Aren’t we always looking for loop holes? Excuses, defense, all kinds of ways to get out of what we don’t want to do. My mother used to call it weasling; weasling out of doing the dishes; weasling about cleaning up my room, weasling about why I was late from a date (often with Allen, incidentally). We resist having to do things that demand the best of us. Most of all, we simply want to be in charge of our own lives.

Of course weasling doesn’t stop with high school does it? It pops up whenever others have expectations for us. So is it any wonder that we push back at this passage? It seems like Jesus has some pretty unreasonable demands for us. Love our enemies? Was he kidding? After all, the ancient law was love your neighbors and hate your enemies; a lot easier to be sure. Uncomfortable, we look for an out and recite, "If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it".

But then, in the next breath, Jesus throws in the out we’re looking for. "Be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect", he says. Well, there you go! There’s the out. We can’t be perfect; we know that, God knows that, in fact we aren’t created to be perfect. Furthermore, if we plead ignorance of what Jesus meant by perfect, we might be able to leave it unaddressed altogether. After all, if we don’t know what it means, it’s not our fault, right? …..Well, not so fast, because here comes the explanation straight from Jesus: Jesus basically says, "OK, here’s what I mean. If you love and care only for those who love you; what good is that? Even the non- believers do as much. But I am asking you to love like God loves you, even when your behavior isn’t lovable either."

This is a perfect kind of love. You see, for the Christian, love is a verb. It is not waiting for a warm feeling inside about someone who has mistreated us. It is kindness we offer another whether they have hurt us or not; whether they have apologized or not; whether they have made the first move or not.

To love in this way, is a repeated theme throughout the Bible. It is not a light command; it is the central message of the God’s word.

But it is easier to point the finger of blame at someone else, than to offer love to one who hasn’t earned it. So, in our most rational voices, we reword this command from Jesus saying, "Well if they refuse to see their faults and change their ways, then we are off the hook in loving them", missing the meaning of the ancient law, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The ancient law was meant as a deterrent to retaliation, not permission for it. It was thought that if a person knew if he harmed another, he would be harmed in the same way, he might think twice before acting.

Odd isn’t it? how we dislike having high expectations put on us, but feel justified in placing them on someone else? When others hurt us we feel it is fair treatment in isolating or punishing the unlovable in our lives. In that way we can bypass any self examination. But beware: when we weasel out of what is expected of us, we turn our backs on Jesus.

We are not off the hook. Jesus is firm here: love the unlovable just as God loves you when you are unlovable. Not because you have earned it; not because you are loved by God more than others, but because love is the bottom line. Love is the mark of a Christian.

One of the more difficult tasks that Ron and I face in ministry is to discern what love means in various situations. Occasionally, people come into the office looking for money or aid of some kind. They have fallen on hard times and they need help. Their stories are wrenching and often stay with me long after they have left.

Who is this person sitting before me? Will financial assistance help or hinder her? What is it he really needs beneath the request for money? Most difficult, who am I to make such a decision? Yet every day all of us are faced with difficult decisions we are asked to make, with only part of the information. The question remains: Who are our enemies and what does love mean in this situation?

Loving our enemies comes in many different forms and I think Jesus turned it around to catch our attention. Loving our enemies goes beyond Iraqi insurgents, or those in jail who have harmed others. Our enemies can simply be people who irritate us. Or they may be those who isolate us. Or they can be those whom we don’t know how to love, like the broken, the lost, the lonely, or the sick. Or it may be painful experiences within our own family.

Recently, we were stunned by the shocking story of Cho Seung Hui, a student at Virginia Tech who killed over 30 students, a teacher and finally himself in a rampage of anger. He committed a heinous crime; what some called an unforgivable act. For days the news tried to explain the unexplainable, blaming it on a variety of things: perhaps his history of mental illness was to blame; or his personality of being antisocial; or maybe there was a link with his impoverished beginnings; or maybe it was his violent writing was a contributing factor.

But I wondered as the story unfolded, was it just about him? Was he totally responsible for his actions? Or did the world play a role in shaping him too? What went on in his mind that isolated him? Was he born a murderer? I doubt that. Something went very wrong.

Occasionally, you and I get a card or a note of thanks for making a difference in someone’s life. We are called a mentor; we have said or done something that another says changed their lives. And mostly, we are shocked, aren’t we? We frequently don’t remember the incident, the words, or sometimes even the person. But someone else was changed.

I think this is true for the things we say and do, that are not so honorable as well; most of the time we have no idea how we have impacted another, good or bad. And Jesus’ words resound in our ears; love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you; pay attention to the ones who have not earned your love.

In my first career, I was employed as an elementary school teacher in first grade. One of the most powerful learnings for me was discovering that the kids who were the most difficult to like, were the very ones who needed my love and attention the most. Those of you who have been teachers know what I mean. But I think this is true for adults as well. We all need to be loved, included, appreciated, even if our behavior doesn’t deserve it.

One year, during my seminary training, I requested permission from the presbytery, to work in the county jail as a chaplain intern instead of doing an internship in a church. Unfortunately, no other ministry candidate had ever made such a request, and you all know what happens when you stumble into the being the one to pave a new way! They fussed and said no one had ever done this before. "You are a woman," they said, "and it’s dangerous. What could you possibly learn there? The others are doing an internship in a church. Why can’t you do the same? "I said I didn’t know; I simply had to go there.

After it was approved and I began, I was struck by how comfortable I felt. I was surrounded by many unknown enemies, in a dark and dangerous place, but oddly,I was never afraid. It was as if I had a Plexiglas shield of protection around me. I felt it; I did not know why I was there, but I did know God walked beside me in that place.

One day, as part of my orientation, the chaplain took me out onto the cat walk. He warned me that there might be obscenities shouted. It was where the most violent were held and he could not be responsible for what they might say. With this warning, we entered the holding tank, anyway. He announced who I was and asked them to be polite. He cautioned me to stay away from the cell bars. As I walked along the dark aisles looking through the bars, no one shouted anything. I expected to see hardened criminals from Shaw Shank Redemption. But what I saw instead were people just like you and me with broken lives. These were the disruptive, the unlovable; the lost. These were the enemies of our society.

Over the months I was there, I learned how our judgments can provide a rationale for isolating ourselves from others, thus preventing us from loving our enemies. For jail isolates, restricts, and punishes and yes, there is a reason for that. But one day I was allowed to enter a woman’s cell. As we sat together on her bunk, she shared her story with me. Her journey, not totally unlike ours, was one of how life had shaped and trapped her; poor choices with expensive consequences. Visiting her each week, we developed a relationship and judgment was no longer so easy.

When we are violated by theft, or someone we know spreads hurtful rumors behind our backs, loving our enemies is not the first thing that comes to our mind. We want to defend ourselves, and attack back. Yet we hear the words of Jesus, saying. "I say unto you, love your enemies". What is clear about this passage, is that Jesus is asking you and me to respond in an abnormal way. To those who treat us negatively, we are asked to respond in the positive. But how do we do this?

Recently in our Companions In Christ group, we took a hard and sometimes painful look at forgiveness. One exercise I remember in particular was to consider praying for those who persecute us. Not those "out there" somewhere that we have conveniently labeled as "suicide bombers", or "drug dealers" or "illegal immigrants"; the ones we can more easily box and ship out of our lives. No, this particular lesson had us make a list of our enemies we had encountered. Our first response was "We don’t have any" but the lesson persisted. Make a list of all those who have ever hurt you, shunned you, ignored you, said mean things about you. Look in your family, with your neighbors; even people in the church. The list was to be up close and personal, not out there somewhere. Then the punch line: Now pray for them. It was as if something had caught in our throats. For you see, to pray for someone who has harmed you, is to forgive them in some way. And there was resistance.

However, the subject of forgiveness is just as hard to understand as loving our enemies. Just as to love, in this context, does not mean having affectionate feelings for someone who has wronged us, neither does forgiveness mean just forget about it and move on. Loving and forgiving are the hardest demands of a Christian.

Everett Worthington, a Presbyterian elder, and a professor of psychology explains forgiveness in this way:

Forgiveness is God’s way of protecting us from being destroyed with hate or revenge. A revengeful heart destroys rather than builds; breaks up relationships, rather than keeping them together. We are the losers when we draw lines in the sand demanding the other change their ways, apologize first; or ask us for our forgiveness.

It is this kind of perfect love that allowed a US soldier to donate blood for a dying Iraqi insurgent. It is this kind of love that inspired a US hiker to build schools for girls in the heart of dangerous Taliban country. It is this kind of love that has over 50 people in our world religion class looking for similarities between Muslims and Christians that link us instead of separate.

Retaliation is easy. But Jesus is offering us a better way; better for us, better for others; and ultimately better for our world. We are in a critical time in our history that is dangerous. As Christians we can make a difference. We can look at someone who is different and look for what connects us. We can disagree while honoring the other at the same time. We can learn to separate the act from the person as God does with us. I wonder what would have happened to Cho Sueng Hei , and others like him, if he had experienced this kind of perfect love.

Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" for a reason. Can we do that?

Amen