St. John’s Lutheran Church
23 February 2025 + Lectionary 7c
Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38
Rev. Josh Evans
“Probably no admonition of Jesus has been more difficult to follow than the command to ‘love your enemies.’ Some [people] have sincerely felt that its actual practice is not possible. It is easy, they say, to love those who love you, but how can one love those who openly and insidiously seek to defeat you? Others […] contend that Jesus’ exhortation to love one’s enemies is testimony to the fact that the Christian ethic is designed for the weak and cowardly, and not for the strong and courageous. Jesus, they say, was an impractical idealist.”
If anyone had cause to succumb to bitter hatred for their enemies, it’s Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote these opening words of his sermon, appropriately titled “Loving Your Enemies,” while he was in a jail in Georgia, and who endured constant threats, violence, and vitriol throughout his life and ministry.
And yet, in an eloquent – and challenging – sermon, King doubles down:
“In spite of these insistent questions and persistent objections, this command of Jesus challenges us with new urgency. Upheaval after upheaval has reminded us that [humanity] is traveling along a road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction and damnation. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist.
“I am certain that Jesus understood the difficulty inherent in the act of loving one’s enemy. He never joined the ranks of those who talk glibly about the easiness of the moral life. He realized that every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God. So when Jesus said ‘Love your enemy,’ he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every word of it. Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives.”
If anyone had cause to succumb to bitter hatred for their enemies, it’s Joseph, whose story we only hear in part, at its climactic and emotionally charged conclusion, in today’s first reading.
Joseph, who at only 17 years of age becomes the victim of sibling rivalry run amok when his brothers, consumed by jealousy, throw their brother Joseph, his father’s favorite, into a pit, leaving him for dead.
Joseph, who instead of actually being left for dead is sold into slavery for twenty pieces of silver, and whose death is intricately faked by his brothers who proceed to take his robe, tear it, slaughter a goat, and dip his robe in the goat’s blood to show to their grieving father.
Joseph, who initially finds favor in the house of Potiphar, an Egyptian official, but who ends up being tricked by Potiphar’s wife, framed for assault, and thrown into prison.
Joseph, whose knack for interpreting dreams finally pays off when he is able to interpret none other than Pharaoh’s dreams, predicting seven years of plenty and seven years of famine in Egypt, and who, now thirty years old, is set up by Pharaoh as his second-in-command, to be the overseer of a large-scale endeavor to take advantage of these seven years of plenty in order to ensure Egypt’s survival and even prosperity in the seven years of famine to follow.
Joseph, now in a position of great privilege and immense political power, when the famine sets in seven years later and word of Egypt’s prosperity spreads even to Canaan, when his brothers come to Egypt to bring back food for their family, and when he finally has his opportunity for retribution and to use his position of privilege and power to exact revenge…
Joseph, who knows exactly who they are, even though they don’t recognize him, who has had twenty-two long years to think and stew, and who organizes an intricate plan to reunite all of his brothers – even Benjamin, his father’s second favorite, who initially stayed behind…
Joseph, who now has all of his brothers at his mercy … shows mercy.
How do we love our enemies?
Again from King: “First we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.”
A forgiveness which can only come from the injured party.
A forgiveness which doesn’t erase the harm or injustice from memory,
but insists that the thing done “no longer remains a barrier to relationship.”
Joseph, so moved to the brink of emotional collapse and whose weeping is so loud the entire household of Pharaoh can hear it, finally reveals himself to his brothers in what can only be described as an act of mercy, an act of forgiveness, an act of love, and ultimately, an act of reconciliation, as the entire family, their father included, reunites and settles in Egypt.
Well, that’s a nice Bible story, isn’t it?
That’s all well and good for Joseph and his brothers,
but we live in the not-so-nice here-and-now.
Is this story, and Jesus’ imperative to “love your enemies,” really meant for us?
How are we supposed to “love our enemies” under an administration that seeks to tear families of immigrants apart and that threatens to erase the existence of our transgender siblings? How are we supposed to “love our enemies” in a political climate that fosters mistrust of those who are different and hatred of the “other”?
I admit that, right now, especially now, this “loving our enemies” thing is hard.
But maybe, therein lies the good news:
loving our enemies.
“We should be happy,” King writes, “that [Jesus] did not say, ‘Like your enemies.’ It is almost impossible to like some people. ‘Like’ is a sentimental and affectionate word. How can we be affectionate toward a person whose avowed aim is to crush our very being and place innumerable stumbling blocks in our path? How can we like a person who is threatening our children and bombing our homes? That is impossible. But Jesus recognized that love is greater than like.”
This is not eros – a kind of romantic love.
Nor is it philia – a reciprocal affection between friends.
This is agape – “the love of God operating in the human heart” (King).
We don’t have to like our enemies to love them.
We don’t even have to love our enemies to love them like that.
We love our enemies because God first loved us and loves us deeply.
We love our enemies because God is love.
Because this love is from God and for all people, without restriction.
To be perfectly clear:
This does not mean making peace or being complicit with evil,
nor does it mean abandoning our baptismal calling
“to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.”
Loving our enemies does not mean ignoring the harm or injustice they cause.
Loving our enemies means not letting those things have the final word.
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,” King contends. “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that […] Time is cluttered with the wreckage of communities that surrendered to hate and violence. For the salvation of our nation and the salvation of [human]kind, we must follow another way.”
“Love your enemies.”
It is, admittedly, one of Jesus’ most difficult teachings,
one which he himself surely struggled with –
as his own message took him to the ridicule of the cross –
which puts us, with Joseph and Martin Luther King Jr., in good company.
And yet, Jesus knew exactly what he was saying
and meant every word of it.
Love. Your. Enemies.
Love – because hatred gets us nowhere worth going.
Love – because it has the power to save us.
