Reverend Marci Scott-Weis, MDIV

Well dear ones, today we consider Jesus’ Upside Down Kingdom, his more radical teachings that especially contradict some of the more worldly wisdom that we typically encounter in life, the call to forgive.

So to begin, let’s be clear, in this teaching Jesus is NOT talking about loving someone we have a disagreement with or someone that we don’t like. He’s using the term enemies. That’s a strong word right? Our enemies are those who we believe purposefully and knowingly seek to harm us!  Our enemies are those who we believe have bitterness or hatred in their hearts towards us, who threaten us or our communities or our beliefs. And these are the folks that Jesus is asking us to love in this sermon!

Now also, understanding the word that is used for love is critical here. Matthew uses the Greek verb that means ‘unconditional love’ when he’s talking about how we should approach our enemies. That word does NOT mean romantic love, liking or even friendship. It means the whole-hearted, unreserved, unconditional yearning for the well-being of the other. The kind of love that is being described here in loving our enemies is the love where nothing is held back, there is no hesitation,  and there is no expectation of getting anything in return. This kind of love is simply the complete desiring of the well-being of the other for their own good, no strings attached unconditional love.

Now sadly, throughout the history of Christianity, this teaching has been misunderstood and has brought untold misery and continued violence, mostly for women and children who were counseled to forgive their abusers. That is most definitely NOT what this teaching is doing! Jesus is NOT teaching that we are all called to like or support actions that we don’t consent to or that we abandon accountability! And perhaps more importantly, Jesus’ call to love our enemies and desire their well-being does NOT mean that we condone or accept abusive, hurtful or violent behaviors or actions that do harm to ourselves or others.

Mercy and love without accountability is unacceptable, but Jesus is saying here that accountability without mercy and love is equally unacceptable.  As Gandhi put it, “And eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”  The trick with this teaching is to hold justice and mercy together, and to hold accountability and love together- with mercy and love, in the end, having the last word.

So what does that look like?  What would it really mean to love our enemies with mercy and accountability? It would mean that the cycle of hate and retaliation would end with us. Loving our enemies would mean that we don’t wait to see what the other person will do before we decide what path we are going to take. Loving our enemies would mean that we don’t have to be trapped in vicious cycles of violence that someone else starts. It would mean that the cycle of hate and retaliation ends with us.

Put most practically, loving our enemies would mean that when they hate us, we love them in return. We can continue to be angry at a person for what they do and still love them. We can continue to resist and oppose their actions and still love them. We can both demand accountability and offer mercy.  This teaching says that if we truly love our enemies, then the ways that we stand up to or stand against our enemies will ALWAYS express our desire for their well-being, unconditionally and with love.

That is what Jesus is teaching here. Jesus is teaching that love wins, in all situations, love wins. And as hard as it is often to believe it to be true, Jesus is teaching that LOVE will overcome all that is hard and horrible in this world.  Or as beautifully said in one of my favorite movies, The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.”  Jesus is teaching that LOVE  wins. LOVE  will have the final word.

Jesus’ teaching here is really hard and often times probably feels impossible for most of us. Loving our enemies, desiring their well-being, their good, with no strings attached, is contrary to what feels right or normal. It’s counter-cultural and counterintuitive. It’s a really challenging call that utterly reverses our conventional thinking about enemies. And given our current political climate, it’s perhaps the most challenging teaching of Jesus that we can encounter right now!

This teaching calls us to transform our relationships and our understandings of our enemies. It calls us to model with our hearts and with our bodies, the blessings of forgiveness and love, trusting that even the most minor and seemingly insignificant moments of mercy will have ripple effects far and wide.

The call to love our enemies asks us to speak up, to act out, and to respond out of a sense of deep and abiding love, the kind of love that dreams of the other flourishing. The sort of love that looks at the face of our enemies and finds a way to see the person that God loves. The sort of love that recognizes that our enemies are the beloved of God, that they are made in the divine image. When we love this way, we embody God’s divine love. We become God’s divine love. This is what Jesus is asking of us. That is the LOVE we were made for.

This incredibly hard teaching is demonstrated not just here in the Sermon on the Mount but by Jesus over and over again in all of the Gospel stories and teachings. You can see it in how he goes about his ministry, what he teaches and how he teaches, who and how he heals, hosts, welcomes and most of all loves. And this incredibly hard teaching also shows us a whole lot about the relationship that is possible with God for each of us. Because Jesus is showing us a model of relationship with God that is built upon unconditional love, where mercy prevails for everyone, including every one of us.

With this incredibly hard teaching we are being called to transform our understandings of our enemies and our relationships with our enemies, even now, even in these times so full of division, resentment, and recrimination. Walking the path of loving our enemies and leading with mercy is a hard road, but it is the WAY that Jesus leads us in God’s upside down kingdom. And it is the WAY that leads us directly to God’s very heart.

Because when we live this WAY, when we embody love and mercy, we reflect the reality of the God of LOVE to this fractured and hurting world that so desperately needs it right now! When we embody love and mercy, we become the LOVE that drives out hate. We become the LIGHT that drives out darkness.

So as hard as it may be in these times, may we find the courage and the strength to rise to that call to walk the WAY of loving our enemies.

May we trust that even our most minor and seemingly insignificant moments of mercy will have ripple effects far and wide.

May we reflect the God of LOVE to this fractured and hurting world that so desperately needs it right now, right here, becoming the LOVE that drives out hate and the LIGHT that drives out darkness, in God’s upside down kingdom.

May it be so …

Amen

 

Written: March 1st, 2026