Pilgr-image 23 - Love of Enemies
But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...
You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? - Matthew 5:43–47
This world which is choking and dying of hate and revenge is waiting for the new and renewing eyes of Jesus’ disciples. - Helmut Thielicke
To Thielicke’s wise words, I would simply add “the feet” of Jesus’ disciples as well. It is one thing to look at the state of the world today (which is still choking and dying of hate and revenge) and just observe it. It is another thing to do something. To act in new ways, in transformative ways, in ways of love. It won’t just happen as we look at it. It will only change when we move in the power of God’s Spirit. The rest of Following the Call’s reflection upon this part of the sermon on the mount is filled with the challenges of the steps we are called to take.
Dr King reminding us that if “we hate our enemies, we have no way to redeem and transform them.”... That “hate destroys the hater as well as the hated” and “And you come to the point that you look in the face of every [person] and see deep down within [them] what religion calls “the image of God,” you begin to love [them] in spite of – no matter what [they do], you see God’s image there.”
There’s a lengthy liturgy by a Serbian bishop named Nikolaj Velimirovic who, during World War II, pushed back against the Nazis. The liturgy has a response of “Bless my enemies, O Love. Even as I bless them and do not curse them” that is said after a series of petitions that recognizes the ways that enemies have wounded and hurt us, yet we work to bless them.
There are steps we must take. That’s what I love about this photo from well over eight years ago when our family visited the King Center in Atlanta. Outside the center are the foot tracings of people who have worked for justice, who have lived love of enemy, and whose lives point us to a new way of living. I love this moment that I shared with my daughter as we both placed our feet in the outlines of Archbishop Tutu whose country we had visited just a few weeks before.
Let us have our eyes changed as Thielicke says, but let that change move to our hearts and minds and into our hands and our feet.
