Jeffrey C. Long

The following sermon was preached on July 30th 2006 at Filer Mennonite Church.

Do you remember the emotions of your first Love? I was pretty girl crazy in school, so I remember the emotions of infatuation pretty vividly. Then I met Deana and for the first time articulated the word “love” as a description of how I felt about her.

I also vividly remember the love I felt for each of my children when they were born.

Love is kind of a slippery word. We use it describe our feelings for a favorite food: “i love good sauerkraut!” an infatuation, or our love for our children.

Jesus narrowed it down a little for us when he taught that there was No other commandment greater then to Love God, and to Love our neighbors as ourselves.

My feelings for God need to be greater then my feelings about sauerkraut. And my feelings toward my neighbor need to be greater then my puppy love in jr. high.

In fact, John Jesus’ beloved disciple taught that we would be known as Christians by our love. He would ask us, “Will the world know you are His disciples by your worship service? Or by my preaching? Will the world know you are His disciples your four part singing? Or by your choruses? How bout by our offering? By our VBS? By our 10,000 villages sale? By our Christmas program?

No: They will know we are His disciples by our love.

And more specifically by our love for each other. In the church.

So, what does this kind of love look like?

The definition for this word is both affection and benevolence.

Affection and benevolence

Webster’s calls Affection: A settled good will; kind feeling; love; zealous or tender attachment

Love is a feeling. It is how we feel towards someone. Feelings of kindness, settled good will. Tender attachment.

Webster’s calls Benevolence: A predisposition to do good. A desire to promote their prosperity and happiness.

It is choosing the best for someone. It is our actions towards them.

So love is both a feeling and it is an action.

Today we are looking at a very difficult teaching of Jesus.

Jesus is teaching us to love our enemies….

He says it is not enough to just love those who love you. Even sinners do that. No, we are called to love those who hate us. Not just with our actions. But with our feelings.

This is a very important and even traditional teaching for us as Mennonites because we believe that it is not possible to love your enemy and still use a gun to take His life. And so we choose to be conscious objectors to war.

But something interesting happens when we do this. We never get the opportunity to love our enemy. We have simply chosen to not engage them on the battlefield. And so we aren’t face to face ready to demonstrate our love for someone who has dedicated themselves to our defeat even to the death.

Many of us can think about loving our enemy in esoteric terms. Unknown enemies on the other side of the world are easier to love than those we meet face-to-face. During the war in Iraq in 2005, one American soldier found out how proximity changes things.

Stephen Tschiderer, an army medic, met his enemy’s bullet before he met his enemy. While patrolling the dangerous streets of Baghdad, Tschiderer was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper. Although he was knocked to the ground by the impact, Tschiderer was saved by his bulletproof vest.

In company with the combat team that tracked down the sniper, the soldier discovered his assailant had been wounded. At this point, loving one’s enemy was no longer a theoretical concept. The enemy was directly in front Tschiderer, wounded and in need of prompt medical attention. Only moments earlier, the sniper had put Stephen Tschiderer’s heart between the crosshairs on the scope of his rifle and pulled the trigger, fully intending to end Tschiderer’s life. Tschiderer could have roughed him up. He could have simply walked away and justified his actions. Instead, Tschiderer treated and dressed the wounds of the man who had tried to take his life.

“Soldier Survives Attack; Captures, Medically Treats Sniper,” USA Today Online (7-15-05); submitted by David Slagle, Decatur, Ge

So I think we need to learn to apply this teaching more broadly then our involvement in national wars.

The root word for enemy is actually hateful.

Love those who hate you.

What we want to do is hate those that hate us.

Author Anne Lamott says “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

This might be an enemy serving another country.

But it could just as easily be your brother.

Or a coworker.

It may be a fellow Christian.

Have you ever had someone be hateful towards you?

Deana and I talked about this, and we both had a few instances.

Both were betrayals. People stabbing us in the back.

For me it was a man who was maliciously gossiping about me behind my back. Because I learned about it through his secretary I could never confront him about it without jeopardizing her job. So I just had to live with the fact that half-truths were being said about me and there was nothing I could do about it.

How are we supposed to be affectionate towards someone like that? How are we to desire their best.

We want justice for that person. We don’t want to show mercy.

I can tell you how I acted. I avoided him. I only said hello when he said hello to me. I didn’t look at him. I was punishing him the only way I knew how, which was to not associate with him.

The next step would have been to forgive him. Without him saying he was sorry. Without him asking for forgiveness.

But according to Jesus, that isn’t even enough.

I am to love him. To be affectionate towards him. To desire his best.

Yuck. I don’t want to do that.

These past two sermons have been extremely difficult to write. I thought it had something to do with me and things that are going on in my life. But I just figured out why yesterday. These are probably the most difficult teachings of Jesus. In last week’s teaching on the blessing of the poor He attacked our security in our wealth. And now He is telling us to be affectionate and looking out for the best for people who hate us.

These teachings of Jesus get down to the very core of our being. They are what sets Jesus’ teaching apart from religious people. Religious people are concerned with what people see. They are busy doing what they think they are supposed to do to live up to a standard. They are concerned with what people think about them.

Jesus says it is not just the outward that matters it is the inward as well. It’s not just what you say and do. It is what you feel.

How do you feel about people? Do you just like them? Or are you affectionate towards them? Do you desire the best for them? What about your enemies. Those who hate you. Who are mistreating you. Do you just put up with them? Or are you loving towards them? Do you desire the best for them?

Tough teaching.

Let’s read. Turn to Luke 6 verse 26

27“But if you are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. 28Pray for the happiness of those who curse you. Pray for those who hurt you. 29If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek. If someone demands your coat, offer your shirt also. 30Give what you have to anyone who asks you for it; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back. 31Do for others as you would like them to do for you.

    32“Do you think you deserve credit merely for loving those who love you? Even the sinners do that! 33And if you do good only to those who do good to you, is that so wonderful? Even sinners do that much! 34And if you lend money only to those who can repay you, what good is that? Even sinners will lend to their own kind for a full return.

    35“Love your enemies! Do good to them! Lend to them! And don’t be concerned that they might not repay. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to the unthankful and to those who are wicked. 36You must be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

There are lots of specifics in this passage, but I want to deal with just one.

When our enemy does something to us, instead of retaliating, we are to respond with extravagance

We have a tendency to get hung up on these particulars… what did Jesus exactly mean by turning the other cheek… does that mean i turn the cheek, get struck a second time and then when i’m struck a third time and _then_ i can strike back?

i think this misses the point. Jesus is teaching us extravagance toward enemies. If they take something give them more.

Here are a few illustrations to flesh this out.

In The Life Giving Church, Ted Haggard reminisces about a kindly Amish family, the Royers, that lived near his childhood home:

One night a group of drunken high school boys went to the Royer farm after a football game and began breaking watermelons—the produce that provided the mainstay of their annual income. While the boys were yelling and cussing in the field, the light of a glowing lantern began flickering in an upstairs bedroom of the farmhouse. From the field the boys could see the light being carried down the stairs and then onto the front porch. As the light approached them through the darkness, the boys prepared for a fight. Instead, Mr. Royer told the boys they could have all the melons they desired, but that the melons they were breaking were not his best. He offered to lead them to the best field and give them as many as they wanted. The boys were embarrassed and respectfully apologized before leaving. Mr. Royer invited them in for a glass of lemonade—he said they needed it. But the boys declined, trying to soak in their vivid lesson on Christian character.

Ted Haggard, The Life Giving Church (Regal Books, 2001); submitted by David Slagle, Lawrenceville, Georgia

Watchman Nee tells about a Chinese Christian who owned a rice paddy next to one owned by a communist man. The Christian irrigated his paddy by pumping water out of a canal, using one of those leg-operated pumps that make the user appear to be seated on a bicycle. Every day, after the Christian had pumped enough water to fill his field, the communist would come out, remove some boards that kept the water in the Christian’s field and let all the water flow down into his own field. That way, he didn’t have to pump.

This continued day after day. Finally, the Christian prayed, “Lord, if this keeps up, I’m going to lose all my rice, maybe even my field. I’ve got a family to care for. What can I do?”

In answer to his request, the Lord put a thought in his mind. So, the next morning he arose much earlier, in the predawn hours of darkness, and started pumping water into the field of his communist neighbor. Then he replaced the boards and pumped water into his own rice paddy. In a few weeks both fields of rice were doing well—and the communist was converted.

Making Things Right When Things Go Wrong (Howard, 1996)

We aren’t supposed to be looking for limits about how far we have to go towards our enemy. Instead, we are being told to go farther then seems right. And in so doing we often wind up changing the character of our enemy.

Close with a story.

Jesus was traveling back to Jerusalem knowing his destiny to die there.

His travel was going to take him through Samaria so he sent messengers ahead to a village to make preparations for him and his disciples to stay there

But when the messengers arrived in the village they were rejected when the Samaritans found out that Jesus was headed to Jerusalem.

This was sort of a family feud about what was the proper place to worship, the Jews believing Jerusalem and the samaritans believing it was their temple on Mount Gerizzim. Because they figured out that Jesus was headed to the temple in Jerusalem for the feast of tabernacles it showed that he preferred the Jerusalem temple to theirs. And so they rejected him and would not allow him to lodge in their village.

Verse 54 of Luke chapter 9 records the dialogue between the disciples and Jesus.

54 When his disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from the sky, and destroy them, just as Elijah did?”



The disciples believed that the rejection of the Messiah demanded justice. Retribution. They were ready to treat the samaritans as an enemy. Instead, Jesus showed mercy.

55 But he turned and rebuked them, “You don’t know of what kind of spirit you are. 56 For the Son of Man didn’t come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”

We are so like the disciples. We want all the justice for everyone else. But all the mercy for us.

We want God to judge our enemies, to judge the people around us for their sins against us. If we could, we would command fire to come down to sky and destroy them.

And yet,

We deserve justice but instead, God shows us mercy.

We deserve justice, but instead, God shows us mercy.

Romans 5:8

8 But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Verse 36 of Luke 6 says You must be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. So, we are to follow God’s example, and show love towards those who are our enemies, because God Himself showed love towards us when we were His enemy.