Creating Enemies

This is a sermon I preached for Calvary UMC in Frederick.

Scripture: Matthew 5:38-48 (NRSV)
 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

“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.”

Sermon: Did Jesus stutter?*

One of the variants of the meme.

There is a meme that I see from time to time that shows Jesus sitting beneath a tree, surrounded by people. He's teaching, and he says, “Love one another.” Another speech bubble appears from the crowd; “but what if,” the crowd asks, “what if they are gay or Muslim or have less money than me or don't have a home or have a different skin color or were born in a different country or voted for someone I don't like?”  And Jesus answers, “Did I stutter?”  Jesus tells us in our scripture reading today from Matthew’s Gospel to love our enemies. He tells us to pray for those who persecute us! And he doesn’t stutter when he says it.    

But we can still get around the difficulty of this scripture because, really, who are our enemies? After all, we are not superheroes. Most of us anyway. We aren’t fighting shadowy villains in spandex bent on taking over the world. Nor are we feudal kings fighting other lords for land, even though we might be side-eyeing our next-door neighbor for planting an ugly bush on our side of the property line. While there may be plenty of people we don’t like, enemy is probably not a word we use in our daily vocabulary.  But we do have enemies. And some of them are taught to us.

Some of you remember the Cold War, right? My dad loves bad 1970s action movies, so I have seen many many movies in which all the bad guys have terrible Russian accents. The epitome of evil, such movies teach us, can be found in Soviet Russia. It seemed so silly to me, but remember, I was two when the Wall between East and West Berlin came down. I never had duck and cover bombing drills in school. But I have experienced the creation of an enemy. When I was in ninth grade, we huddled in Health class and watched the news when the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City came down on September 11, 2001. I was taught pretty quickly that I had enemies after all. At first, it was just learning about this terrorist group called Al Qaeda. But eventually, through news reports that constantly used the word “Muslim” to describe the word “terrorist,” I forgot about white domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, and learned that Muslims were the real terrorists. And terrorists were my enemy.

No one ever said to me, “Shannon, Muslims are your enemy.” But through media and people’s fear, that notion kind of sunk into me. So imagine three years after 9/11, when I went on my first trip to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I found myself surrounded by Muslims. It was a little confusing. They were not very scary. We went to a big international event one evening when we on that first mission trip and I saw people wearing shirts in English that playfully, or snarkily, read: “I am a Muslim. Do not panic.” In fact, the Muslims I met had undergone far worse terror at the hands of Christians during the genocide in the 1990s than I had experienced on 9/11. But how easily we create these universally bad people in our imaginations.   If it had not been for Muslims, I might not be the Christian I am today. You may have heard me tell this story or read about it because I talk about it a lot: Ðana was one of our translators on that first trip to Bosnia, and she is who I visited earlier last month when I was on vacation. She is a Muslim; her father was killed near the community mosque by Christian soldiers when she was a child. One day, our host Saja took me and my sister with her and Ðana to a friend's house for a dinner. Being on a strange continent with strange people who didn’t speak our language eating strange, but surprisingly tasty, food in front of a house that was still stained with bullet holes should have been terrifying. But my sister and I sat thigh to thigh on a tiny bench and ate, listening to the drone of the huge beetles that zoomed around the porch light as well as the music of the almost-guttural Bosnian language. And in the midst of this, Ðana reached over and hugged us to her. “I love you,” she said. 

Ðana, a Muslim woman who had grown up during a war in a country that most USAmericans cannot locate on a map, a woman I had only known for something like two days at this point, told me and my sister, white Christian Americans who had idyllic childhoods but whose country was waging a war against Muslims in the Middle East, that she loved us. And it was in that moment of her telling us that she loved us that I felt God telling me that God loved me.   Love your enemies, Jesus said. He doesn’t tell us why. But in my life, loving someone I was taught was my enemy opened up new worlds for me. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my Christian journey. 

Now you might not get a chance to go someplace like Bosnia to test out Jesus’ command to love our enemies. But Muslims are not the only enemies that have been offered to us. Throughout history and in every culture, we demonize and marginalize.   And right now our culture seems to be all about the creation of enemies, along religious, racial, and political lines especially. Two weeks ago, I went to a preaching conference where two senators were also invited to speak. One of those senators was Cory Booker from New Jersey. He shared a lot about how we are in a moral moment as a country, one that should transcend political parties and he shared what he called the Tale of Two Hugs.

The first hug was between President Obama and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy. Senator Booker joked about how it was an awkward man hug, but pointed out that no matter how awkward it was, it was used as a political weapon against Governor Christie. How dare a good Republican hug that terrible President Obama! But Senator Booker reminded us how awful the devastation was after the hurricane, how exhausted and upset Governor Christie was. And how in that pain, the president reached out in compassion and the governor received it. Similarly, after Senator John McCain’s cancer diagnosis, when he came back to the floor of the senate, Senator Booker crossed the aisle to hug him. And he immediately received hate tweets. How dare he, a progressive, hug a terrible Republican! But Senator Booker said he saw a brother, one he disagreed with often but one who was a fellow human being, in pain, and so he reached out in love. 

Now in some ways, these men are enemies. Unlike me and Ðana who, when we first met, were teenage girls who liked the things all teenage girls liked despite the differences of our backgrounds, Republicans and Democrats often have competing agendas. And those agendas matter. Often, when we read the Gospel lesson to love our enemies, we use it to mean that we ought to just let people take advantage of us, that turning the other cheek when we are wronged means let ourselves be abused over and over again. We pray for those who persecute us and neglect voting against that persecution or marching in the street to speak out against it. I don’t think that’s what the scripture means at all. What Jesus is telling us to do is to recognize one another as human beings, as people in need of love and prayer even when we come from different backgrounds. Even if we disagree with one another. And that love and prayer can be transformational and draw us closer to God.

Jesus explains, For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?...And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Jesus tells us that there is a reward in loving even those enemies. That there is more to the abundant life he calls us to than us only hanging out with people who look like us and act like us and think like us. Instead, God intends a more beautiful world, one of real relationships and transformed hearts--- not only our enemies’ hearts, but our own hearts as well.

Now, I admit that I am preaching to myself this week. Not because society has created new enemies for me, or because some have been constructed when disagree with people, but because some of my friends were deeply wronged. You may be in a similar situation, sometimes seeing enemies at work or at family gatherings or even here at church. And you may see them as enemies because they are simply different from you and you don’t understand them, because they disagree with you, or maybe because they deeply wronged you. This scripture gives us direction to liberate us from the fear and anger with which having enemies burdens us. It reminds us that we don’t have to live this way; that instead we can choose to see one another as human and call one another to live in a new way together. 

Because Jesus doesn’t stutter. He says we are to love one another. Even when we disagree. Even when we are angry. Even while we keep working for justice. Even then we love. And we pray. My prayer for us is that we take this scripture to heart and learn to expect transformation.




*The original title of the sermon and refrain throughout that reference a meme perpetuate ableism. Rather than stuttering, we should be asking if Jesus misspoke. I am committed to reeducating myself about the ableism I've internalized and will work to not make such thoughtless mistakes in the future!