Blessing your Enemies

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 22 Year A
Preached at St Matthias, Bellwoods, Toronto
31 August 2008

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Romans 12.14

Just over sixteen hundred years ago, St John Chrysostom preached a series of sermons on the Letter to the Romans. When he came to Chapter 12, verse 14, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse,” at the beginning of the twenty-second sermon in the series, he commented that in these words St Paul does not simply say, “be not spiteful or revengeful, but required something far better.” and that although a wise man might act without spite or vengefulness, “this is quite an angel's part.” If “to bless those who persecute you” seemed to so great a saint as Chrysostom to be “an angel’s part”, can we hope to grasp it an make it our own? But this commandment is not some clever idea of St Paul’s; it is simply a repetition of the teaching of our Lord Jesus. That we should accept persecution without spite or rancour follows from the words of the gospel, that those who would follow the Lord must «deny themselves and take up the cross». That we should go further than this and bless those who persecute us we find in the Sermon on the Mount, «But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who abuse you» [Luke 6.27]. If we are to follow Christ then it is clear, not only must we never return cursing for cursing, pain for pain, evil for evil. not only are we never to avenge ourselves, but we are to be good and kind and loving to those who hurt us, and to be cheerful about it. Search the Gospels as you will; you will find no exceptions.
Now what St Paul says in this passage from Romans, and what our Lord Jesus says in the Gospel, are both very clear. There is no mystery about what is asked of us. But Chrysostom was right: “this is quite an angel’s part.” For the way of the world is, if not to take vengeance for wrong done or perceived, at least to feel slighted and hurt, and to think that you would be justified to try to get your own back. To follow Christ’s way, then, means not only a new way of acting, but a new way of thinking. It means, as we heard in the reading from Romans last week, not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, so that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect [Romans 12.2].
Every time we respond to persecution, or hurt, or even the unintentional slights that come our way with anger and resentment, with cursing and ill will, we are saying to the world that the will of God is not good, not acceptable, not perfect. For the will of God is seen in Christ, who suffered himself to be abused, beaten, and finally to be crucified, without complaint, without seeking revenge If we do not do the same, we are showing that, for all the faith we profess, we are conformed to this world. Worse than that, when we resist evil with evil, we are not overcoming evil, but adding to it, adding anger and violence to the world. For vengeance never heals wrong, it merely adds a new wrong, calling forth new resentment, fuelling bitterness and rancour from one generation to another. Has a wrong been done to you? St Paul’s words and the Lord’s example tell you to leave it to God. “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord, “I will repay.” The Lord Jesus said, “Judge not;” but all vengeance is based on judgment. All that my vengeance shows is that I do not really believe that God will take care of me. And it is a simple fact that none of us is either wise enough or good enough to punish our enemies justly.
In reality in the lives we lead here, as we try to follow Christ, we may never have to face real persecution, or even hatred for our faith in him. This is not true for all Christians; it is for the most part for us. Nonetheless we need to learn the lesson, “Bless those who persecute you.” For what we do meet are the thousand slights and wrongs, some real, some fancied. If we are not hated for being Christians we do meet personal hatred, or at least dislike. We must learn to respond graciously to the petty hurts of this life if we are to learn to bless those who hurt us, and even those who persecute us. Indeed it is only with these things that we can learn to be gracious and forgiving, with the resentment we feel for people who cut ahead in line, or in traffic; or for people who cheat us or hurt us in petty ways. The Gospel calls us to let these things go.[1]
At first this may mean — it probably does mean — acting against your instincts. It means swallowing your pride and keeping your first response to yourself. The late Father Egan, who taught patristics at Regis College, used to say, “I thank God for the gift of my stutter; it keeps me from saying the first thing that comes into my head.” Having swallowed your pride and bit your tongue, you’ve won a moment to ask yourself whether you have really been hurt, or have any real reason to be angry, or indeed, whether it really matters. You have won a moment for giving the other person the same benefit of the doubt that you expect and give yourself This should wipe away most of the cases. It is in the ones that remain, when a real wrong was done, and you have really been hurt, that the job of being transformed begins, and the angel’s part has to be learned.
Someone has done you a wrong, and they meant it. You feel angry, hurt, and resentful. But you are forbidden to curse, indeed, you are commanded to bless the one who hurt you. This is not easy, indeed, it might seem impossible, truly an angel’s part. But ask yourself: do you ever really try? Do you really try to stop yourself every time you want to repay a real or imagined hurt with hurt, or cursing with a curse? And finding it hard, do you ask God to help you, or do you just give up? As Chesterton one remarked it is not that the Christian life has been tried and found impossible, but that it seemed difficult and has not been tried. Perhaps I should say, Get out there and try to follow Christ’s teaching, and then we’ll talk about the difficulties. But sermons don’t work like that, and I need to finish with some practical words
It takes time to learn the angel’s part. The first step is to stop yourself from doing or saying the first thing that comes into your head. Most of us can manage that. If we try, most of us can manage not to curse. The next thing is to bring those feelings to God in our prayers or to a confessor or spiritual counsellor. We don’t have to keep them bottled up until they explode. Getting this far, simply not returning evil for evil is a wonderful achievement. But we are commanded to take the next step and bless the one who curses us. As we ponder this, it is helpful to remember that Christ did more than bless those who killed him; he died for them. So perhaps he is not demanding as much from us as we think.
Still, perhaps, we cannot utter a blessing on the one who hurts us. The answer is the same as always, so we do what we can. I cannot bless my enemy? Then let me pray for my enemy, pray perhaps that God will forgive him, or that he will see the error of his ways, or that he will have a better day and find a better temper. Let me pray for his good, in fact; for what else does it really mean to “bless” someone? Every time I do this, I build up the right habit of mind, I come to act more like Christ, and I trust that I by his grace I will finally come to bless my enemy. The all-important thing is to trust God and to try.

Note

[1] It is worth remembering that in Our Lord’s word from the Cross, "Father, forgive them" (Luke 23.34), the word translated "forgive" (aphes) also means, ‘let go’.