Impossible Love ...

It is a mystery to me why God loves me.  He has plenty of reason not to.  I have done nothing to earn His love, and way too much to have caused His heart to harden where I am concerned.  But evidence of His love comes my way each and every day.  One piece of that evidence is the love my wife has for me.  And another mystery is born.  My wife may have a few reasons to love me, but plenty more not to, if she chose.  If reasons for her to love or not-to-love me were placed on a scale, the needle would point to the not-to-love side like measuring brick against a feather.  But love remains.  Love persists.  Forgiveness abounds.  These evidences mirror the heart of God and I recognize His touch in the heart of my wife.  Neither of us are perfect, but the touch of God in the human heart, creates love, abounding forgiving love, where none might otherwise even exist.  Then there are my children.  And the love multiplies.  My parents, love expounds again.  I am beyond lucky.  I am loved.  Through my eyes it is with an impossible love.

Where I don’t look for love in the eyes, words, or deeds of my enemies.  It is likely you feel the same.  Human nature would have us look to tend what love we experience in the families we cultivate.  Human nature would have us not even try to spark love in our enemies, because it is an impossible task.  It does not even matter if we are able to love them.  It just always seems it would be impossible for them to love us.  Thus the word enemy.  And enemies do things, say things, that are meant to hurt us.  Or perhaps at best with a total disregard for how it will affect us.  How we respond to our enemies does more to define us than it does to define them.  For it is our hearts that will suffer the burden of anger, resentment, holding of grudges.  It is our hearts burdened down with the baggage of these things, while our enemies seem free to continue going about their daily routines without so much as a single after thought for what they have done to us, or done in spite of us.  Therefore natural to look for love from family and perhaps even friends.  Decidedly unnatural to look for it in enemies who refuse to love us no matter what we do.

But Christians carry another burden.  We are supposed to love our enemies.  Even the worst of them.  This would seem an impossible task for a human.  It is.  So how do we get it done anyway?  When tragedy strikes us, it is seldom our first thought – Gee, I wonder how this will impact our enemies, I hope they are OK.  No, when tragedy strikes, we lament over how it will impact us, then our families, then our wider community.  We figure our enemies will rejoice in our tragedy.  The same is somewhat true when providential blessings come our way.  Our first thought is rarely – Gee, I wonder if I could share some of this blessing, or perhaps give all of it, to my enemy.  No, more likely, we first think of what we will use this blessing on for ourselves, then our families, then our communities.  We figure our blessing has nothing to do with our enemies, and they would lament seeing us be blessed.  To change how we think is required.  To change how we love is required.  It is a total re-wiring of our brains to go where we have seldom gone before without kicking and screaming along the way.  We must learn to love differently.  More passionately, but also, we must learn to love impossibly.  The only love capable of that now is God’s love.  So we must learn to plug our hearts into that and let it take full control over us.

Luke writes about this weird obsession with love in his gospel letter to his friend.  This letter was meant to establish beliefs as you will recall, to provide evidence as to why we Christians believe as we do.  After all the ideas of family and enemies have been around since our first parents were cast out of Eden.  Family before sin.  Enemies after it.  Luke picks up in chapter six, as he continues relaying one of the greatest sermons ever preached on practical Christianity by Jesus Christ Himself.  He begins in verse 27 saying … “But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,”  There it is.  Jesus flips our ideas about who we should love on their head.  You will note this first commandment does not ask us “not” to love anyone, but instead it asks us to expand our notion of love, to include everyone.  And note too, enemies here is not used passively.  Like the enemies who steal a promotion from us at work, or politicians who do the environment wrong and ruin the earth we all share.  This use of the word enemy goes beyond that to someone who actually hates us.  We are to “do good” to them in spite of how they feel and what they do.  That is a tall order.  The tall order God fulfills every day.

Jesus continues in verse 28 saying … “Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”  It is rare to see a fight where one person unloads a series of swearing insults, and the other says only – I would like to bless you in the name of Jesus Christ, asking Him for only the best of life for you in all things.  When the politician appears on the news, the conversations that make you angry, should first make you want to pray, dropping right then to your knees to ask God not to “change” them and their sinful ways, but instead to shower His blessings upon them and bless them, their families, and our nation with an outpouring of His love, tangibly through you if you can go that far.  That sounds impossible.  It is.  How do I make Donald Trump or Bill Clinton the first object of my prayers for blessing on them, instead of me?  How do I think of insuring Gods love for them, ahead of myself or my family?  That they should appear first in my prayers sounds just crazy.  But is it?  Is it so crazy to put others ahead of yourself in your prayers for blessing?  And is it so crazy to pray for blessings upon your enemies, even to go so far as the enemies of our nation like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, the latter responsible for so many murders against us.  They top the hate posters.  Can we dare to take the hate poster down, and make future enemies the top of our prayer list for blessings?  That sounds impossible.  It is.  But Jesus asks it anyway.

Jesus continues in verse 29 saying … “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also.”  And here is where violence is intended to go extinct.  Not in the hearts of others.  But in your heart.  Here is where your “need” for a gun to protect yourselves and your family is no longer a “need”, but a burden you were not meant to carry.  Here is where your life is defined by your ability to absorb violence done to you without trying to return it, but instead offering only gentle love in response.  Did you ever wondered why the Christians did not fight in the Roman arenas?  They just died there.  Usually singing hymns thus infuriating the emperors who came to see fear and terror in the dying.  They were like sheep.  They did not resist.  They did not form militias.  They did not form armies.  Those followers of Jesus were raped, tortured, and killed.  And their faith did not break or turn to violence to defend themselves.  They gave up their bodies and their lives and remained true to Jesus Christ, all the while praying for their enemies, and the courage to remain faithful in spite of the martyrdom they were experiencing firsthand.  Do we just call them crazy and buy that Glock 9 to insure that could never happen to us again?  That kind of love and faith sounds impossible.  It is.  But somehow, they were locked in on it.  We could be too.

Jesus continues in verse 30 saying … “Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.”  Here is where your money becomes nothing more than a tool to do good to others.  You are to give to ANY who asks.  NOT as a loan, but as a gift you never expect to see again.  When my children call me with a need, it is easy for me to drop everything and find a way to help them.  We could examine the reasons I do that on a psychiatrist’s couch for years to come and never reach a conclusion.  But they are family.  They are easy.  When I see the homeless man on the street, and I give them a dollar.  That one is easier to understand.  I give something, so I do not have to give everything.  But in truth, I do not meet his need, I pacify it.  Or better stated I pacify only myself.  It is not what Jesus asks of me.  And while I give to the church, who in turn has ministries for those in need, it is still only the giving of my funds, not of my heart, or of my time.  The precious time I have, I choose to keep, gladly willing to throw dollars at a problem to ever avoid the challenge of the request of my time, or my heart.  As a banker, giving money away seems unnatural to me.  But Jesus asks way more from me, than my ability to go beyond what is natural, He is looking to totally convert my heart and thoughts.  Will I let Him?

Jesus continues in verse 31 with what we call the golden rule saying … “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”  But we have twisted the gold in this “rule” to use it as a means to return to men what they have done to us in like manner back to them.  Still others go farther saying do unto others; then split.  To give first, to love first, to persist in a love despite bad action in return, is for most of us just impossible.  So seeing the impossible done, gives evidence that God’s love is alive in the heart willing to love in this way.  Thus when I see God’s forgiveness in the heart of my wife for me, and in my heart for her – there is evidence of a greater love in both of us than what the human heart alone could offer by itself.  When my thoughts bend not to what is easy for me, but how I could make things easier for her, I recognize in myself the impossible.  It is not of my own origin.  It comes from Him, and only flows through me.  That kind of change in thinking is stunning to me.  It is unnatural to my carnal nature, and teaches me that I need not be slave to my carnal nature.  That through submission to Jesus there is much more love to see and experience than I have even tasted as yet.  It is impossible but only the beginning of impossible.

But then I realize my walk has only begun and my path is much longer than I first thought it might be.  Luke continues with Jesus speaking in verse 32 saying … “For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. [verse 33] And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. [verse 34] And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.”  I am a sinner.  For all of the love I describe is nothing more than any ordinary sinner might experience.  My expectations for love have not exceeded what any ordinary sinner might expect.  I am called to something more.  Something impossible.  It is not just me, it is every person who dares to follow Jesus Christ.  We are all collectively called to something more, something greater.  A greater impossible love, that can still flow through us all.  That redemptive love will change our thoughts, how we think.  It will also change how we love, and as I have repeated often, who we love.  We are to love others not at the exclusion of our families, but in addition to that love.  We are to love others at the exclusion of loving self.  It is self-love at the root of every evil.  Jesus would have us love like God loves.

Jesus concludes this snippet from His sermon picking up in verse 35 saying … “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. [verse 36] Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”  This is the kind of impossible love God has for me, and for each of us.  God loves us even though we sometimes call ourselves His enemies with good reason.  Yet He is kind to us no matter how badly we treat Him.  He forgives us, no matter how many times we require Him to do so.  He continues to love us in spite of what we do and say.  His love is persistent.  His love is infectious.  His love brings us life and life more abundantly.  I confess it is hard for me to love Donald Trump, or Bill Clinton, or any of the enemies of our country that terrorism has spawned.  I just don’t think much about our presidents until they enact something I do not like.  And our enemies tend to go on the hate posters in my heart.  But Jesus asked the impossible of my heart.  And if He asked it.  He must have a way to offer it.  So I will submit and see where He will lead in this regard.  It may be impossible for me.  But I am NOT the one in charge, and what is impossible for me is child’s play for Jesus.  God just has that kind of impossible love and He longs to place it in me and you.