day is Valentine’s Day so it’s not too late to buy the card, order flowers, make the reservation for dinner, or get that diamond. There’s still time. February is the month of love and we are in a series to help us know what love is all about. Last week we heard that what the world needs now is love, sweet love, and that love is all we need. Sometimes pop music gets it right. The Bible says God is love and we know that God made us in love. We were made to receive God’s love and the foundation of love in our lives is to know that we are loved. (pins) We were also made to respond to God’s love by loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and we can do that through worship, praise, thanksgiving, and prayer. But we were also made to reflect God’s love.
As children created in the image of God, we were made to love others. It’s easy to think about loving those we like and have affection for, but the word most often used for love in the NT is not philo or eros, which is the emotional and affectionate love we have others, but agape. Agape love is not a feeling but a choice and an action. It is how we treat people and respond to others regardless of how they treat us. This is the kind of love we are called to reflect in the world and it’s the love we are to have for ALL people.
The 1955 song made famous by Jackie DeShannon says, what the world needs now is love, sweet love, no not just for some, but for everyone. Everyone. Those we like and those we don’t like. Friend and foe and even our enemies. Jesus said,
To you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28
Many of us hear these words and think it just isn’t possible to really love our enemy. Many have said that this teaching proves that Jesus was just an impractical idealist whose message can’t be lived out in our world. It’s a nice idea, but not practical or liveable. But what if love for our enemy really is the answer and what if that kind of love is exactly what the world needs now.
Dr. Martin Luther King said this about loving our enemies.
This command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilizations. Yes, it is love that will save our world, our civilizations. Love even for our enemies. Dr MLK Jr.
If there is any Christian preacher of the past century that we should listen to and learn from when it comes to how to love our enemies, it is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Today, we are going to hear some of what Dr. King had to say about this teaching of Jesus from a sermon he preached in 1957 and was later included in the book, The Strength to Love. For us to fully understand the power of Dr. King’s call to love our enemies, we have to understand the context of this sermon.
So let’s go back to 1955, 70 years ago. The #2 TV show was I Love Lucy, the #5 song of the year was a love song that has been recorded many times (Carol will play unchained melody). The song lyrics include, I need your love, I need your love, God speed your love to me. But the reason many of us know about this time in history isn’t because we lived then but because we relived it on Happy Days.
I grew up watching happy days in primetime, maybe you grew up watching it in syndication, but this is often how we think of the 1950’s - filled with family fun and the fonze. A happy time. But the truth is that for many people, the 1950’s were not happy days, they were days filled with anger, hatred, division and violence.
In 1955, the year rock around the clock made the top 10, Rev. George Lee was the first black man to register to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi. While African Americans were given the right to vote in 1870, many states and counties kept them from registering to vote by putting in place poll taxes and literacy requirements. In 1955, after winning a court battle, Rev Lee helped register almost all the African American voters in his county.
This action was met with anger and hatred and about a month later, as Rev Lee was driving down the road, he was shot three times by a shotgun and died before he could get to the hospital. While lead pellets from his head were consistent with buckshot, the local sheriff said they were just lead fillings that had dislodged from his teeth when his car veered off the road so the case was never pursued.
Later, that summer, Emmit Till, a 14 year old African American youth, went to Mississippi to visit some relatives. He was abducted and lynched for speaking to a white woman. He was brutally beaten and killed and his mother took his body home to Chicago where she had a public viewing of her son so the world could see the kind of violence and brutality that African Amerians faced in the nation. The men accused of killing Emmit were acquitted and then turned around and sold the story of how they killed Emmit to a national magazine knowing that they couldn’t be tried again due to double jeopardy. The injustice of this whole event sparked outrage.
The deaths of Rev. Lee and Emmit Till, and the acquittal of the men who openly acknowledged killing Till, were all discussed at a meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL later that same year. At that meeting there was a woman who decided that something needed to be done to address the hatred and violence toward African Americans and so 4 days later, when she was asked to give up her seat in the “colored” section of the bus to a white woman, she refused.
Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat led to the Montgomery Bus Boycotts which many believe was the first official act of the Civil Rights Movement. Why all of this is important for us today is because there was a young preacher who was instrumental in leading that bus boycott who later said this about the fight for justice.
Let us fight passionately and unrelentingly to the goals of justice. Let’s be sure that our hands are clean. Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love so that when the day comes and the walls of segregation are completely crumbled in Montgomery, we will be able to live with people as brothers. Dr. MLK Jr.
That preacher, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called his followers to love their enemy in the face of the enemy. For me to stand here and talk about how we need to love our enemies when I don’t really have actual enemies seems inauthentic, but to hear Dr. King's call for love in the face of the unspeakable violence of 1955 is powerful.
It would be 2 years later, in 1957, that Dr. King would give one of his most powerful sermons, Love Your Enemy, and what I’d like to do is have us learn from both Jesus and Dr. King what it means to actually love our enemies. Not a love full of feelings and emotions, but a love based on choice and action.
In his sermon, Dr. King gives three very practical things we can do to love our enemy. The first is that we must CHOOSE to forgive.
First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. Dr. MLK Jr.
The power of love at work in our lives is seen when we choose to forgive. Let’s be clear that forgiveness is not usually a feeling or emotion, it is an action. Forgiveness is making the choice to not seek revenge or retribution. We are choosing to let go of our desire to see those who have hurt us suffer and “get what they deserve”. The Greek word used for forgiveness in the New Testament is aphiemi, which means to release or let go.
Forgiveness is letting go of the pain and hurt we have suffered. Sometimes that takes years, but it is a conscious decision to let go of our desire to see those who have hurt us to be hurt themselves. We aren’t justifying their wrong behavior. Forgiveness is not saying that what was done to us wasn’t that bad or that the person shouldn’t be held accountable, it simply means we let go of wanting to see those who have hurt us punished and suffer and get what’s coming to them.
Several years ago we did a series on forgiveness and used an image that several people said was helpful for them when it came to learning to forgive. It was a simple backpack and some rocks. The backpack is our life and the rocks are the hurt and pain that has been caused by others. When we experience situations where we feel slighted or hurt, it’s like a rock being thrown into the pack. Through life, all this suffering and pain accumulates and the burden weighs us down. We can’t experience joy and freedom and the fullness of life this way, we have to learn to let this go.
Forgiveness is letting go of the situations so they don’t weigh us down. While forgiving others might have a redemptive quality in their life, it might help them, it really is about us. Can we forgive so that we can be set free. Holding on to grudges and pain doesn’t do anything to anyone else, it just holds us back. People have said that not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to suffer and die. It doesn’t work that way. We forgive so we can be set free.
This is the love we see in Jesus when from the cross He said, Father forgive them. In that moment, I don’t know that Jesus had a lot of affection for those who had betrayed Him, abandoned Him and crucified Him, but He let go of seeking revenge. Love, agape love, Christian love, the love that comes from God, is a love that helps us to let go and forgive so that we can be set free. This is the kind of love that the world needs now.
The second thing Dr. King said about love for our enemies is that we have to look beyond the outside of people and in their actions and look to the image of God that is in us all.
We must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Dr. MLK Jr.
Last week we heard that God made us in His image and that we are all loved. We are ALL loved. Our enemy is loved by God because they were also created in God’s image. There is value and goodness in them just as there might be brokenness and evil in us. We aren’t always as good as we think we are and our enemy isn’t always as evil as we think they are. It’s important for us to remember this and look for the good in our enemy.
In our Men’s Bible study a few weeks ago we were talking about what it means to forgive those who have hurt us and someone said that what helps him to forgive is to look at those who have hurt him and try to understand what they are going through. Sometimes there is hurt and pain in their lives that we never see and that is what has caused them to lash out in anger. The more we are willing to see people the way God sees them, as loved but also broken and hurting people, the more love we will have for them and the more willing we will be to forgive. The more we see people the way God does, the more we are willing to keep no record of wrongs, which is part of what 1 Corinthians 13 says love is all about.
The third thing Dr. King said about love is that we must not destroy our enemy.
Inevitably, his weak moments come and we are able to thrust in his side the spear of defeat. But this we must not do. Dr. MLK Jr.
After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples in the upper room. They had all deserted Him. They ran away when He needed them. Jesus could have come back and in their weak moments of defeat he could have driven home their failures like a spear in their sides. Jesus could have given them what they deserved but he didn’t. In that moment, Jesus opened His hands to show them the wounds He bore for them. He told them to place their hands in His side instead of driving a sword into theirs. He forgave them. Jesus breathed on them and gave them peace.
In a moment when He could have turned on them in anger, Jesus chose to love. In moments when we are tempted to say, I told you so and gloat over being right and humiliate others for being wrong, we need to choose to forgive and love. We need to let go of our desire for revenge and retribution and choose to love.
Peter, who asked Jesus how many times we had to forgive someone, learned that love and forgiveness is always the answer. He said, Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. 1 Peter 3:9
And Romans 12:21 says, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
The only thing that can overcome evil is love. The only thing that can defeat violence and hatred is love. The only thing that can change our world is love. One of the most powerful and most often quoted lines of Dr. King says this well.
Darkness can not drive out darkness, only light can do that.
Hate can not drive out hate, only love can do that.
Only love can overcome hate. Only love can forgive our enemy and change our hearts and the hearts and lives of others.
So let’s go back to what Jesus said about loving our enemies.
To you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28
To you who are listening, love your enemy. I guess the question for us is, are we listening? Do we believe what Jesus has said about love and how He has loved? Can we learn to love in ways that can help overcome hate and change our world? We can love our enemy. Are we listening?
Next Steps
To know what Love is - Week 2
Who is it that you struggle to love and forgive?
Why does loving our enemy often seem wrong?
When have you seen someone love their enemy?
3 Lessons from Dr. King on loving our enemy.
We must CHOOSE to forgive
Forgiveness is not a feeling or emotion, it is an action.
Aphiemi (the New Testament word for forgive) means to release or let go.
What hurt or offense are you struggling to let go and why?
What would it look like for you to let go of this pain?
Ask God for the strength to let go.
We must look to the image of God that is in us all.
What good qualities do you see in those you struggle to love?
We must not destroy our enemy.
What did Jesus do first when he appeared to his disciples after the resurrection? John 20:19-21
When have you experienced this kind of grace from others?
How does God show us this kind of grace every day?
Reflect on how these quotes can encourage you to love.
To you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. ~Jesus
Darkness can not drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate can not drive out hate, only love can do that. ~ Dr. King
