By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds August – September 2025)
Jesus said, ‘You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ Matthew 5:43-44.
He was making reference to ‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord’ (Leviticus 18:19)
It is not always easy to love those around us. Jesus knew that.
He lived in a world of Roman occupation, where alongside the usual personality clashes and fallings out of families and communities, there were divisions and factions within the occupied Jewish people and a fear and resentment of the occupying Roman powers.
To love your neighbour was not easy, but Jesus challenged his hearers to go further; not only to love their neighbours but also their enemies.
News headlines, social media likes, gossip, and justification for violence are so easily fuelled by fear and hatred, and turn people (and systems) into enemies. It takes discipline as Christians to pursue love rather than being consumed by hate or fear
I recently met a very compassionate person from a town in southern Germany with a significant population of immigrants. They commented that, ‘Sure there are issues, but we must not lose sight that these are people, not problems; they are diverse beautiful people, with harsh and often painful stories.’
They reminded me that the heart of compassion is looking at others (and ourselves) as multi-layered and complex beings who are known and loved by God. I may find someone’s behaviour or views offensive and deeply wrong, but part of my discipline as a disciple is to recognise that there will always be more to that person than the aspects of them which disturb me, and in that recognition to seek to love them.
“There will always be more to them than what disturbs me”
Writing in 1937 under the shadow of the rise of Nazism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship wrote, ‘The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that people should defeat their enemies by loving them.’
Loving ourselves, our neighbours and our enemies is a costly discipline; but a discipline which offers a peace (individually and collectively) which no defeat by violence can ever achieve. It is not easy to love, but it is the only way of true hope for us all.