The written text is below the sermon audio…

 

Sermon Preached at Zion Episcopal Church; Sunday February 20th 2022
The Reverend Alan Neale; “Love Your Enemies”

Luke 6:27 “Jesus said, ‘I say to you that listen, love your enemies’”. “To you that listen… that’s interesting, yes? There are those people, there are those statements to which we choose not to listen. Maybe because we shirk from the challenge, maybe because we are too self-absorbed but these words of Jesus are specifically for those “that listen”… are you listening? Love your enemies.

I believe that with these words Jesus, as it were, throws a theological grenade into a somewhat banal committee meeting of religious people and religious minds.

I used to think that the concept Jesus introduced into religious/spiritual language was the concept of Abba/Father. It is without doubt, especially in John’s Gospel, that Jesus speaks constantly of His Father; a theme that Paul takes up with wild abandon as he writes “By the Spirit we cry out Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). But, scarce though they are, there are references to God as Father in the Old Testament.

No, now I believe the earth-shattering, life changing, mind altering, spirit changing concept of originality and uniqueness is this, “Love your enemies”.

The Greek word for love throughout today’s Gospel passage (Luke 6:27-38) is agapeo – to have preference for, to wish well, to regard the welfare of the beloved. Agapeo – to take pleasure in the beloved, prize it above all things, be unwilling to abandon it or do without it.

And to compound, maybe, our sense of dis-ease, the Greek word for enemy is exthros – someone openly hostile, animated by deep-seated hatred, a person resolved to inflict harm driven by an irreconcilable, deep-rooted enmity.

To such enemies, Jesus bids us to love them; not to deny their ill-will and intent to abuse (note, they remain as enemies in this text) but, nevertheless to love them.

You want to ask me; you ask yourself… but how? Listen to the beautiful words of our Collect today, “Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love…”

I’m reading at the moment a detective mystery by the Scandinavian author Jo Nesbo (You Nesber), The Leopard. At one point the detective Harry Hole (Hooleh) declares, “I agree with those who say that the capacity to forgive says something about the essential quality of a person… I am the lowest grade”.

We love our enemies as we are ready to forgive them and in so doing we follow the path defined by our Lord who in physical, emotional, mental, spiritual pain on the Cross prayers, “Father, forgive them”.

Let’s look now at love, forgiveness in action… displayed maybe in that most difficult of arenas, the family?

The story in today’s reading from Genesis (45) is not the run-of-the-mill story about country folk.

After some twenty years Joseph is reunited with his brothers though the brothers are blind to what is taking place.

Even when Joseph declares, “I am Joseph” the brothers seem unable to grasp the reality of their reunion, the significance of this assembly. They are unable to speak and are overwhelmed by their dismay – in this they show the signs of those who have yet to forgive themselves!

Joseph urges them to come closer… and they accede; the distance between them created by cruel and mean treatment of their brother is reduced, the distance between them created by self-disgust and self-disappointment is diminished. The Hebrew word for “come near” (nagash) suggests a carefully interlocking of parts (just as, the commentator writes, just as the interlocking of the scales of a crocodile!). This is what happens when love and forgiveness is at work.

In this process of familial healing, Joseph confronts them all with stark reality… the brothers had sold him because of fear and hatred and greed; (you sold me); the brothers had deliberately sent Joseph into an unknown future filled with dread (you betrayed me).

9 But then Joseph confronts them all with another reality but this time it is lovely not stark, this time comforting not painful, this time enabling not crippling. Please hear this great and joyous refrain “But God sent me…”, “God sent me…”, and “God has made me Lord”. Friends, do you see this glorious truth… it was as Joseph realized, affirmed, established the presence of God in his most awful sufferings that he was able to forgive, to love, to receive his brothers… come near.

One evening this past week, I asked my beloved Wendy, “So, what do you think is the opposite of forgiveness?”… and now I ask you the same question?

I think it may be “resentment” – the word originates from French “ressentir”, re-, intensive prefix, and sentir “to feel”. The English word has become synonymous with anger, spite, and holding a grudge. The energy of resentment is that it makes us revisit, relive, recall the event that once caused us such pain. What Joseph did, by grace, was to take God back into the moment of pain and hurt, to imagine God as present, very present, in that moment of grief and ache… Maybe this could be a Lenten exercise.

Just see what happens to Joseph as he loves, forgives, receives… he renews relationship and his emotions are healed; surely at some stage that is what we all want to experience?

Years ago I heard at a 12 Step Meeting, the testimony of a man who had a long standing resentment; resentments are not at all good for addicts, Bill Wilson reckoned them to be the number one cause of relapse. But anyway… the man shared that for one month he prayed “Bless him, change me”.

And so I got to work with, in mind, a bishop from long, long ago. For far more than a month I would include in my prayers, “Bless him, change me” and then, one day, I realized I had only prayed “Bless him”. At last I had changed and I was set free to forgive, to love and to receive.

Luke 6:27 “Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, love your enemies”.

Amen, So Be It!