What God's Love Can Do
Scripture: Luke 6:27-36
Rev. Richard H. Thompson, February 14, 2010

It's Valentine's Day. The day when over one billion people on the planet will give and receive cards, candy, and flowers.

• 110 million roses, mostly red, will be sold.
• 73% of the people buying flowers are men.
• 64% of men do not make any plans in advance for a romantic Valentine's Day with their sweetheart. This can become a real problem. For example one wife shared with her husband that she had a dream. "In my dream, you gave me pearls. What," she asked her husband, "do you think it means?" The husband answered calmly, "You'll find out tonight..." That evening he gave her a small well wrapped package. Delighted, she opened it to find a book entitled, "The Meaning of Dreams..." That's fast thinking.
• King Henry VIII was the first to declare February 14th a holiday which, by the way, is celebrated only in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, France, Australia and the U.K.
• E-commerce retailers expect to rack up about $650 million in sales of food, candy, flowers and gifts.
• Teachers will receive the most Valentines Day cards, followed by children, mothers, wives, and then sweethearts. Mostly it's children six to ten years old who exchange more than 650 million Valentine's cards with their teachers, classmates and family members.

Maybe the children get it about Valentine's Day better than the rest of us.

That we live in a world looking for love...

I did some research on Wikepedia on the history of Valentine's Day. You find there's more to it than cards and candy. Depending on what you read, the holiday is named after one, two or three early Christians martyrs named "Valentine".

According to one version St. Valentine of Rome who died in 269 was persecuted as a Christian and interrogated in person by the Roman Emperor Claudius 11.

Claudius was impressed by Valentine and had discussions with him in order to get him to convert to Roman paganism in order to save his life. Valentine refused and tried to convert Claudius to Christianity instead. Because of this he was executed. Before he was executed he is reported to have performed a miracle by healing the blind daughter of his jailer.

Another Valentine, of Terni, died for his faith in the early 200's. Yet another Valentine died in Africa along with a number of his companions.

Pope Gelasius I recognized what these men stood for and established a day of remembrance in 496. Valentine's Day only first became associated with romantic love in the High Middle Ages in the days of Geoffrey Chaucer when the traditions of courtly love blossomed.

In other words, the deep history of Valentine's Day is made up of stories of people loving people who hated them.

It is a history of people inspired by the greatest lover of all time. So the deepest root of Valentine's Day, I suspect, goes back to Jesus.

Given that Valentine's Day falls on Sunday only every fourteen years, it seems like a good time to see what Jesus might say about Valentine's Day. Let's listen to him. Luke 6:27-36

"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

If there's one thing Jesus is known for world wide, it's what he says here, "Love your enemy." Can you imagine going into the Hallmark Store and walking up the Valentine's Day aisle with all those categories: Wife, Husband, Sweetheart, Teacher, Friend... and then "Enemy"!? I haven't seen that one, have you? I wonder, what would that card say? What kind of image would there be on the front?

-Maybe a heart and a white flag

-Or an outstretched hand with a heart in it.

-Maybe on the inside it says, " Peace", or, "We're in this together," or "I'm going to stand by you ..."

If you could find a card like that, who do you think you might send it to? Who might send a card like that to you?

Jesus said, "Love your enemy." Who did he have in mind when he said this? For the first Christians there would have been many possibilities:

-there was the oppressive Roman government

-there were hostile Jewish leaders

-there were those tax collectors

-if you were a Christian and refused to bend the knee to worship the emperor as a god you would find yourself in a hostile business climate.

-because you did not practice the same lifestyles, particularly when it came to sex, you would also find yourself excluded from certain social circles. You would have been considered weird, out of touch. A judgmental prude.

The enemy would be anyone who had contempt for them. It's who has contempt for us, because of what we believe. This is anyone we're tempted to think about attacking in order to protect ourselves, or to seek revenge against for what they have done to us. Where we are tempted to use the "conventional weapons" of counter attack, character assassination, personal condemnation, and even violence.

When Jesus said, "love" he did not mean chocolate covered sentiments - not that there is anything wrong with chocolate. Jesus' word for "love" means actions seeking ways to honor the person who hates, or is hated.

It's to "do good", which in the Bible means what contributes, what builds or improves or expands.

It's to "bless". Literally in the Greek this means, "speak well", as opposed to spreading rumors, or triangulating others. We all know how that works.

Suppose someone says to you, "Now, don't tell anyone but..." What happens? You get to know something confidential. You get to feel special because this person just told you something confidential. And now as a result, the two of you have just formed a little "alliance". It feels good to be on the inside. It's how to build influence with people. We have that expression, "I take you into my confidence." But this is not "blessing". This is rumoring for personal gain. "Blessing" creates open conditions for future reconciliation. Speaking well means speaking well publicly and privately.

Jesus also says "loving enemies" involves prayer. This is huge. It's to stand before the Lord on behalf the enemy and lift them up. It's to pray something like, "Lord, here's Jack. He hates what I stand for. He hates me. I'm sorely tempted to lash out but I know in my head that he's loved of you. Help me to look at him the way you see him. Do a miracle in me. Lord, I want to be willing to love him. Help me."

I wonder how Jesus' line of Valentine's Day cards would sell? Think there's a market?

But wait, there's more.

Jesus also says, "Offer the other cheek." In other words, absorb the blow. When insulted, do not retaliate. A wise Christian friend who has been through some pretty brutal times shared with me an important principle. He said, "Do not escalate". Because when we escalate we only make things worse. "Offering the other cheek" is not about being passive. When I turn the other cheek I regain the initiative. I'm not just absorbing blows. I'm asserting a radical new way to love enemies.

Let's be clear that Jesus here is talking about difficult relationships, especially when it comes to living out our Christian faith in a world that seems to want no part of us. Jesus is not talking here about someone coming through your bedroom window in the middle of the night. He is not talking criminal justice, or rogue nations.

Our Lord summed all this up with the well known Golden Rule, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." This is not original to Jesus. Most everyone already knew this rule. So do we. You and I are supposed to base how you and I treat others, including the people who hate us, or the people we hate (!), on how we ourselves would want to be treated if we were the enemy. But there's a hitch: Jesus is inviting us to look at ourselves and do a realistic self-appraisal of our own fragile, faulty, broken, sinful humanity. If we don't do this, we miss the fact that God loved us even when we wanted nothing to do with God. When we were God's enemies. When we fail to take all this into account, we fail to understand how best to do for others as we 'would have them do to us. Ironically, we become our own worst enemies!

No question. This is a very different way to look at Valentine's Day. This takes what we mean by "love" to a whole new level, doesn't it? It was real different in Jesus' day too. The Roman Empire was built on a universally understood code of conduct based on QUID PRO QUO that worked like this: You "give" in order to receive benefits. You do favors in order to gain acceptance and admittance. You gain power by doing for others so that in time of need you could call in the "chips". The emperor became emperor by building vastly complex webs of obligation. Quite literally power was all about who you knew. Guess some things don't change...

But Jesus undermines this system.

On the one hand Valentine's Day Jesus' way refuses to be defined by those who hate us. We love our enemies. On the other hand Valentine's Day Jesus' way is also not just defined by the people who already love us. As He put it, "If you love those who love you what credit is that to you?" Of course our loved ones, our wives, husbands, friends, our kids, our students, our teachers, classmates, postal worker, mechanic, grocery store clerk, doctor, barber, neighbor and everyone else in our lives are graces for whom we are thankful. No doubt. It's just that there's more to God's love than the people we already know most about

In effect Jesus says, "Expand your circle to include even your enemies... and your reward will be great." What does he mean by this? What do we get out of loving enemies? What do we get from loving people who don't already love us? Maybe we get a new friend or two, or three. Maybe we get rewarded with a reconciled relationship. And the greatest reward of all is that we get to see what God's love can do. We get to learn how to love as God loves us, we who ourselves were once also enemies of God. We get to know that we are God's.children. That this is how God loves us.

Does it work? Does it really change things? I think the answer is "yes, but don't expect everything to be different in one day." About a year ago I put a rock tumbler on the communion table and placed a couple of pounds of very hard, jagged edged stones inside. These I proposed represented people in Christian community. I poured in water to represent the influence of the Spirit, and then I poured in grit sand to represent the Word found in our Bibles. Then I closed the lid, turned on the little motor and let it run continuously for six weeks. These are what came out. I've given some of them away now. All those very hard, jagged, rather dull stones, were transformed with a lot of "interaction" with the Spirit, the Word, and each other ,into something beautiful. Think about your own hardness. Your own jagged edges. Think about those you used to hate. It takes time doesn't it?

So let's summarize how to love enemies.

First, control your tongue. Speak well in private and in public. Don't be a rumor spreader.

Second, seek godly advisers you can trust to keep a confidence who will hold you lovingly accountable and support you in finding ways to love the enemy.

Third, re-humanize that person who is your enemy. Enemies tend to become two dimensional, flattened out caricatures we label. It's easier to hate a "knuckle head" or a "bigot".

Fourth, pray. See that person as God sees him or her, just the way God sees you and me.

Fifth, do well. Do good. Find concrete ways to make room and conditions for reconciliation. Build trust. This takes time.

Sixth, recognize your own limits. Monitor your own emotional capacity to engage someone who hates you. Go when you "feel" strong enough to go. Have your advisers help you decide when that time has come.

Seventh, expect no results because you and I cannot control outcomes. You and I do not do this so that we can make this world a better place. Maybe we will be successful, maybe we won't. This is not our call. We love enemies simply because we are commanded to do so and because we are God's children. So we are not focused on results. We expect nothing in return.

Think of an enemy you will love.

Who knows? No guarantees, but maybe next year there'll be more people to send Valentines to.

Questions for Reflection.