What does love look like in real time? That is to say, when you strip away all the idealism and romantic notions, all the hypotheticals and abstract thinking – how do I make love the center of my life in real and practical ways? This is the question I began to address directly in my blog last week. In some ways, I have been trying to address this in my entire life as a priest, and in everything I’ve written or preached – because I think a faith that does not address our everyday lives, that neither acknowledges our actual concerns nor nourishes us on a practical level so that we may love more fully, that kind of faith is a waste of our time.
God is not about wasting our time. God is about love. The Christian tradition teaches that God is love, that all of creation is born from the abundance of love, and that the first and greatest commandment God gives us is to love. If we take all or any of this seriously, then we must accept that love is not some benign emotion, but in fact a mighty force that transforms our experience of the whole world. Love is not simply something you feel – love is something in which you participate: You follow love. Love gives you eyes to see the world as it really is, and the courage to join in its healing and reconciliation.
Again, I wrote about this last week, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much, but it is worth saying over and over again that love is practical, and that God’s command to Love our neighbor is not idealistic or aspirational, but is a functional, practical, and life-changing way of living in the world. Jesus said people who live lives centered on this kind of love are building the strongest foundation imaginable – and he’s not talking about what happens to you when you die: Jesus is talking about the foundation of your life here and now.
Maybe the most controversial and universally ignored statement of Jesus’ entire ministry is when he says, love your enemies and pray for those who hate you. It seems the universal response to Jesus’ command is “No. No thank you.” We do not at all seem interested in this, and we who call ourselves Christian often relegate this command to either a suggestion or a description of being an idealistic superhuman. It is neither of these things. Loving our enemies is not a suggestion. It is, however, a description – not of a superhuman, but of something you and I can learn to do in real life if we are interested in taking Jesus seriously.
I get that we are skeptical of Jesus’ admonition to love our enemies and pray for those that hate us. In part this skepticism comes from a shallow understanding of love simply as warm and affectionate feelings. And being commanded to feel warm feelings and think happy thoughts about those who hate us rightfully seems ridiculous. Try to remember that when Jesus talks about love, he is not appealing to your emotions or sentiments: He is talking about the lens through which you view people, and the actions you take towards them. He is talking practically.
So let’s think practically. Political and ideological division are at the front of our minds these days, and I understand why. For the record, when you hear people say, “Politics should never get in the way of our relationship,” I disagree. Politics are not a game, and politics are not toothless. Our beliefs, when enacted in real time through our governing bodies, have an effect on people’s lives. Slavery, for instance, was enforced through politics – both national and local. When slavery was officially ended, it was through a political act – with people very clearly on both sides of that vote. In current times, if you are voting for something that will clearly and adversely affect someone you know, it is only reasonable to expect that your relationship with them will be affected. How could it be otherwise?
Our political beliefs and practices matter. And they absolutely can turn us against each other. We should not pretend otherwise. We should acknowledge the sad reality that our beliefs can put us at odds with one another, that they can end our relationships. Maybe we don’t use the word enemy in our everyday lives, but the effect is often the same: A fracture or disconnect in our relationships that puts us at odds with one another and tempts us to categorize and dismiss each other. I have experienced this personally in both friendships and in my own family, so I do not take it lightly.
I want to understand how to follow Jesus into this arena. I want to understand how to love my political enemies.
I believe there are three levels on which we must consider this question of how to love our political enemies: There is loving the person in my life with whom I disagree, there is loving the politicians with whom I disagree, and there is the working for love within the larger political system of which we are all a part. Next week I will address these three levels in more detail, but for today I want simply to state for your consideration that loving your political enemies is possible, is practical, is powerful. Loving your political enemies is not retreat, acquiescence, or weakness.
Loving our enemies is possible, so long as we understand that we are not alone in it – that we are not doing it on our own strength. At the core of our Christian belief is that God is with us, that God is not merely watching from afar, but is animating us with their very breath, and giving us, as Dr. King called it, the strength to love. Remember that love is not something you do on your own in order to please God: No, when you love, you are participating in the great power of God as it infiltrates this world. When you love, you are walking alongside and with God.
This past week we observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and remembered Dr. King’s life and witness. His life and witness were explicitly rooted and grounded in love at all times. The foundation of his life’s work was God’s love – and that work was political. Dr. King’s understanding of love made him many enemies. His daughter Bernice recently wrote, “Please don’t act like everyone loved my father. He was assassinated. A 1967 poll reflected that he was one of the most hated men in America. Most hated. Many who quote him now and evoke him to deter justice today would likely hate, and may already hate, the authentic King.”
We want to remember how hated Dr. King was, not only to keep ourselves honest when we tell our American story – though that is important: We want to remember how hated he was because we want to remember that taking love seriously, placing love at the center of your life, acting with love on a practical level in your community and with your politics, is not passive and weak: Love in action is the power of God and it has the power to terrify and upset those who stand in its way.
It is all too possible for me to mangle and misappropriate Dr. King’s words for my own purposes. It is sometimes tempting only to take his most comforting and least controversial words to heart. I will try not to do that. I want to acknowledge here that it was Dr. King’s writing that first taught me to think of loving my enemy as practical. It was his teaching that opened my eyes to see that my enemy and I are both beset by evil systems and forces that pit us against one another. Dr. King insisted on humanizing our enemies, not as a way of rationalizing and explaining away bad ideas and behavior, but as a way of recognizing their God given dignity at all costs – this recognition saves our souls. Dr. King taught me that when I hate others, I distort and harm my own soul. Hating others – even if they do awful things – does not make me better or smarter or more righteous than them. It ruins me. It ruins us all.
The political climate of the last decade is not unique for its disagreement. But it seems to have no precedent in our lifetime for its rancor and mean-spiritedness. Cruelty and unkind words are just par for the current course. Not a day goes by without our president publicly calling someone nasty, stupid, crazy, unamerican, or ugly, and it is completely acceptable. We cannot pretend it is unacceptable. As a culture we are fine with it. In many cases we love his cruelty and crassness. Others of us are perfectly happy dehumanizing him – speaking of him with cruelty and crassness, returning his hate with hate. In my most cynical moments, I tend to think we are all doomed to hate each other to death. I pray this is not true.
To that end, I was shocked by love this week, and I am so grateful for it. During the National Prayer Service at The Washington National Cathedral, The Rt. Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, preached about the practical and political application of God’s love in real life. For the conclusion of her sermon, she directly addressed President Trump, who sat in the front row. She did not yell or holler, neither did she name call or condescend. She spoke as one Christian who disagrees with another Christian, and it is worth repeating every word she said, because I believe it powerfully demonstrates the love we are talking about:
Bishop Budde said, “Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world.”
Then she said Amen, and I add my Amen to that, not only because I agree with her – though I do. I do not think you need to agree with Bishop Budde – or with Dr. King for that matter – on every point they make in order to recognize their method, their approach, as loving. I add my Amen, because Bishop Budde shocked me out of my cynicism and reminded me that love is practical and fierce and kind and true. She reminded me that here and now we can love our enemies.
