23 February 2025
Do you remember that I have said in the past that sometimes Jesus uses hyperbole? Hyperbole is another word for exaggeration. And it’s not the kind of exaggeration intended to mislead. It’s really just the opposite: It’s exaggeration that’s obviously not intended to be taken literally.
For example, when Jesus says that if one of your eyes causes you to lust, you should gouge it out. And if one of your hands causes you to sin, you should cut it off. Never in the history of Christianity have these directions been taken literally by any church—not even the ones who claim they take the Bible literally. That’s because they’re obviously hyperbole.
These, of course, aren’t the only difficult sayings of Jesus, and so the question arises: Of all the sayings of Jesus that we find impossible to follow, are they all hyperbole? If we can’t do them, does that mean Jesus was just overstating something, and we were supposed to understand all along that he was exaggerating to make a point?
What about turning the other cheek? If someone strikes me, am I literally supposed to turn my body so they can do it again?
Well, this is not hyperbole, but there’s no reason to believe that Jesus didn’t mean it literally. If we look at his life, we can find no instance of him cutting off or otherwise removing a body part that offended him. But we definitely find him before the council and before Pilate refusing to defend himself. So perhaps the cheek was a metaphor—and it stood for something real: refusing to allow somebody else’s violence to cause him to lash out in violence himself. And in case we have any doubt about this, before he died, he prayed for those who had nailed him to the cross.
And this brings us to today’s reading from the scriptures, which opens with the words, “Love your enemies.” This is one of those impossible sayings of Jesus. Maybe it’s hyperbole. Maybe it’s such an exaggerated statement that we’re supposed to automatically know not to even try to fulfill it.
Love your enemies… “Certainly these are great words, words lifted to cosmic proportions,” said Martin Luther King, “and over the centuries, many persons have argued that this is an extremely difficult command.” And so we might sit back and think that if these words are not, in fact, hyperbole, they are at least unrealistic and overly idealistic. Perhaps Jesus could practice what he preached, but we’re just too weak, too broken, too prone to hate and revenge.
But it was Dr. King who pointed out the reality, which is that Jesus is not being an “impractical idealist” here. No, it’s Jesus who’s being the “practical realist.” The saying love your enemies takes on a new urgency in our day and age. “Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization.”
When Jesus told us to love those we were inclined to hate, he knew he was telling us to do the opposite of what our human spirits were often inclined to do. But this, he knew, was the only way his followers were going to live with any integrity in the world. For many, it was going to have to be the only way to live in the world, period.
And so as we move forward with Jesus and the words, “Love your enemies,” I want to make three points. First, the cure for hate is never more hate. When we respond to hate by hating back, hate is intensified in the universe. When our response to a deed that hurts us with revenge, there has been no healing and the pain of the world has gotten worse.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” And so if we believe—as Christians must believe—that love is the answer, then love must, in fact, be the answer—the answer even to hate. We’re told these days that forgiveness is weak, that strength requires us to take revenge. But that’s not true, is it? The one who steps back from constant retribution and says to violence, “No more”—that is the stronger one. Hate loses control. Love is always in control.
And so if hate intensifies the existence of hate in the universe, then love intensifies love; love promotes more love.
I finished a book a couple of weeks ago. It was a book for young readers called The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau [Random House, 2004]. It was the sequel to a book called The City of Ember, about people living in an underground city that had been founded centuries earlier in preparation for a world-ending cataclysmic event. The underground world was all they knew, and they had no idea what lay beyond their city. They didn’t even know they were underground. But as systems began to fail, a couple of kids found the way out. And in the sequel, the hundreds of people from the City of Ember find a town of survivors called Sparks, and the migrants need help.
The people of Sparks give them help and things are fine for a while, but things start to sour as the villagers start to resent the underground migrants, and accuse them of stealing their stuff. There are bad people on both sides stoking up hatred until an all-out battle erupts. As certain death for both sides draws ever closer, one of the main characters—a teenage boy from underground named Doon takes a chance and saves one of the kids from Sparks. This wasn’t just any kid, but Torren, the kid who had started the rumors and accusations against the people from Ember in the first place.
It could be argued that Torren deserved nothing but the hatred and resentment of those he hurt with his lies. But hate was not going to drive out the hate that had possessed both sides. Which leads to my second point, and that is something we hear all the time in our world: “Haters gonna hate.” Maybe we think that when we hate our enemies, it only effects our enemies. But that’s not true, is it? We cannot hate without being characterized by hate. If we hate, we don’t just turn the object of our hatred into hatees. No, we also turn ourselves into haters. And who among us wants to be a hater? Who among us wants to be defined by our hatred?
In the worst of people, there is some goodness. And in the best of people, there is some bad. So even if we think we’re on the good list, we would do well to remember that. It changes our attitude toward persons and peoples. If we choose to look at the good, it becomes harder to hate. And if we choose to pray for the bad, it also becomes harder to hate. And if pray for our loved ones and our enemies in the same breath, then we have a stake in their well-being, and hate becomes impossible.
One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in Jeremiah when God told Israel to pray for their captors and their welfare. And instead of being diminished by seventy years of hatred in exile, they were strengthened by the very prayers they prayed for the city of their captivity.
So don’t be haters, but be characterized by love. Because love doesn’t just put an end to violence and injustice, it also redeems—and this is my third point, that love changes people for the better. Remember the book I talked about earlier, The People of Sparks? Well, when Doon saves Torren from the fire that’s about to engulf him, it doesn’t just save his life; it redeems it. Torren didn’t turn out to be a perfect boy after his rescue. But he turned out not to such a hateful one. Perhaps we could even say he was honest. And this was a direct result of his enemy not hating him enough to let him die in the flames he had kindled.
There’s another dumb phrase that people throw around these days: “Fake it till you make it.” You’d think this saying would be meaningless. But it turns out, it’s not. Though repeating it probably doesn’t do what a lot of people think it does, it turns out we can eventually become what we pretend to be, we can grow into the stories we tell ourselves, and acting like the people who surround us helps change our behavior and even our beliefs.
It's been seen in those who place themselves in extremist circles. After extended periods of being exposed to nothing but hate speech and extreme opinions, people do indeed become radicalized. And if this is true, what happens when we place ourselves in communities of faith and trust, when we’re surrounded by people who promote love, peace, and forgiveness?
So love redeems not only the enemy, but it redeems the person who rejects hatred. My favorite line at the end of The People of Sparks is when Mary, one of the town’s leaders speaks to both her people and the migrants, explaining that nobody’s going to get everything they want. But, she says, “We will refuse to be each other’s enemies.” And really, that sums up Jesus’ words in a nutshell. Jesus says “love your enemies” to both us and them. And, seeing in each other the image of the same Creator, we respond, “We will refuse to be each other’s enemies.
—©2025 Sam Greening
*The basic outline and many of the points of this sermon are taken from Martin Luther King, Jr., Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together, Charles E. Moore, ed. (Walden NY: Plough, 2021) pp. 141-144.
