Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you

The words below are a sermon shared by my Grandfather, Terrence Bailey, in August 1957, he was 27 years old. Terrence died long before I was born so his sermons are an important window into the life of someone I have few ways of knowing. I share this today because it speaks to us here in 2016 about how we find a Christian response to current circumstance.

YOU HAVE HEARD THAT IT WAS SAID, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOUR AND HATE YOUR ENEMY.” BUT I SAY TO YOU “LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, AND PRAY FOR THOSE WHO PERSECUTE YOU.”

Matthew 5:43-44.

Judging by one or two novels I’ve been reading lately, it seems to be the impression that the parson is meant to instil into the people on Sunday the sort of airy-fairy platitudinous idealism which nobody in their right senses would dream on trying seriously on Mondays. From what I gladly know of Methodist Worship, I am convinced that that is quite untrue (it was probably true of the Church of England of 1730!), but occasionally it crops up, and with certain themes: “Love your enemies.”

            It’s an idea we laugh at – secretly – and it’s certainly one we don’t take much notice of. We miss (and it is a real loss) we miss its challenge and its opportunity because we misunderstand “Love”. Let me try and suggest to you some of the masks of the love of God, which, reflected, becomes our love for those who have no time for us, and I hope that by them I shall assure you that this is nothing pasty-faced, but virile, and positive, and triumphant. I don’t want to argue about pacifism or anything like that (you can do that afterwards): all I want to establish is something worth working on, something which will challenge, something which will make us think again.

I, LOVE IS ACTIVE (AND NOT PASSIVE)

I think a lot of the difficulties about the suggestion of loving enemies is the picture of the Christian as a door-mat. The Christian, it says, isn’t supposed to show any fight: love is to take what is coming to you (whether it be a punch on the nose or an allegation about the church) with passive equanimity (emphasising the passive).

            In the Gospels there seems to be two totally conflicting pictures of the attitude of Jesus towards his enemies (so much so that some people have felt that this disproved his sinlessness, in that sometimes he didn’t seem to be loving his enemies). Compare those occasions – the fierce denunciations of the Scribes and Pharisees, “hypocrites”, or the expulsion of the black marketers from the temple, with the cross: “Father, forgive them” (and the “them” applied to the same the same men). People have seen in the cross an offensive on the part of the enemies of Jesus, matched by a passive Christ who let himself be crucified, let himself be slandered and spat upon, without a murmur. And that, they say, is loving your enemies.

            That conception, which seems so very close to precious facts, has, I am sure, one vital mistake. It was Jesus who started the battle. (Excuse all these military metaphors: they have always been appropriate in the sense of spiritual battling against the forces of evil, although it is rather outrageous that – on those grounds alone – people have justified Christians fighting in the literal sense (the “logic” goes: Paul uses warfare as an illustration, therefore warfare must be Christian; on the contrary, this morning I used as an illustration a slogan advocating the drinking of Pimms No.1 – so what?!). But that is a parenthesis.)

            It was Jesus who started the battle, and not those who crucified him. If it hadn’t been for the deliberate intention of Jesus, the crucifixion would never have happened. But, in fact, he arranged the whole situation: when they in a fit of rage wanted to seize him while he was still in the rural backwaters, he evaded them, but when he moved towards Jerusalem, nothing the disciples could do could stop him: he placed himself where he knew they would respond, because he knew it was the only way that men could be shown in unmistakeable terms the sin of man and the love of God. Calvary is like (if it isn’t too crude an illustration) a place on an arterial road with two great floodlit hoardings which no one passing by car will miss, and on the first one there is a cross with the words “This is what sin can do and has done”, and on the second a cross, and the words “But love is stronger.” And it was Jesus who, by the determination of his fearless love, erected both signs.

            The offensive was the active love of Christ trying somehow to break through, and, by the side of that, the trial, the scourging, the spitting, the crucifying, are a mockery of a counter-attack that failed.

            Now I want you to apply that – to the opportunity of loving those who are set against us: love is active. It doesn’t look like it, I know; it looks as if, like Jesus, we are letting them with their weapons, do what they will, letting them hit the other cheek while we do nothing. I think the reason Jesus talked about turning the other cheek was this: you are meant to be so totally concerned with this active mental and spiritual weapon of love, so totally given over to caring for the other man, that you haven’t time to care for yourself, and if they choose to go on counter-attacking (in the only way they know, like Caiaphas and Pilate), that’s their concern and not yours.

            You know (or you ought to) the story of Edith Carell, who because she was a Christian decided that her nursing must not be confined to the wounded of her own country, and she started caring for Germans and English when Germans were enemies. Her conduct made both sides suspicious of treachery, but she knew it wasn’t true, and continued that work. Eventually in desperation they shot her, but men take notice of Edith Carell now: she had a vital active power which men are beginning to appreciate: love is active.

II, LOVE IS BENEVOLENT

I chose that word rather impishly, because it is another of these words that has been devalued in meaning, so that[i] it has come to mean something soft, which, for the sake of not giving offence, lets evil run riot – and that’s a hint of another misunderstanding about loving your enemies. But I want to use “benevolence” literally: love is concerned with doing good to those who are doing evil. Extend it a bit and say that love is something which is working by all means to redeem, to change, to save the objectionable and the evil. And the thing that must be emphasised is this: that when those saving purposes demand it, love is tough: it does not, and it must not, mean tolerating evil.

            Let me use a rather weird sort of analogy. If a couple of mixed race (for instance, the husband an African and the wife English) go into South Africa – if they were allowed in – and at any stage they wanted to go into a park and have a rest, they would come to not one seat but two, the one marked “Europeans Only” and the other “Natives and Coloured Only”, so that man and wife would have to sit on separate seats. To us that separation is unthinkably wrong; but that ought to be true too of another apartheid: the supposed incompatibility between love on the one hand (which is soft) and discipline and severity and anger on the other.

            Love is “benevolent”, writing for good, for the good of those who are evil, AND DISCIPLINE IS ONE OF THE INSTRUMENTS OF TRUE LOVE. I think that’s why Jesus attacked the Pharisees in the terms her did: somehow he must try to shatter their thick-skinned superiority. You don’t stand much chance of getting inside the skin of a rhinoceros with a pea-shooter, and Jesus knew that, if he was to stand any chance at all of making the Pharisees come to their senses he would have to stab, and stab hard, until it hurt: “Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” – that is one of the ways of love.

            You know examples of this which bear out what I’ve said. Those of you who are Mums and Dads (this is where I venture into unknown territory, but I think safely!): when one of the children (what shall we say -) drops a bottle of ink, and splashes the wallpaper, you punish the child (not maybe by giving it a hiding, because some Christians seem to have other equally effective ways, but none the less really), you punish the child so that it may do better, so that it may realise what when children are naughty it costs trouble and time and money, so that they may grow up more responsible. Sometimes those aren’t the motives (sometimes it’s because all the fuss has interrupted the telly!), but true parenthood is built totally on love which uses tough ways where tough ways are necessary.

            The other example is an obvious one: prison life (as men are caring to see it). A man is sent to prison, not to get rid of a nuisance, but to change a nuisance, to try (and it’s sometimes successful) to send him out a responsible man. If ever there was a loving purpose, it’s that, but it is built on tough discipline (and I wish the people who talked about prisons being soft would try one).

            That’s the second thing I want you to think about – the benevolence, the working in all ways for the good of the wrongdoer which characterises true agapé. Build that into your ideas of loving the enemy.

III, LOVE IS UNILATERAL

You’ll see that if we trace back for a moment men’s ideas of retribution. We read the cruel story of Achan, where, because he disobeyed orders and brought defeat on his side, not only he but his wife and family and his livestock were all killed by the tribe. There was a reason for that kind of retribution, because they thought that, because children had the same blood in their veins as their father, they had the same characteristics, and would only do what their father had done. But retribution for the crime was worse, and went further than, the crime itself. So you see how much of an advance it was when the Jews said, in effect “only one eye for an eye” – when someone kills your brother you must only kill him (not his grandma and first cousins into the bargain). “Let the punishment fit the crime” – retribution and crime are equal. But then Jesus comes along and takes it to the third stage: Love which is prepared to reprieve and punish and build again. Mary Magdalene, or the man on the cross, were emphatically sinners, self-acknowledged ones, but for the sake of building in them something worthwhile, Jesus befriended and forgave. Love is totally unrelated to merit in the other person: love is (to use this topical word) unilateral.

            I think it’s time we questioned this word “love”. If you often go past Piccadilly Circus (says he, looking straight at the gallery!) you will immediately know what I mean when I say there is a thing in the middle up which people three parts gone climb. And the little winged statue of Eros is a symbol of “Epos” one of the Greek words for “love”, and it means something mutual, something which both people find evoked in one another; there is something lovable which makes you want to love. I hope no young ladies feel embarrassed at this stage, but I want to illustrate. If you go to the office the morning after a date, and say “he kissed me last night”, I don’t think you’re being honest; if you were truly representing the action, I suspect that you would say “We kissed one another last night” (you had more of a hand or lip in it than you make out). Epos is something mutual, something (if you like) “bilateral”. But that is never used in the New Testament.

            The New Testament word is Agapé (and, in case you don’t know how to spell it, its got a code number: 727, look up in the hymn book, and you’ll find that no. 727 has a tune called “Agapé”). Now ἀyaπɳ is totally different: it is almost unknown in anything earlier than the Greek Bible, and it means a love which is not shared, not evoked, but a ‘one-sided’ love. The ἀyaπɳ of God is like that, God loves us, not because he sees something in us that is worth loving, not even because he sees potential good in us: ἀyaπɳ is just something unrelated to merit. (You remember St. Paul’s words: “God shows his love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”) Unilateral ἀyaπɳ.

            You’ll soon think of examples of where that idea is needed. I can’t resist saying that it is no wonder that Communists have got this spurious name as peacemakers: however empty their offers may be, it is repeatedly the Communists who make the offer, which we sit tight and say “If you come half-way to meet us – first – we’ll follow.” But I want to leave it there, because it is you who must apply it – in your own situations.

APPEAL

Love is active, and not passive; love is (in the real sense) benevolent; love is unilateral. I’m told (by those quite a bit older than myself!) that during the Great War a poster appeared, with the finger of Kitchener pointing, and the words “Your King and Country Needs YOU;” there is a poster with a Cross, and the words “God and Every Nation Under Heaven Needs You,” to attack your enemies, and to destroy them – by making them your friends.

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[i] So that it immediately conjures up a picture of the aged and no doubt saintly vicar who potters up to the local village louts who are throwing stones through the stained-glass windows and who says to them: “Now, children, you really shouldn’t do that should you now?” And when he gets a straight retort merely potters away muttering something about what children are like these days – WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING. That’s a caricature – and it’s a caricature of love.

Where do we go from here - part 2

So a month on, a few more thoughts on the aftermath of the referendum.

Why did we vote (narrowly) to leave? The truth is that there is no simple answer, and not everyone voted LEAVE or REMAIN for the same reasons. (So please don’t read what follows as claiming they did.)

My feeling is that the dominant issue at the heart of this referendum was immigration. I think it boils down to a stark reality, our personal experiences of immigration and our perceptions of immigration is starkly different.

For many of us, including myself, our experience of immigration has been overwhelmingly positive, I’ve friends who are immigrants, I’ve travelled to other countries, I’ve lived in France. I like the fact that I could live anywhere in the EU, I like the fact that other EU nationals have been able to move here. For me immigration is a social Good. The economic benefits are a secondary concern. I like being European. That is the experience of many people I know.

But what this referendum has made clear is that there is another side to Britain whose view of immigration is very different. Their experience of immigrants has been negative, they have not made friends, they have not enjoyed travelling to other countries, they have not lived in other EU nations. Their perception is of immigrants who take their jobs and are too often involved in crime.

One of the difficulties I’ve been pondering quite deeply over the last month is how to have a constructive national conversation.

The Referendum campaign was extremely divisive. Big lies were told on both sides. Where is this £350m a week for the NHS then Mr Johnson? Where is your emergency budget Mr Osborne? For weeks we were bombarded with a few lies, a lot of half-truths, and a mountain of spin. None of that makes an honest constructive conversation possible, all it does is make people angry and shouty.

This is nothing new. For decades our governments have not attempted to rule by consensus. We have in effect been ruled by the biggest minority. In 2015 The Tories won on 36.8% of the votes, in 2005 Labour won on 35.2%; in neither David Cameron nor Tony Blair’s victory speeches did either acknowledge that a majority of voter did not vote for them. No, they proclaimed a majority government and proceeded to implement their policies without a passing glance to the 60%+ who did not support their manifesto, nor to the great number who did not vote.

To me such leadership is weak. And I think it is at the heart of what has brought us to the divisive referendum on the EU. As a nation we have no culture of consensus building discussion. We either shout at each other, hurl abuse, and treat any kind of compromise as a betrayal. Or we retreat into liberal platitudes, ”everyone is entitled to their views” or “all views should be equally respected” simply stating our views without listening to anyone else or challenging each others lines of thinking. Our media doesn’t help, political interviews are either about catching politicians out or are completely superficial. Often all we get is the soundbite or the slogan, our attention span has been trained to get bored with more than a minute of well constructed rational argument.

In his book “The Pedagogy of Education”, the Brazilian education theorist Paulo Ferriere makes the case that whenever someone has the freedom to make a decision they must always be allowed to experience to full consequences of that decision. I think this point has relevance for our politics. For too long we have allowed a minority (just less than 40%) to elect our government. Then we all walk away and the consequences fall where they will; sometime they touch us sometimes not. But on the whole our blinkers are put on and we take only a fleeting interest in that which doesn’t pertain to our daily lives. We are not listening to those who feel the pain, and when it’s us that feel it no one is listening to us. Hence we have a sense of disconnection. When election come round again all we consider is our own narrow corridor of experience. Our politicians know they only need to appeal to their favoured 36% (ish), so who cares for the experience of all the others?

This is where we are. A nation of shouters who have never learnt how to listen. We have not listened to those who felt afraid (rightly or wrongly) by immigration, we have condemned before finding out why. We have not listened to those who’ve felt like they have no voice, those who are never among the winning 36%, and so live frustrated that they are never consulted or even have explained to them, decisions which transform their lives. We have not listened to those who been denied stable jobs and permanent contracts, finding themselves stuck on zero-hours minimum wage jobs. We have not listened to those who work long hours in jobs that give them no satisfaction, year after year. We have not listened to those who can find no meaning beyond longing for the next consumer possession. We have not listened to those who feel like they’ve failed in life because things haven’t turned out as they’d hoped.

We have not listened! When no one listens to us some of us get frustrated. “why is no one interested in me!” Others shrink away into solitude.

We have not listened; but equally we have chosen to ridicule privately rather than challenge openly. So we allow the racist joke to go unchallenged. We allow the made up statistic to stand as fact. For the sake of peace we choose to accept the received wisdom we don’t really believe. When open disagreement appears we quickly change the subject to something less controversial, or we make the proponents feel as if their being antisocial or a bit boring.

None of this makes for a healthy national debate! Nor is it really democracy.

How we change things? Now that is the real question.