Love Your Enemy

 In the collect for today we prayed:

       Lord, without love whatever we do is worth nothing.

       Send your Holy Spirit gift of Love, 

       which is the true bond of peace and all virtue,

              without which we might as well be dead.

 

That begs the question:

       Just what kind of love IS this?              

 

The Greek word (one of several for love in the New Testament)

                     is in this case agapay

       and we usually are told that this is “godly love”

              like the kind of love God has for us,

and that’s good

       because that kind of love that God has for us is

              unconditional, abundant, generous, everlasting and trustworthy.

But agapay love is also unitive love, uniting love, 

       love that does not make a distinction between lover and beloved.

To experience this kind of love is to discover union with the Divine

       and union with all other living beings.

In its fullest form agapay love makes no distinction between persons,

       between species, between living and inanimate beings,

              everything belongs in this love

                     and is valued, respected and cared for.

We can understand something of this expansive love

       in terms of how much we will sacrifice for each other,

but this goes way beyond that 

       for the whole of creation is held in this agaph love.

To love with this kind of love requires us 

       to live in service to the whole environment, to everything.

 

Few of us catch that whole vision of what love can be,

       like St. Francis of Assisi did,

              in which he also shared the same wounds as Christ on the cross,

which is the ultimate length for one to go in loving your enemies.

 

We are Christians.

       That means we are followers of Jesus.

To be a follower of Jesus means that we listen to what he has said,

       and, as the old saying goes, to hear is to obey.

 

So that means we need to listen to the Gospel reading for today,

       listen and hear what is being said, 

              and then to follow, to obey.

 

Jesus said, "I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, 

              do good to those who hate you, 

              bless those who curse you, 

              pray for those who abuse you.

“Love your enemies.”

 

Oh, great.  

       That’s not what most of us want to hear.

If this is agapay love, does this then mean 

       that I have to see the other as being in union, relationship with me?

 

Now I need to say emphatically what I am NOT talking about.

       This is not doormat love.

       It is not a carte blanche ticket for an abuser to walk all over you.

 

agapay love is the kind of love that looks at everything as belonging, 

       that we are all so interconnected that not to love is to do self-harm.

 

And that is what we

        (speaking generally of the whole human race geo-politically) 

              currently are doing – self-harm.

 

Self-harm

       How do we intervene when someone wants to harm themselves?

I was taught in pastoral care courses and as a hospital chaplain

       that when someone says 

              that they are thinking of committing  suicide,

we are to take that seriously: 

       report, refer, 

       stay with the one threatening self-harm until help arrives.

 

I will never forget the time that happened – 

       the night when, as a hospital chaplain, 

              I received a call from a person outside the hospital,

a person who was so deeply despondent 

       that he was planning to kill himself if no one answered the phone.

He had significant reasons for wanting to die,

       and he had the means and a plan put in place.

I kept him on the line asking questions, 

              trying to establish some trust,

       while I scribbled a note to a staff nurse to trace the call 

                     in order to get his location and then send help.

An hour or so later the call ended 

       when help arrived at the door for a wellness check 

                                          and for taking him to the hospital.

 

It took a team to save his life that night.

       I couldn’t have done that alone.

I didn’t know him personally, but that was not the point.

       He was a person in need, 

       and I happened to be on call that night.

That is a clear cut example of intervention 

       when we see the potential for self-harm.

 

And what we may also see around us

        is a larger but more amorphous potential for 

                                                               or actual self-harm going on.

 

The situation today is critical, whether we personally feel it or not.

But we are called to follow Jesus.

       We can repeat his words – “love your enemies” – 

              but to follow up those words with our actions, that’s the test.

 

So it may be helpful to look at another Greek word,

       the word for enemy echthros.

It is a word that means those who are discordant, alienated,

              not simply an adversary.

 

Let me remind you of another situation of loving your enemy

       that we also just heard in the Hebrew Bible reading for today:

Joseph revealing himself to his brothers, 

              his brothers who had betrayed their relationship with him

                            in a most hateful and hurtful way,

and now their cruelty had caught up with them.

 

When Joseph tells them who he really is 

       “his brothers could not answer him, 

              so dismayed were they at his presence.”

They thought that, if he were still alive, he would be a slave

       but now they find that not only is he alive 

              he has great power over them.

In fact, he has the power of life and death over them.

But what does Joseph say to them?

       “do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves … 

              God sent me before you to preserve life.”

That is agapay love intervening, 

       a love that looked at them and bridged the alienation 

              because they were intricately connected in life.

 

Now the current situation that our nation is in 

       is one that has been engineered to create shock and awe

              and to destabilize 

So spiritually now is the time when we really need to be grounded,

       to be connected with others, with each other.

 

Each of us as individuals may feel helpless to intervene 

              and address the self-harm that we see happening 

                            that impacts us all.

       to intervene with that highest form of love agapay,

but we need to remember that we are not alone.

       It takes a team, maybe a team of thousands, millions.

That is how agapay love works – we team up

       because we know, we realize, we experience it in our bones

              that we are so interconnected

that if one falls, we all will lose balance, slip 

       and potentially go down too.

 

So I am calling you all to open your capacity for compassion,

       especially with others who are alienating,

because they are blind to how interconnected all life is;

              they do not see 

                     the self-harm they are causing themselves in their alienation,

                     and that is self-harm for us all.

 

And forgive.  This is important too, because

       if you do not forgive, you make yourself into an enemy,

                     one who is alienated and in discord.

To forgive is to liberate the other

              who has been imprisoned in their isolation of enmity.

And forgiveness liberates you from your own imprisonment too.

 

“Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 

       give, and it will be given to you. 

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, 

       will be put into your lap; 

for the measure you give will be the measure you get back."

 

This is how we live faithfully in chaotic times.