Consideration of “Loving Your Enemies”
Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama,
on 17 November 1957 by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Matthew 5:38-48
Martin Luther King Jr. was born in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. He was born at home in an upstairs bedroom of the family homestead where his father Martin Luther King Sr. and his mother Alberta lived. King Senior was a minister and Alberta was a musician. Martin had an older sister, Christine, and a younger brother named Alfred. Also living in the homestead was Martin’s beloved grandmother Jenny and an aunt. One of the family rules was that the entire family would eat dinner together, which meant that the meal would have to wait until Martin Sr. came from work. Every night before they could begin to eat each child had to recite a memory verse from the Bible and because they were hungry they liked to quote John 11:35 which was “Jesus wept.” (the shortest verse in the Bible) M.L. liked to play basketball, football and baseball and he loved music. He was baptized at the Ebenezer Baptist Church at age 7, went to Morehouse College when he was 15, gave his first sermon at age 18 and then was ordained into the ministry. He attended Crozer Theological Seminary and then Boston University. It was during his time in New England and on a blind date that he met his future wife Coretta who a music student at New England Conservatory. On that first date he brought up the subject of marriage which gave Coretta pause, however they were married in 1953 and eventually had four children.
It was during his college years that King first learned about the Ghandian philosophy of non-violent resistance and was influenced by Henry David Thoreau’s Essay on Civil Disobedience. In 1957, two years before he would travel to India to learn more about Gandhi and his philosophy of non-violence, Rev. King preached a sermon called “Loving Your Enemies” based on Matthew 5: 38-48. It was a sermon on love in the midst of hate, a topic he knew and had been on the receiving end of all of his life. But he also knew what it was like to struggle with internal hatred as well. He writes about his first feelings of hatred for another when he was only six – for it was then that he was no longer allowed to play with his white friend and had to have the problem of race explained to him by his parents. He struggled with hatred - fully knowing Jesus’ command to love your enemies. Religion was his life and he began that internal struggle with his Christian faith and practice, his moral conscience and the reality of life in the south in the 50’s.
My goal this morning is two fold. I would like to share with you the faith and the spirituality of this Christian man who was a Baptist and who lived in our life time. And just as there was hate then - there is just as much hatred now. We live in a world and society filled with hate and fear. Hate is nearby – it is very close. In December teens were arrested in Springfield for vandalizing and setting fire to a mosque. In Weymouth two teen brothers were attacked just because they were talking in Arabic at a bus stop. In November in Charlestown three young African-American teens were attacked by a group of white teens. In Needham and in Concord leaflets were being distributed in the schools and streets encouraging hatred and membership in the Klu Klux Klan.
But hate is even closer still. Hate can reside in our towns, in our own schools, in our politics, in our places of work, in our church, in our homes and even closer still – in our own hearts. It is so easy to slip over the line and slide into a state of hate and anger. We have all done it – and we would all be better off if we could rid ourselves of something so malicious, so destructive and so harmful.
Let us see what Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would say to us, today, about Loving Your Enemies. This particular sermon was delivered on November 17th, 1957, just 48 years ago at the Dexter Baptist Church in Alabama. I would like to point out only three of the main points of this thought provoking, faith inspiring sermon. I believe that King offered a head, heart and hand response to the problem of hate. He connects us emotionally, intellectually and practically to the problem and pain of hate. To that problem he offers these three suggestions;
1. You must analyze yourself and see if you also have the hate response within you.
2. You must look for the good in your enemy.
3. You must never try to defeat or hurt your enemy. Instead you must love as Jesus did with a redemptive love.
King’s words:
“Now first let us deal with this question, which is the practical question: How do you go about loving your enemies? I think the first thing is this: In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self. And I’m sure that seems strange to you, that I start out telling you this morning that you love your enemies by beginning with a look at self. It seems to me that that is the first and foremost way to come to an adequate discovery to the how of this situation.
Now, I’m aware of the fact that some people will not like you, not because of something you have done to them, but they just won’t like you. I’m quite aware of that. Some people aren’t going to like the way you walk; some people aren’t going to like the way you talk. Some people aren’t going to like you because you can do your job better than they can do theirs. Some people aren’t going to like you because other people like you, and because you’re popular, and because you’re well-liked, they aren’t going to like you. Some people aren’t going to like you because your hair is a little shorter than theirs or your hair is a little longer than theirs. Some people aren’t going to like you because your skin is a little brighter than theirs; and others aren’t going to like you because your skin is a little darker than theirs. So that some people aren’t going to like you. They’re going to dislike you, not because of something that you’ve done to them, but because of various jealous reactions and other reactions that are so prevalent in human nature.
But after looking at these things and admitting these things, we must face the fact that an individual might dislike us because of something that we’ve done deep down in the past, some personality attribute that we possess, something that we’ve done deep down in the past and we’ve forgotten about it; but it was that something that aroused the hate response within the individual. That is why I say, begin with yourself. There might be something within you that arouses the tragic hate response in the other individual.”
The hate response.
How easy it is for the hate response to appear within each one of us. How many times have we found our emotions and our thoughts changing within us? We can feel our body tense up and change from a state of hopeful expectancy for the day - to a state of anger and disgust. The hate response comes upon us quickly, often when we least expect it and don’t want it. The fall Presidential election brings the problem of hatred to mind. Many have commented on how hateful our political process has become. No longer do people with opposing political opinions find a way to discuss the issues and platforms with civility and respect for dissent. The campaigns were filled with ads that were negative and destructive and we were all bombarded and confronted with them daily from the multiple forms of media that we are exposed to.
And when we are tired and worn out or not feeling physically well it is so easy for anger to take over our spirits and our heart. We need to take the time to understand and examine our own inner self which is an emotional and heart response to the real issue of hate. Rev. King is suggesting that when we become aware of the hate response and its choke hold on us - that we are taking the first step to living a life of love.
On the second point, King says:
“A second thing that an individual must do in seeking to love his enemy is to discover the element of good in his enemy, and every time you begin to hate that person and think of hating that person, realize that there is some good there and look at those good points which will over-balance the bad points.
I’ve said to you on many occasions that each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality. We’re split up and divided against ourselves. And there is something of a civil war going on within all of our lives. There is a recalcitrant South of our soul revolting against the North of our soul. And there is this continual struggle within the very structure of every individual life. There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do." There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with Plato that the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses, each wanting to go in different directions. There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Goethe, "There is enough stuff in me to make both a gentleman and a rogue." There is something within each of us that causes us to cry out with Apostle Paul, "I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do."
According to King we must remember that there is an element of good within every person. Every person we meet or come into contact with has a life and a story to tell. Our head or intellectual response knows – as the cliché goes - that there are two sides to every story. There is a person and a family and a story behind a face, behind a boss, behind a competitor. Madeleine L'Engle reminds us that we are all “mortals who are male and female”. Looking at humanity at that most basic level we are reminded that we are all male or female human beings who need air to breathe, water to drink, food to sustain us, shelter to warm us and love to make us smile.
Rev. King suggests that once we look at ourselves and acknowledge our own hate response, the second thing we need to do is seek out and look for the good in our enemy.
On the third point King says:
“Another way that you love your enemy is this: When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person. It might be in terms of a recommendation for a job; it might be in terms of helping that person to make some move in life. That’s the time you must do it. That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system”
Here is the “hand” response from King – the action plan that becomes our way of responding to various persons and situations. We must not act with hate. We must not retaliate or get revenge or seek to hurt the other. If we find that hate response rising within us and our eyes are temporarily blind to the good in the other person – we must not reach out to strike the other person in any way. We turn the other cheek; we walk the extra mile; we give away our coat as the words of Jesus tell us to do in Matthew chapter five. This is the way that Jesus lived and the way that Jesus taught us to live in relationship to each other.
King points out that this kind of love is called Agape love and it is a redemptive and transforming love. It is the love that is exemplified by the life of Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself so that we might live. That type of sacrificial love flies in the face of every thing that society stood for during Jesus’ life time as well as the cheap love on display in the 21st century. In order to love our enemies we must choose to love them with an agape love following the example of Christ who loved, lived and died for us. He never reacted in hate but only loved well. Martin Luther King Jr. learned this lesson about loving and living in the midst of hate and racism and injustice.
One of the greatest tributes we could give to him on the anniversary of his birth – is to live and love with an agape love. This is not easy to do. It is so much easier to slide into hate - but God calls us to love one another over and over again. “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.’ (1 John 4:7) Rev. King also said that “The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil”. King was a follower of Jesus Christ – we would do well to follow both of them this week mindful of these words and the power of love in action.
Amen
Rev. Deborah J. Blanchard
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