models, hatred is seen as wrong. We are forced to suppressed it, buried, swallowed it. But what happens when we buried hatred? The energy of this hatred does not actually go away but rather becomes buried in our unconscious. Then this hatred leaks out in ways we are often not aware of like sarcasm or judgementalism or racism …or this hatred turns against us and we begin to reject and hate ourselves. Managing all of these hatred feelings and all the rejection it creates, which we also try to manage, often causes us to feel very powerless in life, and this powerlessness triggers further feelings of self rejection and self hatred. I am so thankful when I learned from the Diamond Approach psychology that the energy behind hatred is not wrong but actually a divine quality of God. There is a God-given reason why we naturally feel hatred when our life or our loved one’s life is threatened or hurt. When we become prayerfully present to our experience of hatred, we soon discover that this energy, in its purified form, is the Power of God working in our lives, a divine power that is needed for us to confront that which is threatening our life, and if necessary, do what is needed to save ourselves, our family, and community from that which is seeking to hurt us. Hatred when it is purified of all ego distortions is a manifestation of God’s power. We sing a lot of songs in church that talk about the power of God. But how does this power from God manifest in our earthly world, in human form, in the human Jesus, and also in us? This is probably the first sermon I have ever preached in my lifetime that explores how we as humans can possibly experience the power of God. When you think of power, what images come to mind? Power to dominate. Power to destroy our enemies, at least contain them. This is how our human world understands power, and anybody is seeking after this power. But how does this understanding of power relate to the power of God as we see expressed in Jesus, like our text today where we read that we are to love our enemies. God’s power is not expressed in destroying our enemies but in loving them. How can this be? So often we see love as a feeling, a soft, tender, vulnerable feeling in our western world, but if this is our concept of love, then it is impossible to love our enemies. In fact, this “feeling” understanding of love leads to lots of attachment issues for us. We become attached to all people and things that gives us this feeling of love, and we reject or avoid all those people and settings where we don’t experience this feeling-sense of love. Clearly, Jesus is not talking about this from of love, a love that is a feeling, a love that comes and goes, that is here and not there. Jesus is talking about a different understanding of love. He is suggesting that love is relational, that it is unconditional, that it never changes but is constant. Divine love involves remaining in relationship regardless of the feelings involved. Within this “unconditional relationship” understanding of divine love, Jesus’ instruction to love our enemies begins to make sense. This divine love is all about maintaining relationship. This divine love flows more easily among friends and neighbours but Jesus highlights in this text the importance of loving our enemy. People have often been troubled by Jesus’ instructions to turn the other cheek to our abuser, or to give even more to people who steal from us, or to not get upset if people don’t pay you back. I don’t think these teachings of Jesus are to be taken literally, but I do think there is key teaching in these verses. All these teachings of Jesus suggest that we are stay in relationship with those we judge as our enemy, those who slap our cheek, those who take our coat, those who don’t pay back their debts. The human temptation in all of these settings is to use our hatred and power to cut off and punish those we see as hurting us, to hurt them as much as they have hurt us…an eye for an eye. Our human ego loves using our power in these hateful ways; so does our world and culture. There is a huge emotional release in using our power in these hateful ways. This emotional release is why we feel so justified in our actions. What would happen if we took this same power in our hatred, and instead of using it to destroy our enemy or develop walls around our enemy, we used this power to stay in relationship with our enemy. We use this divine power to help speak our truth about the pain they caused us. We use this power from God to help us bear and hold the hate and pain caused by our enemies toward us so that we can stay in relationship with them. Martin Luther King saw the power of this divine love when humans were able to embody this loving power toward their enemies. Within the Christian tradition, we often teach that Jesus had to bear the sins of the world on the cross when he died. Could it be that Jesus bore the hatred of the religious and political leaders and all the pain they caused them because Jesus realized that this was the only way for the cycle of hatred, violence, and sin to be broken, the only way that the curtain between God and human sin/hatred could be ripped apart and destroyed. Jesus took his experience of hatred and used its power in a sacrificial loving way. Jesus showed us how to take our pain and hatred and use it for the purposes of God’s love and reconciliation in the world. Following that tragic event in the village of La Esperanza, the Mennonite Brethren congregation began to really wrestle with the questions. They invited in an organization called Edupaz to help facilitate a process of healing, transformation and response for their village. The church began to wrestle with core questions. What should we expect from a population who rejects war? What role could a rural church have in healing wounds, sharing forgiveness and creating spaces for reconciliation? What example would this small faith community give to the urban megachurches? Edupaz’s hope was to accompany the whole community in an event for peace, memory, forgiveness and reconciliation – with the participation of ex-guerillas from a nearby village (a place where the ex-guerillas were grouped together to guarantee the cease fire and laying down of weapons). To this end, two years after the tragic event, on 20 July 2017, a reconciliation event took place. Children smiled and waved the flag. Combatants from the guerilla group walked firmly toward a different life. The community took no account for political, religious or social difference, but through songs to eternal God, made space for public repentance and sincere forgiveness, for reconciliation between victims and victimizers. Every step was directed toward the town’s sports centre…where the violent tragedy had happened two years before. This infamous arena would no longer be remembered as a place where death, terror and wrongs of the war met on a rainy April night, but rather as a place where the community came together to worship, forgive and love.
During the activity, everything happened in perfect harmony. Children created a representation of what war meant to them. People sang songs of peace as prayers to the heavens. The church invoked God’s presence and support. Social leaders and state representatives gave hopeful messages. And an ex-combatant asked for forgiveness for what happened in that place. A plaque memorialized the motto of the day: “Forgiveness is not for the one who deserves it, seeks it or asks for it, but for the one who needs it, although they are not conscious of it.” Finally, under a star-lit sky, hundreds of inhabitants of the village La Esperanza held glowing candles representing the spark of hope that illuminated the whole country. Everything that night was hugs, unity and messages of reconciliation. It was the first coming together of those sons, daughters, and fathers who had once joined the war but today hoped to return to their homes to build a new life and heal wounds inflicted by violence. Now, this community is being transformed into a place with open doors and smiles. People are ready to contribute to the construction of a stable and lasting peace. True to its name, La Esperanza has become an example for Colombians, showing that healing and forgiveness is possible, changing a gray and gloomy picture into a blue sky of hope. All because they chose to let go…of their hate and use that power to love their enemy. Questions to Ponder:
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