Loving Your Enemies
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C – 23 February 2025
Mahatma Gandhi, the great Indian statesman, as a Hindu, was particularly inspired by the teaching of Jesus in today’s Gospel. Gandhi said that this teaching of Jesus was what inspired him to search for non-violent ways tobring about political freedom in India. He wrote: “I came to see that this sermon was the whole of Christianity for one who wanted to live a Christian life. It is this sermon that has endeared Jesus to me.” When Gandhi was gunned down in 1948, his last gesture was to press his palms together and raise his folded hands to his lips in the Hindu sign of forgiveness.
Isn’t it true that when someone does something harmful to us, our first instinct is to get back at them! Our natural response is to make them pay and to hurt as much as they hurt us. But that is not what Jesus would have us do.
If this Gospel passage had such a transformative power in the life of Gandhi as a Hindu, how much more should it challenge us who are Christians.
Being a disciple of Jesus is not for the faint-hearted or small-minded. It takes real and extraordinary courage to be a Christian. Following Jesus and putting his teaching into practice is not an easy, comfortable, convenient thing. Being a Christian takes large-heartedness, courage, and perseverance.
There is always a real possibility of us domesticating Jesus and his teaching so much, that we might fail to see the challenge presented to us this Sunday. Last week we began to study Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, as we have it in Luke’s Gospel. We listened to the Beatitudes - the revolutionary way of life we are called to as disciples of Jesus. This week’s Gospel is a continuation of this Sermon on the Plain and the teaching this week is a broadening out of the meaning of the Beatitudes.
This week we consider what the Beatitudes concretely mean for us living in the world. As disciples of Jesus, we have received a higher calling. It is about doing good to others without any ulterior motive, without expecting anything in return; it is about wanting what is best for them. The usual human instinct is conditional love, hoping to get something in return, or repaying those who have done good to us, but we are called to be like Jesus.
The story of David and Saul in today’s first reading functions almost like a parable. By showing mercy to his enemy, Saul, David gives us a concrete example of what Jesus expects of his disciples. David, as a general in Saul’s army, had rapidly risen in popularity and power. His military successes and the great loyalty and respect he had from the soldiers, threatened King Saul, who then tried to destroy him. It is in this context that our reading today says that Saul and his three thousand picked men went in search of David to kill him. Yet David and Abishai were able to sneak into Saul’s camp and stand over the sleeping king. But David turned down Abishai’s offer to “pin Saul to the ground with one stroke of the spear.” David’s sense of justice, his spirit of forgiveness, and his respect for God’s choice of king, helped him to go beyond the revenge which others expected him to show. In this David is an image of Jesus, and an example to us. If he can forgive his mortal enemy, so can we, and so should we.
In today’s Gospel Jesus says, “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” Can we really love our enemies? In fact, twice in this short passage, we are told to love our enemies! Who then are our enemies? They are those who dislike us, those who do not love us, those who oppose us and seek to harm us.Who are those we feel justified in putting outside our circle of concern? They are all who have hurt us or continue to hurt us. They are those who speak badly of us. Sooner or later, in our lives we encounter such people.
Let’s face it: This gospel passage is “tough” talk… “hard to listen to” talk. Make no mistake, this is Jesus’ most difficult teaching. This teaching is what sets Christianity apart from other religions, philosophies, psychologies, and even basic common sense. This teaching of Jesus defines the core of Christian ethics and who we are as Christians.
The Gospel passage contains four commands of Jesus: love, forgive, do good, and pray. These commands specify the kind of love that the Christian follower is expected to show toward an enemy. They are concrete actions of love. They are acts of the will. All the commands in this revolutionary teaching of Jesus can be summed up in the Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” The Golden Rule exists in many religions and philosophies, but most often in the negative: that is, don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Out of the mouth of Jesus it is more positive, proactive: Do to others what you would want them to do to you. The negative version is sometimes referred to as the Silver Rule.
Being a disciple of Jesus, a Christian, is about doing more, doing the extra thing, going the extra mile, giving more. We are meant to be different; we are meant to be held to a higher standard. We are a people of the Golden Rule. For Jesus, love is a fundamental attitude that seeks another’s good.
Jesus orders us to love our enemies and to be merciful as God our Father is merciful. We are challenged to do for others what God does for us. “Be compassionate, as your Father is compassionate.” Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus speaks of loving another, he does not ask – even the enemy – to change first before we love them? We don’t get to set conditions for our love. Conditions such as, they must first apologise, or be sorry, or stop hurting us, before we will forgive them, don’t measure up to this teaching of Jesus.
David refused to pay back evil with evil. In so doing he broke that vicious cycle of hatred and violence that destroys so many relationships, so many families, so many societies.
How often haven’t we come across situations in families, between spouses, in communities, where it is an effective stalemate of blaming each other, or of getting back at each other for some offence? Then it goes backward and forward, to and fro, never ending. What’s needed to break the cycle, is one party to forgive, to not seek revenge, but rather to love. And it takes courage, strength, and largeheartedness to be the one to forgive.
Perhaps there are situations in our lives in which we are called to do something like this, to be the largehearted, courageous ones?
Of course, it is hard to forgive and forget, to bless those who curse us, to want good for those who want to harm us. But remember that Jesus says in today’s Gospel that this is what distinguishes us as his disciples. If we only do as much as non-disciples, what credit is that to us. We prove our genuineness as disciples of Jesus when we love our enemies
