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I want you to know that as we reflect together this morning, even though it looks like I'm doing a lot of talking, we reflect together on what it means or how we should have an enemy. I'm not an expert, but I the Gospel of Luke guides us here and so my prayer for myself is to learn as well to listen to God for Jesus to teach me how to have enemies I pray and to continue to convict me to teach me how to love my enemies as God has loved me that said the world is heavy is it not friends The world is heavy and perhaps heavier than normal.

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There is so much violence and escalation of violence against vulnerable people outside these doors. I give thanks that we have communities like this where we can gather. Gather with those that have gone before us across time, but also across the globe. Communities, Christian, Muslim, Jewish,

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People outside of religious traditions, sewing and knitting beautiful communities in the face of great violence. People have done it for centuries, and we learn from them, for they handed down to us their wisdom and their courage. And so I give thanks for you and for what you do outside these doors. I give thanks for this time together to reflect on the Gospel of Luke

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that teaches us how to have an enemy. You know, in the Christian tradition, we love to say, Love your enemies. Boy, we love to say it. And as a historian of Christian mission, I can testify that the historical record says that Christians love to tell vulnerable people, Love your enemy, love your enemy, love, love, love, love, love.

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From the places of privilege that I myself inhabit. Places of privilege to look at the vulnerable and the oppressed and say, love your enemies. Dialogue, talk, hold hands. And often Christian missionaries have seen themselves as the neutral broker between parties.

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Failing to assess the power dynamics, failing to see that there is a just and an unjust, that there is an oppressor and the oppressed. We love to say love your enemies so we don't have to confront injustice. We love to say love your enemies because it feels so good. Woo!

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Indigenous scholar Patty Krawek says that Christians love to do this because it gives us emotional satisfaction without structural change. We love to set up dialogues, dialogues. We love to sing songs. We love to light candles.

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All those things are beautiful and good, but not if they do not have structural change. What difference does it make if you and I walk away feeling so good and nothing changes for the most vulnerable among us? This is what Patty Krawick is saying and what a friend and colleague of mine says in her book, Melissa Flora Bixler. She says in her book, How to Have an Enemy, that, We just can't keep getting away with this if we want change.

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She wrote her book a few years ago And it's more prescient than ever to think about how we have come to this place where hatred is becoming so ensconced in all of our societal norms and institutions. Vulnerable people will testify they've always been there, those hateful ideas and structures, but they are becoming more firmly ensconced. They're becoming more cultural norms.

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And so where is the church? Surely, she is not proclaiming love your enemies without saying what it means to love an enemy or how to have an enemy. Melissa Flora Bixler gives an example in her book of a program in North Carolina where the police had for years and years, as they have across the country, been abusive of black bodies, killed unarmed black bodies. And there was obviously tension between the largely white police force and the black community.

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In an effort to build bridges, the police started a program at McDonald's, and they would go visit young black children and give them coupons for a free ice cream. In her book, she says, It felt so good. And the Christians were like, All right, love your enemy. This feels so good.

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But, she says, what happens when some of those black children, especially black boys, become black men and they're on a dark hill and a police pulls them over? That moment, that feel-good moment means nothing because they will be killed for being a black body. This example reminds us that what feels good to us often does not yield structural change. And this is what we aim for when we love who Jesus loved.

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People often say, Well, Jesus loved everybody. God loves everyone. Friends, there is no doubt. It is a given.

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It is a given that we should love our enemies. love our enemies does not mean excusing injustice it does not mean avoiding confrontation it does not mean avoiding rupture in relationship it does not mean packaging the truth in small doable bites so that it feels so good if we leave church feeling good Bishop Oscar Romero says It's not the gospel. It's not the gospel, he says.

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If you're not familiar, he was assassinated for standing with the poor in El Salvador. And if you're not familiar with his journey, he started out with a quite neutral stance because it felt so good. to have everyone on the same page, the military that was torturing and disappearing people, the government that was funding it and ensuring to have their wealth at the expense of the most vulnerable. And the more time he spent with the oppressed in his community, he realized that the gospel is for the oppressed.

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So that means that maybe you and I can find times when we are enemies of the gospel. We often think -- when we think about enemies, we think, Who did me wrong? I think that.

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Paul from kindergarten, who used to harass me every time at recess, he was my enemy that whole year. Don't worry, 40 years later, I promise I forgive him. It's okay, Paul. But we think, right, in individual terms.

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But this is not what the Gospel of Luke invites. The Gospel of Luke says enemies. And the entire Gospel reminds us that Jesus's mission and that the good news are rooted in the good news for the oppressed. For the oppressed.

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That is where we are grounded. That is where we are rooted. That is where we are to be looking. The good news is for the oppressed, and anyone who stands in the way of the good news is an enemy to the gospel.

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That might be you or I. It might be the ICE agents that are kidnapping our neighbors off the streets. Yes, absolutely. It might be the powers and principalities that bomb people out of existence in Gaza.

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that commit genocide in Gaza, in Sudan, in Congo, so you and I can have cell phones and laptops. Until we stop, until we take seriously, these things, they will keep happening. They are not far away. They are not things that we are so sad about and cannot do anything about, lest our moral imagination be limited.

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We have to come together and fight as vigorously for our rights and our human flourishing as we would the neighbor down the street or the neighbor across the globe. Time should stop. Everything should stop. So that the good news can be good news for everyone.

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People often want to abuse the language of love your enemies. Remember, friends, that loving our enemies is not the opposite of confrontation. It is not, it does not mean wielding violence. It does not mean the things that we are afraid of.

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We should be more afraid of being an enemy of the gospel than we are offending a neighbor, a friend, a family member. We do not pursue the prospect of having enemies. We do not want enemies. Look at Jesus.

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By merely the way He lived, He became an enemy to many. And therefore, we should have enemies. And we should love them. This is how.

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And this means that when we love them, that we do not allow ourselves to be transformed to their methods their tactics their ways of being we do not allow them to transform us love loving our neighbors does not excuse oppression it names the enemy and calls out its mistreatment but as Scholar Timothy McNinch writes, the response of love sidesteps the interminable cycle of violence and retaliation, and lays hold of a new identity. it does not stop confrontation it does not stop a church from being in the way of Empire if we are not in the way if we are not in the way of Empire we are not the church Oscar Romero said as much and his life and death testified as much the life and death of Jesus testified as much we must be in the way we must agitate

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Through creative non-violent means, we must make sacrifices that cause us to have less, that hurt us. Sacrifices. We must take risks. Do you not see who's being scapegoated?

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People labeled terrorists, our Muslim neighbors scapegoated, immigrants scapegoated. The queer community, scapegoated. Vulnerable populations, scapegoated by an empire that blows people out of existence, denies people food, and basic human rights. Who's being scapegoated?

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We must stop these cycles of violence. I am reminded of a friend, Dawood Nasser, who lives and dwells he wouldn't say owns on the tent of nations land in Palestine in the West Bank. For decades he has fought to keep his land and the Israeli government has tried to take it.

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Settlers come even just last week with large guns threatening, saying you can keep working your olive trees, gathering your olives. It's okay. It's going to be ours one day. It's a hilltop property coveted

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And what he does is he brings people, volunteers, and they work the land, and they pray, and they do not use violence. People don't often tell Dawud's story, because people often think of Palestinians, the way they think of Muslims, as violent. People are discarded, not even considered. His story is decades old.

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People from around the globe come and till that soil. and resist violence with creative nonviolence. I pray to have the courage that Dawud has, because he has it every day in the face of great violence. He has many stories beyond what I have shared, but I think of him when I think of creative nonviolence and the many ways that he has survived, that his family has survived on that land in the face of great hatred and violence.

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I pray to have that courage. And so when I ask, what is it like to have an enemy? How do I have an enemy? Of course, I love them.

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I want what's best for them. When they are hungry, may I prepare them food. When they are sad, may I pray for them. May I pray that their hearts change, but I will stand in their way.

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I will, and many across the globe will, I will stand between them and the vulnerable with my words, with my actions. And I know many of you do, and will, and have. We do this in community.

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We do this as a church. We do this in interfaith communities. We do this to build a better and a different world. We cannot sit idly by with what feels good.

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We must disrupt. we must face the enemy and say, You will not violate the gospel. We are agents of the gospel of Jesus first and foremost. Peace building entails confrontation and disruption.

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You cannot have peace without justice. You cannot have peace without justice. And so we must continue on, and not in ways that make us feel good, but that bring change. Go make Empire uncomfortable.

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Go make sacrifices. Go take risks. But the important thing is you don't do it alone. We do not do it alone.

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We do it together in community, and that's where its power is And we are not transformed by the ways of this world. We use creative, non-violent resistance to say no to the enemy. And if the enemy says, I am your enemy, may it be so, because our allegiance is first and foremost to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And this is, in part, how we have an enemy. And prayer helps too. May we learn to have enemies. May we learn that our allegiance is first and foremost to the gospel.

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And may we remember that the gospel gospel is first and foremost for the oppressed Jesus help us to remember amen good