Tough Love

Rev. Debbie Cato

Lev. 19:15-18 and Matthew 5:43-48

Peace Presbyterian Church 1/18/2015

“Tough Love”

The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of Jesus’ most significant teachings. If you want to know what Jesus is about – chapters 5 and 6 in Matthew are a good place to go. The Sermon on the Mount speaks volumes about who Jesus the Christ is. It gives us a good picture of what the Kingdom of God looks like. These teachings speak clearly about who we are to be if we call ourselves followers of Christ, and what we should be focused on doing. It’s good stuff. But it’s hard teaching.

Right at the outset of his ministry, Jesus lays it on the line. To follow Jesus demands a totally different way of life. A new age has dawned and the Sermon shows what human life must be like after we repent and commit ourselves to Christ. In His Sermon, we see a sharp contrast between the standards of Jesus and the standards of the world. We find a distinctive lifestyle, with radically different values and ambitions. Jesus challenges His followers to do the opposite of what seems normal and reasonable.

Beginning with the Beatitudes we discover that the characteristics valued in the Kingdom of God are upside down from that of the world. The powerless are lifted up and the powerful are pushed down. We learn that our reward is in heaven, not here on earth. This is radical, radical teaching.

But Jesus is just getting warmed up. He teaches us that anger toward someone is as great a sin as murder. That’s a little hard to swallow. I’m no less of a sinner than a murderer? That's hard teaching.

He teaches us that anyone who lusts after another person has committed adultery. Wow! Who of us hasn’t taken some pleasure, some delight in dreaming about what it would be like to be with some attractive man or woman? His challenging teaching continues as Jesus talks about divorce, swearing oaths and retaliation. Turn the other cheek? Seriously, Jesus?

And then he ends this part of his teaching – this half of the Sermon on the Mount with a little lesson on love.

Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ BUT I TELL YOU: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

Love is the central theme of all Jesus’ teachings – the central theme of his life and ministry. Love is the very core of who Jesus is. So it should be no surprise that Jesus challenges us to love in radical ways. He demands unlimited love; unconditional love. Love the just and the unjust he says; love the good and the evil; love those who love us back, and those who are our enemies. Jesus demands that his followers have undiscriminating and undifferentiating love toward everyone. That is a tall order! But that is the mark of our Master and so it must be the mark of His disciples. We are called to love as God loves.

I will never forget the feeling I had when my oldest daughter was born and I held her for the first time. My heart swelled with love. I was completely overwhelmed with the intensity of my emotions. These were feelings I had never experienced before in my life. In fact, the only other time I experienced this intensity of emotion, was when I held my second daughter moments after she was born 2 years later. Perhaps you know what I’m talking about? I am still overcome with emotion when I remember those first moments with those precious babies. The feeling of love I felt for my beautiful babies completely and irrevocably swallowed me up and from that moment on, I would do absolutely anything to protect them. I still would.

But you know what I really find amazing? This is only a small taste of how much God loves us! You see, God loves us more than we can possibly love one another – even our children, because his love is truly unconditional. It’s not conditioned on how cute we are or how well we behave or anything about us. He loves us because we belong to Him. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone could love my daughters more than I do. But God does.

You see, the love that Jesus describes is an intentional act - even for those we really dislike. Jesus commands us to “choose” to love; to decide that we will love our enemies; to “will ourselves” to love those we hate. It is not an emotion. It is a decision that we will love because God loves us. Christ’s disciples are commanded to reflect the generosity of God, who sends blessings upon both the righteous and the unrighteous. Jesus says, “God shines his sun on evil people and on good people. He sends his rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Why should we be different – we who call ourselves Christians? That’s radical love. That’s tough love.

Tomorrow we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. We remember the horrendous prejudice that he and others fought without violence. Theirs was a movement against hate that was non-violent. We remember the damage that hate can and will do. Tomorrow we remember the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In his book, “Strength to Love,” King writes about this passage from the gospel:

“Probably no admonition of Jesus has been more difficult to follows than the command to “love your enemies.” Some men 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?

In spite of these insistent questions and persistent objections, Jesus’

command of Jesus’ challenges us with new urgency. Upheaval after upheaval has reminded us that modern man is traveling along a road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction and damnation. …

Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world….

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.”

King knew what upheaval was like. He was hated just because of the color of his skin. He knew that hate leads to destruction. But he chose to lead a movement in love; non-violent – even when they were met with violence. King knew that love builds up and that his greatest enemies were human beings that God loved.

How can we possibly do this? How can I possibly love this person that has been so cruel to me? That has hurt me? Not on my own, that’s for sure! We are able to be gracious and forgiving and hospitable and generous, and yes, even loving because we are children of the God who showers us with His abundant grace and mercy and love – grace, mercy, and love that we don’t deserve either, just like our enemy. Those who know God’s love, can love their enemies; those who experience God’s forgiveness; can forgive those who persecute them; those who claim God’s gift of generosity, can give back to those who have little or nothing.

Can you say you have never sinned? Can we as a Church say that we have always exemplified the life of Christ? Can we say we have never hated? Never held onto

anger? Never retaliated?

Every time we sin; every time we fall short of the glory of God; every time we oppose God, we become his adversary. And isn’t an adversary the same thing as an enemy? Yet unbelievably, God continues to love us. Jesus commands us to be no different.

If we call ourselves Christian, we must choose to love… will ourselves to love, as

God loves us. God loves us with a perfect love that knows no boundaries. A love that doesn’t discriminate. A love that is more than an emotion based on the behavior of another. In this teaching, Jesus shows us that our loveless attitude toward our enemies is identical with that of the very people we despise. This is tough love. But just because it’s hard – just because it seems impossible doesn’t make it less of a truth.

If we really listen to this passage and take it to heart, we realize what a radical thing Jesus is asking us to do. It is easy to love our children, our spouses, our parents, our friends – at least during the good times. We all do. But, even those “unlovable” people in our lives are somebody’s daughter, son, mother, father, or friend and love or are loved by friends and family. I believe it is how God created us. After all, He created everyone in His image.

Jesus says in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” But to love those who rub us the wrong way and those who we find un-loveable is a challenge. To love those who actually disagree with us, who believe differently than we do – is difficult. To love people we don’t even know, perhaps have never heard of, is even more complicated, for they almost don’t exist. But to love our enemies – batterers, serial killers, suicide bombers, terrorists – now that is another matter altogether. To love as God loves “unlovable us” is what we are called to do every moment of every day.

In Christ, we are called to a radically different way of being in this world; one that

is often difficult and hard to swallow. God’s love for the world trumps our wish for vengeance and our need to be self-righteous before others. God’s love is for all of His creation and that happens to include those who do not love us and who wish to destroy us.

What would happen if we took Jesus’ teaching to heart? What would it be like if we truly loved as Christ commanded us to love? What would happen if we loved so radically that it drew people to Christ? Christ’s love is transforming – after all, it has transformed each of us, so why couldn’t it transform the world?

Let us pray: Loving God: You love people whom we do not love, You read the hearts of others, whom we do not understand, You know the inmost suffering of those whom we ignore. Open our eyes and our hearts. Enlarge our heart that it may be big enough to receive the greatness of your love. Stretch our heart that it may take into it all those who with us around the world believe in Jesus Christ. Stretch it that it may take into it all those who do not know Him, but because we know Him, are our responsibility. Stretch our hearts that it may take in all those who are not lovely in our eyes, whose hands we do not want to touch; but whom you love unconditionally in the same way that you love us. Teach us to love with your perfect love. Through Jesus Christ, our Savior. AMEN.