Psalm 121:1-8

I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

Matthew 5:43-48

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.  For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same?  Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect

Love Your Enemies

Today is the second Sunday in Lent, and we continue with the Sermon on the Mount. Remember, we are studying the Sermon on the Mount to understand the mind of Christ.

Philippians 2:5-11

NRSV

⁵ Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

⁶ who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
⁷ but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
⁸     he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

King James

⁵ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

⁷ But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

⁸ And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

⁹ Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:

¹⁰ That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;

¹¹ And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Love Your Enemies  

Matthew 5:43-48

New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

Love your Enemies

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The One

 “Love your enemies” as a paradox for meditation

 Jesus is talking to his disciples. And, by extension, he is talking to anyone who wants to be his disciple. So this is a very clear statement about Christianity. If you want to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, the teaching is “Love your enemies.”

This teaching, “Love your enemies,” is one of the most perplexing things Jesus ever says. It’s one of the most difficult teachings in Christianity. It will keep you awake at night. It’s a meditation. It will get stuck in your thinking, you know, like an ear worm. You know those little bits and pieces of songs that you can’t get out of your head. “Love your enemies” is like that. It will get stuck. It will keep you awake at night, struggling, How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to understand this? Love your enemies. Really? It’s impossible. I, as this individual person, this separate individual, self-centered, egotistical, person, I cannot love my enemies. It’s impossible. And that is the point, really. I cannot love my enemies. And this I has to change. This I must be transformed. This is the central point of “Love your enemies.”

The mind of Christ is a self-emptying mind. In Greek, the word is “kenosis.” Empty of self. This is what Paul is writing about in Philippians.

Jesus often taught using paradox, that is, he taught through contradictions. His use of paradox is a clue to what he is trying to show his disciples, which is, he wants his disciples to have a direct experience of God. Not intellectual ideas about God. A direct experience of God. And this is only possible through paradox.

Paradox is the teaching vehicle that allows one to step outside of dualistic thinking and enter into the realm of direct experience, that is, enter into unitive or nondual experience: the Oneness that is God, the experience of non-separation that is God.

Now, what am I talking about here? Let me give you an example.

In 1958, Thomas Merton was walking on a sidewalk in downtown Louisville when he had a mystical experience, and this is how he described it:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

 Non-separation.

Merton fell into a direct experience of non-separation, in other words, a direct experience of God. And this is what Jesus is trying to provoke in his disciples when he says, “Love your enemies.”

Now, obviously, “Love your enemies” is an impossible task. It doesn’t make sense. This sentence is a contradiction. It’s a paradox. Quite obviously, as soon as you love your enemies, then all of a sudden, you don’t have any. If you love your enemies, they are gone. They disappear. There are no more enemies.

Thomas Merton, standing on the corner in Louisville Kentucky, had a direct experience of being at One with the entire universe. This is a mystical experience. It doesn’t make sense to talk about. It is not an intellectual idea. But it is something that happens. The individual disappears and becomes One with everything, One with God and with all humanity and with the entire universe.

Ok, so now you are saying, “Pastor Ed, this just doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t make sense.” And that is the point, really. It doesn’t make sense. To our ordinary everyday perception, I am here, and you are there, and I see you and you see me. But in the experience of Oneness, there is no I and no You. There is just this whole One, undivided Whole. When I love my enemy, I disappear, my enemy disappears, and there is only love. Love through and through.

This is what Jesus did. This was his experience. He lived in this direct experience of non-separation, of being At One. And if we look at his life, really look at what he did, we can see it. He did not fight with anyone. He did not start any wars. He did not drop any bombs on anyone. Jesus was a pacifist. He did not kill. He would not kill. He saw God in everyone and everything, and so he could not kill. Even when he was being killed, he did not fight back.

So we have to really think about this. We have to really think about what it means to be a Christian.

You know there are different kinds of Christianity, right? I hope, in five years of preaching here, that if you don’t get anything else from me, you will at least get this one point. There are many different forms of Christianity. And this is what makes “Being a Christian” so difficult. It’s confusing. To try to figure out, what is a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian. And there are so many people preaching so many different messages.

But if we go back to the Mind of Christ, that is a good source for the original Christianity: First century Christianity, early Christianity. You know, because Christianity changed. It’s important to understand the history of the church and how the institution of the church changed the original message of Christ’s teachings. The first major change happened in the fourth century with Constantine. In the fourth century, the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the State Religion. Roman sold

iers fought and killed people in the name of Jesus. We have to see how far this deviated from the original teachings of Christ, from the Mind of Christ.

This Imperial Christianity became very powerful. But Jesus did not preach power and domination. Later forms of Christianity developed “Just War Theology.” You know, fighting a war that was “Just.” The Good war. But Jesus never taught war. So we need to understand this when we talk about being a Christian. What is a Christian?

The early Christians, like the disciples, and the early Christians in the first three centuries, were martyred. So many of them were killed. And they did not fight back. They were pacifists. They did not fight. They did not kill. They were martyred. They died public deaths in Roman arenas, and these are well documented. You can read the story of the early martyrs. How were they able to do die without hating? Their public deaths shocked and stunned the Roman audiences. It was love. Love that makes the enemy disappear. Love that makes the self disappear. Self-emptying love. This is the Mind of Christ. It is the greatest challenge, the most difficult thing about following Jesus. Love is the basis of direct experience, the direct experience of God. This is what Jesus is teaching here. Love your enemies. It is the greatest challenge of Christianity, and it is the most misunderstood. The invitation for us today is to reflect on what this means for us.

May it be so for you.

Amen? Amen.