Sermon, , Matthew, Love Your Enemies

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Caroline Watson
5 years ago
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1 1 P a g e Last year, a Christian pastor in Florida threatened to burn a Quran, the Muslim holy book, to protest plans to build an Islamic worship center near the site of the 9/11 attacks in NYC. After a lot of pressure from media, other Christian leaders, and even the Secretary of Defense who warned about reprisals in Afghanistan, Dr Terry Jones agreed to cancel the burning. Picture - Jones In fact, he promised to never burn a Quran. Last week he burned one anyway. Picture Book burning. In his church of 30 people in Florida, they had a mock trial. They put the Quran on trial. A Muslim convert to Christianity was the prosecuting attorney. A Muslim cleric was invited to provide a defense. A jury of 12 church members found the Quran guilty. And it was sentenced to be burned. A picture of a burning book was also later posted on the church s website. A French reporter was present for the mock trial. He reported it and the rest of the world noticed. Here s a question that occurs to me: Who is telling this Florida pastor who he is: Jesus Christ or his enemies? (2x) Multiple protests have occurred in the Arab world this week. It took about a week for the Muslim Teachers to preach against the blasphemy And for the most radical to incite their followers to outrage and action. Picture Afghan protesters On this Friday in Afghanistan 7 United Nations peace keepers were killed when a protest against the Quran burning turned violent. One report says 2 of the UN workers were beheaded. 4 Afghan protesters were also killed. Reports have the Afghan protesters shouting death to America and Get these bloody (blankety blank) Americans out of our country. Those are the kinds of actions of our enemies. Not every Afghany is our enemy, but that s how some think and act. What effect should their actions have on our actions? Do we define who we are by what our enemy does? Who tells us who we are?

2 On Friday CNN's John King recorded a "long interview" with the Quran burning pastor. It was later deemed too full of hate speech to put on the air. 2 P a g e A USA Today article reported that CNN was refusing to show the interview, and in the comment section following the article someone referred to Evangelical Christians as America s Taliban and the comment section was full of those who insisted that Christianity is just as bigoted and hateful and violent as Islam. Was Jesus Christ hateful, bigoted, or violent? Title slide We have been talking about what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel According to Matthew. And I just have to bring several things Jesus said to light on this situation to help us consider it, learn from it, and respond to it. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said: Matthew 5: Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, Do not break your oath, but fulfill to the Lord the vows you have made. 34 But I tell you, do not swear an oath at all: either by heaven, for it is God s throne; 35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36 And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37 All you need to say is simply Yes or No ; anything beyond this comes from the evil one. You know what Jesus was teaching against here. He was teaching about not making a promise, an oath, and then later trying to get out of it on a technicality. The Jews had developed a list of things you could swear by and it wouldn t be so bad if you broke your promise and a list of things you could never swear by and break your promise. It was like: do you pinky swear? I pinky swear. Do you swear on a Bible? I swear on a Bible. Do you swear on your mother s grave? No, I won t do that. As in I promised never to burn a book, and even though my church burned the book where I am the Sr. Pastor, it wasn t me who lit the match. Jesus said, cut that out. Don t swear. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said:

3 3 P a g e And Jesus also said, Matthew 7:1-2 1 Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So right away I feel like, I need to be careful. But the Florida pastor and church had a trial. They put the Quran and all who esteem it on trial. But listen to how the apostle Paul later qualified who is not to be judged. 1 Corinthians 5: What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. Paul is saying to the Corinthians who were having problems with an immoral brother, no, you have to judge this sin and this situation and deal with it. Just be careful, not to judge those outside the church. Leave that to... who? God. Who will judge those who reject Jesus Christ? Who will judge those who reject his word and follow another book? Are Christians to judge those who are not in the church? Does that mean we cannot have value judgments about what is truth? No Does that mean we cannot say that this is a false religion or teaching? No. We just don t issue edicts of condemnation and pronounce punishments to unbelievers. That s what they do. That s not the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus is truth and? Grace. Jesus Christ brought us truth and... grace. We are to speak the truth in... love. We cannot win the world with the law. Through knowledge of God s law and the way the world falls short of the law will save no one. Truth must be followed by grace, not condemnation. And lastly, and most importantly in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said:

4 4 P a g e Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. It is a given that the Quran teaches that infidels, including Christians, should be converted or killed. It is true that day after day Christians are being persecuted, jailed, beaten, even killed by Muslims around the world. That makes them enemies of Christians and Christ, by their choice. If that is the case, according to Jesus in this passage, how are we to treat Muslims? Even if the Quran is false, it is beloved by Muslims, so if we desecrate it, is that love? So, what does this passage say about how Dr Terry Jones is representing the teachings and person of Jesus Christ? God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good. He send his rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. God loves even the evil and unrighteous. So if God can love those who hate him, what about you? How about you and me? At work with that coworker who makes life miserable? With you friend who turned on you and now says things against you... With your spouse that betrayed your trust?... With your family member who has cheated you?... With the one you went to court with?... What is the response Christ would have you give in return to being used, persecuted, hated, or betrayed?

5 5 P a g e Love. Why? Why? Well let me answer it this way. Leo Tolstoy is a famous author. He wrote what major classic? He was a Christian. After 30 years following Christ, he wrote a book called, The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You. In it he talked about loving your enemies in such a profound way that the Ghandis from India learned their passive resistance from his book. Tolstoy said: "Certain questions are put to us not so much that we should answer them, as that we should spend a lifetime wrestling with them. My question: `Who tells you who you are?"' Who tells you who you are? Do your enemies tell you who you are? Do they dictate who you will be? Who tells you who you are?

6 6 P a g e I was eighteen years chaplain here at Yale, and it was natural that seniors going on to graduate school (who had not learned that education kills by degrees) should come to the chaplain for letters of recommendation. Modesty aside, I wrote brilliant letters of recommendation, and often I would write to such highfalutin institutions of higher education as the Harvard Medical School or the Columbia Law School: "Dear Dean of Admission, this candidate will undoubtedly be in the bottom quarter of your class, but surely you will agree with me that the bottom quarter should be as carefully selected as the top quarter. And for what would you be looking in the bottom quarter if not for the sterling extracurricular characteristics so eminently embodied by this candidate?" And I would list them: caring, conscientious, will seek not private gain but the common good. Then I would show the letter to the senior. You are not going to believe this but, invariably, their feelings were hurt. "How do you know that I am going to be in the bottom quarter?" Well, all the evidence is in, isn't it? "Yeah, but you didn't have to tell them." You see what is going on? Just to get into Yale, you have to be in the 99.5 percentile, to graduate, 99.6; to get in the Columbia Law School or the Harvard Medical School, you have to be in the 99.7, and to graduate, in the But just because I did not say that they were going to be in the 99.9 never mind that I said they were caring, conscientious, would seek the common good, not personal gain they felt as nothing. Such is the power of institutions of higher education to tell you who you are. Some people need money to tell them who they are. There are of course two ways to be rich: one is to have a lot of money; the other is to have few needs. As the second option is not entertained with breathtaking regularity in American society, it is well to remember the wise words of British philosopher John Ruskin, who said, "The primary reward of human toil is not what you get for it, but what you become by it." Human development is a matter of being more, not having more. Some people need power to tell them who they are. Think of the politicians who seek, gain, and hang on for dear life to the political power they have obtained. It is moving, always, to me, to remember that Abraham Lincoln in Congress raised up to say that the war in Mexico was unnecessary and unconstitutional. For that, he lost his congressional seat. Wisconsin. But it was good to know that some politicians have ethical instincts greater than their political ones. Ethical is as ethical does. Believe me, as a pastor I can report to you that many people need their sins to tell them who they are. In fact, the way some people treasure their sins, you would think they were the holiest things in their lives. And finally, some people need enemies to tell them who they are. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, millions of American anticommunists suddenly lost their identity. "Who are we without communists?" In the 1990s they elevated liberals to the stature of communists and found their identities again. But this works on both sides. In March of 1968, President Johnson in the middle of the war in Vietnam announced that he would not stand for reelection. Half a million people in the American

7 7 P a g e peace movement lost their identity. "Who are we without LBJ?" Well, fortunately Mr. Nixon came along and restored it. Today, this is a pretty important question: Who tells you who you are? On September 11th, a restless, rootless society vaguely groping for a meaning was viciously attacked, and now, it would appear, millions of Americans are purposeful again; they have found their identity. Last Sunday I was ambushed in church by a deep feeling that Jesus never made more sense than when he gave that incredible, provocative commandment, "Love your enemies." At least if you love your enemies, your enemies cannot tell you who you are. Saint Augustine said, "Imagine the vanity of thinking that your enemy can do you more damage than your enmity." And of course, "Love your enemy" is a reminder that love is perfected in the love of the imperfect. It is a good question, is it not? Who tells you who you are? Suppose you heard and actually believed Isaiah when he said, "`I have called you by name. You are mine,' saith the Lord." What does that mean? It means, for one thing, you never have to prove yourself, for two reasons: God's love is poured out equally, for everybody from the Pope to the loneliest wino on the planet, and God's love does not seek value, it creates it. It is not because we have value that we are loved, but because God loves us that we have value. Our value is a gift, not an achievement. But if you do not have to prove yourself, you have to express yourself. And what a world of difference there is between proving and expressing yourself. To express yourself means basically to return God's love with a devotion of your own. It means you do not have to be successful, you have to be valuable. You do not have to make money, you have to make a difference, primarily in the lives of those Jesus put first and society generally puts last and counts least. One of my favorite stories is of a beggar in sixteenth century Paris, desperately ill and brought to the table of a group of doctors who said in Latin they were sure he would not understand- "Faciamus experimentum in anima vile"; "Let us experiment on this vile fellow." The beggar was in fact an impoverished student, later to become a worldly renowned scholar, Marc Antoine Muret. And he asked from the slab on which they had laid him out, linimam vilem appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus mori est?"; "Will you call vile one for whom Christ did not disdain to die?"

8 If Christ did not disdain to die for anyone, who are we not to live for everyone? 8 P a g e In religious faith, it is not doctrine, but love, that is nonnegotiable. And love, among other things, demands the utmost in clear-sightedness. If your heart is full of fear, you will seek not truth, but safety. But if your heart is full of love, it will have a liberating effect on the mind. For as Saint Paul said, "Even though I understand all mysteries and all knowledge but have not love, I am nothing." I believe that. I believe it is better not to live, than not to love. So, do not let... tell you who you are. Do not let money tell you who you are. Do not let power, and do not let your sins tell you who you are, when there is more mercy in God than sin in us. And let us not let our enemies tell us who we are, lest we become what we abhor. You do not have to prove yourself, but you have to express yourself. Finally, it is quite easy. All you have to do is to remember: "`I have called you by name. You are mine,' saith the Lord." Amen. We are involved in Libya. Bombing. Gaddafi was saying things like this is a new crusade where the Christians are attacking the Muslims. President Obama tried to define why we did it saying we are the kind of people who cannot stand by when a dictator is about to wipe out his own people with no mercy. Our enemies are trying to define who we are. I watch detective shows. Criminal Minds Suspect Behavior. Forrest Whitaker. Evangelical Christian was a nut. He was blowing up his kids because he had twisted the Abraham and Isaac sacrifice. The enemies of Christianity those who oppose Christ and his followers are trying to define who we are. Do we let them? Do you let your enemies define who you are?

9 Jesus said... love your enemies... 9 P a g e Leo Tolstoy

Matthew 5: The POWER of Conquering Love

Matthew 5: The POWER of Conquering Love Matthew 5:38-48 Matthew 5:38-48 You have heard that it was said, Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I tell you: Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the