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"



Now if we understand 'love' to mean 'have warm glowing feelings towards', then I suspect that this is a recipe for psychological disturbance. If it means either 'seek the welfare of ... even at personal expense' or work towards making a situation where it becomes possible for you to have a positive relationship with ...', then I think we have something to work with. Let's face it we may love our family but we don't always like them let alone have warm glowy feelings for them [though sometimes we do and that's helpful in sustaining the longer term loving]; loving them means being prepared to work for their welfare, looking out for them, trying to see things from their point of view, working at reconciliation when things are hairy, doing stuff to help them and so on.



So let's re-read that list with enemies in view. It's still challenging, but in many cases it is possible to begin to imagine that perhaps it could happen. It's modelling God's attitude: whether we like God or not, many of the benefits God confers on us are available to all, save only those that are inherant in a positive relationship to God.



The idea of hating your enemies was probably about defining 'neighbour' in ways that ties of kin and race etc made easier. "Who is my neighbour?" -well actually your enemy is your neighbour. Simply patting ourselves on the back for having good deeded those I am tied to by 'natural bonds of affection and common interest' is not particularly virtuous; everyone does it; it's how we're made and how our making most easily expresses itself. The harder thing is to recognise that the call on our consideration, effort, regard and affirmation can also come fromthsoe whom we find difficult, who are unpleasant or whom we have been 'told' are beyond the scope of human consideration. In such cases we have to think: 'what would I do for this person if I naturally liked them and wanted to serve them?' and then do that thing. Actually, the exercise of learning to pray blessing on those for whom we feel anger and dsidain or disgust is a struggle but one that does change our heart. If you keep a prayer list, have a section for forgiving and blessing enemies and make sure you visit it regularly. It's always the ones who persecute us that are hardest: I don't think that just 'for our faith' is intended here: persecute means anytime we are harassed and held in contmept by others. Its hard not to seek revenge or to nurse a grudge. But remember, in working for that person's welfare you may be sowing the seeds that will change their persecution. One thing is almost certain they are not going to change if you or I are not prepared to break the cycle.



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