Sunday's Message: Loving Our Enemies

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On Sunday we continued working through the Sermon on the Mount. We read Matthew 5:38-48 where Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, offer our coat, go the extra mile, give the extra money, and love our enemies.  I shared stories from the lives of Will Campbell and Saint Francis to help us imagine the life Jesus is calling us to lead. 

 As one commentator wrote:  We are called here to love as God loves.  Jesus is giving us a portrait of the very heart of God, one who loves the unlovable, come among us in Christ, suffers our worst and rises to forgive us. Turn the cheek, give the coat, lend the money, love the enemy because that is how God loves. If you want to follow Jesus you will be adopted into a life in which you find yourself loving this way before you know what you are doing.

 Maybe we can start by spending a little time reflecting on whom we consider our enemies. Then, pray for them and pray for ourselves as we seek to see them and love them as God does. We do all we can to be reconciled. Our friends may not understand and feel we have betrayed them. Our enemies may not understand and spit in our face. Jesus did not say following him was easy – indeed he called us to pick up our cross and follow him, and love even those who would seek to nail us to that cross.  But what else can we do? Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that life is the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.    
Let us go and do likewise.

If you would like to learn more about Will Campbell, here are a few recommendations:

  - His memoir:  
Brother to a Dragonfly

  - Rolling Stone Article from 1990:
THE FIRST CHURCH OF REDNECKS, WHITE SOCKS AND BLUE RIBBON BEER

  - Short article from 2013: 
Will D. Campbell: An Unconventional Approach to Racial Reconciliation
And then a couple short account of Saint Francis and the Sultan:
  - ST. FRANCIS AND THE SULTAN
  - St. Francis meets Sultan Malik al-Kamil


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