“But to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you….” (Luke 6:27)
Comedian George Burns attended a gala given in honor of his ninety-fifth birthday. The dais was filled with show business celebrities. One of the first speakers was Irving Brecher, creator of the popular fifties television show, “The Life of Riley.” Here’s what Brecher had to say about Burns: “What’s so unusual about our guest of honor this evening is that in a profession that is so fiercely competitive – where the pressure to make it big is so intense that friends often turn on one another – George Burns doesn’t have a single enemy.” Brecher paused for a moment, and then added, “They all died.”
Jesus seldom makes things easy. He doesn’t simply ask us to love. He asks us to love extravagantly. He asks us to love each other, to love the lost, to love those the world hates, and to love those we find repulsive. He even goes so far, as in today’s gospel from Luke, to ask us to love our enemies. And that, as you and I know very know, is a mighty tall order,… a mighty tall order.
Loving your enemies is true tough love. Some labor long and hard just to define who their enemy is. For me, on the other hand, it takes hardly any time or effort at all, particularly when I’m being honest. In my former life of politics, I encountered one or two or three who severely challenged my capacity to love them. They did, however, help bring about my political “conversion” to Democracy with a capital “D.” But admittedly, compared to other people’s enemies, mine are pretty tame.
What Jesus means by loving your enemies doesn’t require feeling affection for the likes of Saddam Hussein. It doesn’t require acting like a doormat or punching bag for abusive people, nor being passive in the face of injustice. It does require, however, loving someone as you believe God loves you. Jesus challenges us to love others, even those who hurt or mistreat us, because he knows that doing so brings out the best in others, which in turn brings out the best in us. By treating others as if they were what they ought to be, we, like Jesus himself, help them become what they are capable of being.
Jesus attaches no conditions to love. Nowhere does he say we should love only those who are sinless, only those who agree with us, only those we find attractive. On the contrary, he expects us to love others regardless of whether we find them lovable or not. Even Osama bin Laden; even the spouse who deserted you; or the priest who molested your son; or the man who kidnapped and murdered your daughter.
Loving people like that seems totally absurd, totally beyond our capacities – which of course it is. But that’s part of the good news; we do indeed have the power, if we choose to use it, if we choose to act beyond our capacities. Because God is love and we are created in God’s image; because God lives with us and within us; and because of what Jesus was able to do on the cross, we have an inexhaustible supply of love to rely on to keep Jesus’ seemingly impossible commandment.
Love in its purest form is the most powerful weapon we have against hatred, indifference, prejudice, misunderstanding, and divisiveness. The more we love, the more we understand that this commandment is life-altering for everyone involved. Just as water rushing against hardened stone eventually erodes the stone, so love in action breaks down barriers between people. It’s a commandment which works miracles and brings the kingdom of God closer to reality
On the morning of Sunday, November 8, 1987, Gordon Wilson, an Irishman took his daughter Marie to a parade in the town of Eniskillen, Northern Ireland. As Wilson and his twenty-year old daughter stood beside a brick wall waiting for English soldiers and police to come marching by, a bomb planted by IRA terrorists exploded from behind, and the brick wall tumbled on them. The blast instantly killed half a dozen people and pinned Gordon and his daughter beneath several feet of rubble. Gordon’s shoulder and arm were injured. Unable to move, Gordon felt someone take hold of his hand. It was his daughter Marie.
“Is that you, Dad?” she asked. “Yes, Marie,” Gordon answered. He heard several people begin screaming. “Are you all right?” Gordon asked his daughter. “Yes,” she said. But then she, too, began to scream. As he held her hand, again and again he asked if she was all right, and each time she said yes. Finally Marie said, “Daddy, I love you very much.”
Those were her last words. Four hours later she died in the hospital of severe spinal and brain injuries. Later that evening, a BBC reporter requested permission to interview Gordon Wilson. After Wilson described what had happened, the reporter asked, “How do you feel about the guys who planted the bomb?” “I bear them no ill will,” Wilson replied. “I bear them no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray tonight and every night that God will forgive them.”
In the months that followed, many people asked Wilson, who later became a senator in the Republic of Ireland, how he could say such a thing, how he could forgive such a monstrous act. Wilson explained, “I was hurt. I had just lost my daughter. But I wasn’t angry. Marie’s last words to me – words of love – had put me on a plane of love. I received God’s grace, through the strength of his love for me, to forgive.” For years after this tragedy, Gordon Wilson continued to work for peace in Northern Ireland.
Because forgiving like loving requires an act of will, it’s not possible to love your enemies unless first, like Gordon Wilson, you’re willing to forgive them. Alexander Pope, the 18th century English poet, correctly observed: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” And, of course, Jesus is the very model of forgiveness. His love, after all, enabled him to forgive those who put him on the cross and even to forgive His Father for allowing them to do it. But for us ordinary mortals, forgiving enemies isn’t any easier than loving them.
That’s because we misunderstand what forgiveness is all about. Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s not condoning what’s been done to you or another. No sensible person, for example, would tell you to return to an abusive situation. Nor does forgiveness mean not defending yourself, your family, or your property. It doesn’t mean forgoing the pursuit of criminal or civil remedies either. Forgiveness isn’t being soft-headed or soft-hearted; it’s being savvy in your own self interest. Forgiveness, you see, isn’t something you do for your enemy, it’s something you for yourself.
Why forgive? Because refusing to forgive gives the person who hurt you the power to continue to hurt you. It keeps you trapped in victimhood and binds you to him or her as if by a metal chain. And ironically, most often your enemy either doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care how you feel. Forgiveness, on the other hand, sets you free.
To bear grudges, to harbor hate, to seek revenge, are all self-defeating. They don’t satisfy; they don’t heal. They keep you from moving forward and starting over again. They bury positive energies in negative emotions and actions which serve only to exhaust and deplete you. They destroy your creativity, retard your spiritual growth, ruin your physical and mental health, corrode your soul, and make it impossible to practice the First and Second Great Commandments. In short, they’re like drinking poison expecting to ease your pain.
Why forgive? Because our faith requires it. Every time we recite the Lord’s Prayer we’re reminded that before we can ask for God’s forgiveness, we have to first forgive those who trespassed against us. It’s the only petition with a condition attached.
Once in the Old West some hunters were called away from their campsite by a sudden alarm, leaving their campfire unattended with a kettle of hot boiling water on it. Presently an old bear crept out of the woods, attracted by the fire, and, seeing the kettle with its lid dancing about on top, promptly seized it. Naturally it burned and scalded him badly; but instead of dropping it instantly, he proceeded to hug it tightly – this being the bear’s only idea of defense. Of course, the tighter he hugged it, the more it burned him, and, of course, the more it burned him the tighter he hugged it, and so on in a vicious circle, to the bear’s undoing.
Why forgive? Because hating your enemies is like hugging that kettle! It just ain’t worth it!
Anthony J. Sciolino
Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (Cycle C).
February 22, 2004.
Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 22-23/81
Corinthians 15:45-49
Luke 6:27-38.