Monday
Luke 6.27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you.”
Please read that again. And again. These words of Jesus are as counter-cultural as anything he ever said. They would win a comedy competition of “Things you would never hear in a football dressing room.” But they are serious. Not deadly serious, but life-saving serious. Enmity fuels hate; hate finds words as hate speech and cursing; then verbalised hate escalates to ill treatment. We live in a culture where that connection between fear and hatred of the other makes enemies out of strangers and turns public discourse into a weapon. You cannot be a follower of Jesus and think, talk and act in ways that divide the world into those we love and those we hate. Following Jesus means going against the stream – love your enemies.
Tuesday
Luke 6.27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies…”
Thought for the day can’t always be warm words of encouragement, feel-good thoughts, or devotional supplements to boost the enjoyment of our inner life. Obedience is when we hear what Jesus tells us, and say yes to the demands of life under His reign. “Love your enemies” is so counter-cultural, so counter-intuitive, that it takes an inner revolution, a conversion of heart and mind, a renewal of our whole inner apparatus of thought, feeling, conscience, and motivation. To follow Jesus is to carry our own cross, on which enmity, hatred, cursing and ill-treatment of others are crucified, with Christ. The Jesus we follow said to his crucifiers, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” That will take love, God’s love, poured into our hearts.
Wednesday
Luke 6.27 “I tell you who hear me: do good to those who hate you…”
Those who dislike us, those we see as unlike us and we don’t want anything to do with them, those we’ve fallen out with and never sorted it, those who see us as difficult, or who blame us for something we did or didn’t do – Jesus is talking about all those folk who make life harder for us. Love them, and the first step is do good to them. Think of ways to build the bridge, show ‘indefatigable goodwill’, find ways to signal friendship and open closed doors, pray for them. There’s a thought – a prayer list populated by those we are at odds with! Love is so much more than a feeling – it’s an enacted argument based on the logic of doing good.
Bonhoeffer Statue, Westminster Abbey
Thursday
Luke 6.27 “But I tell you who hear me: bless those who curse you.”
Thirty years after Jesus said this, Paul dropped Jesus’ peace initiative into the heart of the Roman Empire: “Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse…Do not repay anyone evil for evil…If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge my friends…” (Read Romans 12.14-21) Paul the persecutor had so internalised the words of Jesus that he was ready to write the handbook on Christians loving their enemies. And he started with the words of Jesus!
Friday
Luke 6.27 “But I tell you who hear me: pray for those who ill-treat you.”
I was serious about a prayer list for folk who, for whatever reason, we don’t get on with. From family to work-colleagues, from people we’ve fallen out with to those we’ve never met personally but can’t stand them (our least favourite politicians, celebrities, church members!) To pray for someone is to bring them with us into the presence of God, who knows their heart and ours, and to seek God’s blessing upon them through our prayers.
Saturday
“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother or sister for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face that hitherto may have been strange to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother or sister for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner. This is a happy discovery for the Christian who begins to pray for others. There is no dislike, no personal tension, no estrangement that cannot be overcome by intercession as far as our side of it is concerned.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, page 65)
Sunday
Luke 6.27 “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who ill-treat you.” Romans 12.20-21 “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Paul is quoting Proverbs 25.20-21. These are wisdom words. The words of Jesus that have been our focus all week are likewise wise. Wise in the sense of enacted practical goodness, patient refusal to hate, constructive bridge building with our words, and by prayer bringing every wrong relationship into the purifying, penetrating presence of God’s holy love. To heap coals of fire on the heads of our enemies is to do what Jesus did: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” Love outlasts hate, the resurrection proves that, and we are resurrection people. Peace-making and peace-building are characteristic identifiers of those who are called to be children of God, those who have the family likeness of the Father.
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