1 Samuel 26:2,7-9,11-13,22-23 / Psalm 102(103):1-4,8,10,12-13/ 1 Corinthians 15:45-49/ Luke 6:27-38
LOVE YOUR ENEMIES
Fr. Daniel Evbotokhai
Today we are concerned with the theme “Love your enemies”. In the first reading we have the example of David who had the opportunity to eliminate Saul his outright enemy but forgave him. Similarly, in the gospel Jesus says “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” Jesus challenges us to express unconditional love to our enemies. This commandment of Jesus has sparked much debates and controversies amongst believers. Most persons find it difficult to love their dearest and nearest family members let alone love their enemies. We have seen brothers who are not enemies but they don’t just love themselves let alone their enemies. Love your neighbour makes sense and it was like the known structure; but love your enemies was Christ’s innovation and restructure. We too must therefore align with this new structure if we must be saved.
Carefully, enough Jesus says “I say to YOU THAT HEAR, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you, … and as you wish that men would do to you do so to them.” ‘You that hear’ refer to those who are listening, those who are receiving information and allowing the information to work transformation in them. It refers to those who can reevaluate their age-longed belief in an eye for an eye, those who can put aside their prejudice and bad traditions and accept Christ’s message for what it is. Some people don’t listen even when they are attentive. When you are speaking; they are concerned with loopholes, faults and their responses. At the end of the day, they would have heard but not understand. A disciple therefore must listen and understand what the master is saying. Listening and understanding bring about transformation. A transformed man can love his enemy. Thus, love your enemies is not a function of the carnally minded but the spiritually minded. For the carnally minded life is about ‘do me I do you’. But the spiritually minded understands the power of mercy and love. “YOU THAT HEAR” if you must love your enemies you must do the following:
1. Be Spiritually Minded: St Paul says in the second reading that “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. All of us who through baptism bear the image of Christ must behave like Christ. That means we must be spiritually minded and approach issues with Christ methods. Paul captures Christ’s methods in 1Col3:13 where he says “just as the Lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive.” In Rom.5:10 Paul says while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son. Luke 23:34 on the cross he prayed Father forgive them they do not know what they are doing and in Acts7:60 Stephen died praying for his enemies “Lord do not hold this sin against them.” When Pope John Paul II regained his consciousness after he was shot by the one who attempted to kill him, his first words were ‘I forgive him’. These are men whose hearts and minds are transformed even on earth. These men knew the meaning of Christianity. They knew that Christianity is love and without love we are pseudo-Christians.
2. You Must not take Revenge: Revenge is a pronouncement of independence from God. IT means you don’t depend on God. Revenge is way of raising your hand against the Lord’s anointed or the Lords created. In the first reading, David said I will not raise my hand against God’s anointed. It means; he hated revenge. Lev. 19:18 “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” Many of us are good with taking revenge. It is not a Christian practice. Some will say what happens when we are left with no choice. Learn from David. He had no choice but God saw his submission and honoured him. There are five reasons Christians must not revenge
1. God forbids it,
2. Revenge only satisfies sinful passions
3. Good can come from evil (Rom. 8:28 all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose). (Gen. 50:20 Joseph says “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today”)
4. God is in control (Ps.115:3 “Our God is in the heavens; he has power to do what he wills)
5. We are at the mercy of God.
3. Do not make uncharitable judgment: When the gospel says “do not judge and you will not be judged” many people take this to mean we should not judge at all. For this reason anytime you try to correct someone this next response you get is “judge not”. Judge not in the bible does not mean we should not judge at all. Otherwise it would have been sinful for a Christian to be a judge in the law court. In Luke 12:57 Jesus says “why do you not judge for yourselves what is right” so it can be said we have the right to judge among ourselves what is wrong. In Beloved in Christ we can judge theories, ideas and doctrines that are promulgated daily for us to know what is true, right and accepted by God. Judge people before you join them in friendship. Do not judge in the bible implies three forms of judgment. They are: hasty judgment, unjust judgment and rash or hash judgment. These three suggest that we must hear both side of the story, we must not conclude from slight or insufficient evidence. Therefore let us be charitable with our judgment, a merciful man is that man that is charitable with his judgment.
4. Have a forgiving spirit: Child of God, learn to forgive those who hurt you. You too have hurts others before, learn to forgive. God desires to bless you with his abundant grace and mercy. Part of this blessed life is to be forgiven and become forgiver. Forgiveness is essential to being healthy physically and spiritually. Christians are to become forgivers it is the character of God. The psalmist says it is the Lord who forgives all your sins, who heals every one of your ills, who redeem your life from the grave, who crowns you with mercy and compassions He the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and rich in mercy. He does not treat us according to our sins nor repay us according to our faults. Beloved, if the Lord is slow to anger it is bad for you to be quick to anger; if the lord does not treat us according to our fault it will be bad for us to treat people according to their fault. This is not to shun discipline but for us to be merciful as the heavenly father is merciful Luke 6:36. Beloved in Christ let us learn to forgive the Lord’s Prayer suggest so. As Christians forgiveness is our business. This is not easy so he assured us that his grace is sufficient for us.
CHRISTIAN LOVE
Proactive not Reactionary, Gratuitous not Reciprocal
Fr Galadima Bitrus, (OSA)
An enemy is someone who is actively opposed or hostile to you, or someone who is after your life, like Saul actively seeking to kill David (1 Sam 26:2); cf. 24:3), or like those who were dragging Stephen out of the city and were stoning him to death (Acts 6:58-59), or those who crucified Jesus after a sustained plot to kill him (Lk 23:34). Can you show love or kindness to someone who is after your life like that, someone so hostile to you?
This is precisely what David does in today’s 1st Reading and what Jesus in the Gospel Reading teaches and puts forward as the standard of ethical conduct worthy of those who bear the name, “Christian.” Hence, our reflection today underscores the specific character of the kind of love Christ advocated: a proactive, not reactionary love, “gratuitous, not reciprocal love, a fundamentalism and an extravagance of love necessary to disrupt the cycle of violence and undo the ideology of hate, and inaugurate a counter-culture of love and forgiveness.
The 1st Reading (1 Sam 26) is a story of magnanimity which David shows Saul. A slightly different version of this story is told in 1 Sam 24. In the story, Saul is determined to kill David and gets privileged information about his whereabouts. Accompanied by three thousand select men, Saul set out to look for David in order to kill him. In their camp, Saul and his men fell asleep and David and his men found them.
Now, David has the opportunity to kill Saul. One of his assistants, Abishai, who had accompanied David to Saul’s camp, seeing this unrepeatable opportunity, calculated and explained with precision how the operation is to take place, subtly backing up his proposal with some theology: “God has delivered your enemy into your hands today. Let me pin him to the ground with a single thrust of the spear. I will not have to strike him twice” (26:8), he said.
But David resisted this natural instinct for vengeance. Citing a more profound and more consistent theology, he said to Abishai: “Do not do violence. No one can lay his hands on the Lord’s anointed with impunity” (26:9). And David went on: “As the Lord lives, the Lord himself will strike him down, or his time will come and he will die, or he will go down to battle and perish” (26:10). In other words, in one way or the other, the enemy too will die.
This act changed the narrative. For sparing his life and not exacting vengeance, Saul will ultimately address David as, “my son David” (26:17) and a dialogue ensues between the two of them that culminates in Saul acknowledging his wrong. He said: “I am in the wrong. Come back, my son David, for I will never harm you again, seeing how you have held my life precious this day. Yes, I have been a fool, and I have erred so very much” (26:21). Saul ultimately blessed David in the following words: “May you be blessed, my son David. You shall achieve, and you shall prevail” (26:25).
The 2nd Reading (1 Cor 15:45-49) contrasts the initial man and the ultimate man, the first Adam and the last Adam, the first being earthly (from dust), the second being heavenly. In context, the first Adam or initial man reflects our human nature with its earthly logic of vengeance and ethics of reciprocal and reactionary love. The ultimate man or the heavenly man requires us to go higher, in imitation of God, the Most High, the heavenly one, as the Gospel Reading (Lk 6:27-38) makes clearer, continuing the theme of non-vengeance, not only as an isolated individual act but as a standard of behaviour which Jesus teaches and expects should characterize the life of those whom he has called, his disciples, alongside his teachings on the blessed life (the beatitudes; Lk 6:20-23) and the unfortunate life (the woes; Lk 6:24-26).
Loving enemies apparently is not having good feelings about them or being comfortable around them; it is not a question of sentiment but of concrete action. The Old Testament also commands helping the enemy in need. For example, the Israelites are commanded to take back the enemy’s ox when found wandering and help the enemy raise his ass when found lying under its burden (Exod 23:4-5).
In the same light, the exhortation of Jesus to “love your enemies” (Lk 6:27a) is accompanied by the synonymic parallel, “do good to those who hate you” (Lk 6:27b), the latter clause saying in a different but more explicit way, what was said in the preceding clause. In fact, Old Testament wisdom literature pushes the need to train, including our emotions, in showing kindness to the enemy. In Prov 24:17-18, we read: “If your enemy falls, do not exult; if he trips, let your heart not rejoice, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and avert his wrath from him.”
Being kind only to those who are kind to you is a reactionary and reciprocal love; this is the love that originates from a morality of basic human nature (the first Adam or initial man). The higher morality of Jesus (the second Adam or heavenly man) calls us to imitate God, our father and so behave “like father like children”: “And you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Lk 6:35).
In summary, we are called upon to be merciful as our father is merciful (Lk 6:36) and we are reminded of our own need before God not to be judged in accordance to our deeds but to be forgiven, knowing that if God should mark our guilt, none of us will survive (Ps 130:3). We also reminded to imitate God now because ultimately, God will imitate us: “Forgive and you will be forgiven….for the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Lk 6:37.38).
Often, Scripture has been used to justify our propensity for vengeance and violence. David shows us, and Jesus even commands us, to resist the temptation to revenge or to overcome evil with evil. Rather, “love your enemies and pray for those who hate you” (Mt 5:44); “Love your enemies, do good, lend, expecting nothing in return (Lk 6:35).
Paul develops this doctrine of non-vengeance writing, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all” (Rm 12:17). In other words, let us not be converted to the logic of the violent by becoming violent ourselves but we must disrupt the ideology of violence by leaving vengeance in the hands of God. As St. Paul classically puts it, “Do not revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath. For it is written: ‘vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord” (Rm 12:19).
In the last analysis, you don’t join them in bad doing or hating but you counter them with doing good or showing love. And when they curse, you bless, thus becoming an antidote: healing the wound they have caused, bringing about a counter-culture of love where reigns a culture of hate. As the famous prayer of St. Francis goes: “Lord make me an instrument of thy peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.”
