Growing up, I spent my summers at my grandparents farm and ranch. One summer when I was a teenager, one of Granddad’s better cows had cut her leg just above the hoof and it became infected with screw worms. We had to keep her in a pen so that each day we could clean the wound and put some medicine on it. That old cow did not like that. She was more than just a little "onere" when we tried to put her in the shoot and then hold her leg in a steady position so that we could do our "doctoring." When I complained about this difficult and somewhat dangerous chore, Granddaddy said: "Son, this is what separates the drugstore cowboys from the real thing."

The passage we read today describes what is difficult and sometimes dangerous for those of us who call ourselves Christians. This passage describes what separates the drugstore Christians from the real thing. Jesus said: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,⁴⁵ so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good. …⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

The word for love that is used in this passage is "agape." The best definition I have been able to put together to define "agape" love is: giving of ourselves for the good of others, whether we feel like doing it or not. When Jesus told his disciples and us to love our enemies, he was not talking about what we ought to feel as much as he was trying to tell us how we ought to behave. Jesus was telling us to give of ourselves for the good of our neighbors—even the neighbors who are our enemies. We might not like them, but nevertheless we are to give of ourselves for their good.

Fulfilling this set of instructions from Jesus makes "doctoring" that "ownree" old cow seem to be child’s play. Give of ourselves for the good of the one who has intentionally done us harm? Love the one who made a fool of us and then laughed at us for being such a fool? Give of ourselves for the good of the one whom we thought we were helping, but who really just took advantage of our efforts and took what was ours in more ways than one? Love the one whose half truths gossiped about us kept us from getting that promotion and stained our reputation? Give of ourselves for the good of someone who destroyed the life of a person we dearly loved? Love the one who hurt us more painfully than any mere physical wounding? Love our enemy? Surely Jesus must to be kidding. Or maybe the writer of Matthew has it all wrong.

But Jesus was not kidding, and the writer of Matthew did not get it all wrong. Jesus telling his disciples and us to love our enemies is consistent with the message in the New Testament. Love (agape) is the dominant word used in the early church to describe the behavior of a follower of Christ. We are reminded by Christ that the greatest commandments are to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Paul wrote that being able to live this agape type of love is greater than having faith to move mountains, even greater than living with hope. When the writer of the First Letter Of John wrote that God is love, he was saying that agape love is the best way to describe God. As God in Christ has loved us, we are to love one another. And in the passage we read today, we are reminded that even our enemies are among the neighbors we are to love.

Sometimes when I hear this passage or hear someone trying to talk about it, I will try to avoid the painful point of it all by saying to myself, "That is just a bunch of unrealistic idealism." And having said this, excuse myself from having to deal with the issues Jesus was talking about. "After all," I will tell myself, "it is only human to want to get even by hurting those who have hurt us."

And that is right. It is only human—merely human with none of the grace of God involved. Trying to get even, get revenge, settle the score has never brought lasting peace or a constructive resolution to conflict and injustice between persons or between peoples. All we have to do is look at just a few of the places where retaliation and getting even have been used as the way to resolution generation after generation and century after century: Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Middle East. Dealing with enemies by the means of revenge only brings about retaliation and more revenge. Trying to get even has never worked as the way for persons or groups to move on with life in a peaceful, constructive way.

There is nothing more stupid, nor perhaps more human, than to keep trying to do what has never worked thinking that it will work if we just keep trying. And so we keep trying to gain peace and make the world safe through the method of revenge, getting even.

But not only is revenge or getting even impractical in that it never produces lasting, constructive peace, when getting even is our primary goal, our souls are distorted and crippled.

The basic urge—or perhaps more accurately stated, our basest urge—is to get even when someone has hurt us physically or harmed us financially or damaged us socially or wounded us emotionally. But if we do not move beyond what that person has done to hurt us or harm those we love, we find ourselves living in bondage—slaves of our resentments, our bitterness, our anger, and even in bondage to hatred. It is as though we are chained to our enemy and the awful things he or she has done, and we live our lives dragging around all that hurt and hostility. In a very real sense, we live in bondage to our enemy. We are unable to be the healthy, whole persons God intends us to be because we are sick with old anger and crippled by resentment.

Jesus wants us to be whole, to live the lives we were created to live. This is what Jesus was really talking about when he urged us to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. And what is this perfection he was talking about?

The Greek word for perfect that is used in this passage has to be with being whole or complete, being what one is created to be. To want a model airplane to be perfect is not to expect that model airplane to be anything other than a model airplane. A perfect model airplane and a perfect airplane are not the same thing. And yet both the model and the real airplane are perfect.

When Jesus urges us to be perfect, he urges us to be perfect as human beings, in the same way God is perfect as God. Jesus is not asking us to be God; he wants us to be what we were created to be; Jesus is wanting us to live in the image of God. We are still humans. We remain fallible, making mistakes and even, at times, unintentionally doing harm while we are earnestly trying to do good. The perfection Jesus was talking about has to do with living in the image of God, so that the basic intention guiding all we say and do is shaped by God’s love at work in us. To have the love revealed in Christ shape all our intentions is to fulfill our purpose in life. When we live loving others as God in Christ has loved us we are living in the image of God, we are being perfect in the sight of God, even though we continue making mistakes in the way we express that love in words and deeds.

We are to love others as God in Christ has loved us, and this means giving of ourselves for the good of even our enemies. This love God has made known in Christ is not some wishy-washy sentimental love that has no backbone in it. Jesus drove money changers from the temple. He was tough on the folks who settled for merely being very religious rather than being truly faithful. The Old Testament is full of stories about the consequences that happen when persons violate the will of God or societies fail to live as God intends, failing to provide both justice and mercy for all people—especially the weakest and the poor. Through many stories the scriptures remind us that when as persons or as a society we fail to put God’s will into action, there are consequences. But just as the discipline administered by the ideal parent is an expression of that parent’s love, so is the judgment of God an expression of God’s love. God’s love is a tough love as well as a tender love, and that tough and tender love revealed in Christ is the kind of love we are to offer our neighbors.

When Jesus told us to love our enemy, he was not telling us to give in to our enemy; he was telling us to give of ourselves for the good our enemy. This does not mean we passively sit by and allow that person to hurt us or others, but it does mean that whatever we do is not done for the sake of revenge; it is done for the sake of the good of our neighbors—both the neighbor we are trying to protect and the neighbor who is doing harm.

By the way, this is why in the light of God’s love there is a place for prisons. But the prisons should be more than warehouses where criminals are dehumanized and learn more from each other about how to commit more crime than they do about how to change their living so that they can become constructive citizens. Tough love is never merely punishment or revenge. It always has to do with consequences for the sake of transforming persons—not merely making them suffer for a set period of time. The goal of God is redemption—not revenge.

In the passage we read today, Jesus was telling his disciples, and he is telling us, that trying to get even with those who have hurt us is neither the way to wholeness for ourselves nor the way to healing and hope for the world. As God in Christ gave of himself for our good, so we are to give of ourselves for the good of others, even those who are our enemies—just as Jesus did.

God, loving our neighbors is hard enough, but loving our enemies is more difficult and dangerous than doctoring that "ownree" old cow. Help us so that we will live our lives loving others, even our enemies, as you in Christ have loved us—even when we have been your enemy. Amen.

God, sometimes we are disappointed. Things happen we had not planned on, and dreams we had for ourselves or for others no longer appear to be possible. Sometimes it is not situations or circumstances that are the cause of our disappointment as much as it is the behavior of persons in whom we had placed our trust. God, in such times it is tempting to allow our disappointment to lead us into bitter discouragement or angry cynicism. In such times, God, help us to view life with a sense of hope—not a naive or sentimental hope, but a hope that is rooted in the deeper realities of life.

And, God, when we are disappointed in others, protect us from irresponsible and self-righteous anger that makes matters worse rather than better. May we be so aware of the way You reach out to us that we also reach out to others. In the midst of dealing with the consequences of what was said and done in the past, help us also to see the new possibilities You are giving us in the present, and make us sensitive to the potential You are offering us in the future.

God, when things are not going right, help us not to focus on our own hurt but on Your grace that gives us what we need to deal with the present and the ability to move into the future with hope.

In the name of the one whose life and ministry, death and resurrection revealed Your grace, we pray as he taught us to pray: "Our Father …"