Love Your Enemies

Luke 6:27-38 and This Morning I Pray for My Enemies by Joy Harjo

Sunday February 23, 2025

Nicole M. Lamarche

Welcome again! The Spirit is ahead of us! Welcome however you are joining, in

whatever shape you are in, whatever you are bringing today. I offer this prayer from

Psalm 19…

Last April, some of us sat in a trolley and as the car began to jerk from one side

to the other, while staying in place, a loud voice told us that our journey was about to

begin. We were at the Freedom Rides Museum in Montgomery, Alabama as part of our

Civil Rights Pilgrimage that we did as a church and I wasn’t sure what we were in for.

The tour was meant to be interactive, and it allowed me to hear the story in a new and

different, a deeper way. As the lights dimmed and we were asked to remain seated,

through a film sharing the stories, we experienced a re-enactment of history in

holograms. And it was in that place that I started to understand for the very first time

what it really took to do what they did. Some of you probably already know or maybe

you would not be surprised to learn, that it was driven and led and supported and

sustained by women, more specifically Black Women. I have now learned the story of

one in woman in particular, born on April 17, 1912 in Culloden, Georgia who later

became the valedictorian of her high school class and went on to graduate from college,

becoming not just the first woman, but the first one in her family to do that. She went on

to fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher.

She was a teacher in the public schools of Macon, Georgia for five years while she

worked on a Master’s degree from Atlanta University. Her name is Jo Ann Robinson. She

also pursued English studies at Columbia University in New York City, later moving to

Montgomery in 1949 to be a teacher at Alabama State College. But not long after she

arrived in Montgomery, a driver of one of the publicly buses, verbally attacked her for

sitting in the "whites only" section. She was already active in and connected to the

Women’s Political Council, a local civic organization of, by and for African American

professional women and so they thoughtfully and repeatedly shared with the elected

officials of Montgomery, Alabama about what was happening. They shared of their unfair

treatment. They shared stories of drivers that were abusive, they were not heard, nothing

changed. Those in positions of privilege found it hard to have ears to hear.

Eventually Jo Ann Robinson began creating plans for how the African American

community could boycott the buses of Montgomery. They were already preparing for

what this could look like, for what would need to happen for it work, when in December of

1955 Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person.

Joann Robinson and the Women’s Political Council were ready when that happened.

They had already built their networks.

They went to work making copies of flyers that they put all around the city, sharing

everywhere they could, calling their community to experiment with a one-day boycott.

I bet some people said one day couldn’t do very much, but it actually showed them how

much power they had and they decided that they had to continue their campaign and

they made a little group, I love that its acronym is MIA but it stands for the Montgomery

Improvement Association and that group worked together to create a huge carpool

system. We moms know how to carpool! They created a carpool system that helped

everyone in the African American community get to work and home for 381 days. Let me

say that again, it was 381 days and do you know it was tens of thousands of people? For

all of that time, they helped each other and supported each other.

In a 1976 interview, Robinson pointed out, "That boycott was not supported by a few

people; it was supported by 52,000 people."

In a speech later where he spoke about what was happening, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther

King said that often African Americans “ended up being plunged into the abyss of

exploitation where he experienced the bleakness of nagging injustice.”

But something else happened. Like it did in Montgomery. And the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther

King said that Joanne was infatigable.

“In 1956, 50,000 Negroes in Montgomery, Alabama, walked the streets of that city for

381 days. They substituted tired feet for tired souls and walked until the sagging walls of

bus segregation were finally crushed, not only in Montgomery but in cities all across the

South.”

They weren’t heard so they bound themselves together and loved each other so fully that

their enemies could not stand, separate facilities and separate seats could not stand,

they loved the hate right off of the bus. They had been plunged into the abyss and then

something else happened. They took what was happening to them and transformed it.

As Jean Yves Leloup, writes of being in harmony in the Gospel of Mary, but it’s not a

teaching to give into to harmful forces, letting them have their way. He says, “such

adversaries must be confronted in all of their violence, but without adding to it, without

provoking new violence, to be in harmony with our enemies is to skillfully allow their

violence to pass through us without contaminating us. Just as in martial arts, this

attunement to our attackers can awaken a consciousness in them that can help them to

get out of the trouble they are in. Offering the other cheek means presenting an entirely

new and unexpected way of dealing with the problem, it means to oppose violence with

consciousness, to look the other in the eye and to regard the other as subject like

oneself and to refuse to be a predictable subject.”

That something else that can happen, that shift toward another way is what I think the

Gospel of Luke is talking about. Because I don’t think this text means for us to curl in a

ball in the presence of danger or to bow down to Caesar, rather I think it is inviting us

creative ways to stay engaged so we can be a part of the change. Good things take a

while. Being indefatigable in love requires a collective commitment.

So what if when we read that we are to love those who hate us that we are to overpower

those who hate us with our goodness. It might take a while. But the network of love is

powerful! The collective commitment to inclusion is worth the effort. I blieve that together

we can love the hate right out of the world. We can disrupt hate when we see it, in

person or online. We can claim our power and think long term.

That last line in Luke, “the measure you give will be the measure you get back,” I don’t

think it is referring to Christian Karma but maybe. I think it’s more like, “love is

exponential” the measure of love we give out will be overwhelmingly returned in the

world in ways we cannot even understand. How can we love the hate out of the places

we feel and see it and read it? What does that look like for you right now? How can we

not be hooked by hate and instead support our individual and collective organizing to

overwhelm it in love?

Beloved of God, I wonder if loving our enemies and doing good to those who hates us

looks like the freedom riders of Montgomery, who showed with their actions what was

impossible when they supported each other over the long haul. I wonder if loving our

enemies looks like being indefatigable, like she was, which means persisting tirelessly. I

love this question that poet Joy Harjo asks us, “And whom do I call my enemy? And “who

is worthy of engagement?” The answer is also in the poem. “How do we let our hearts,

not our furious minds ask the question?” I love the privilege of being with you in this,

loving the hate out of every hallway and every heart, every courtroom and every police

stop, every policy and every law, every interaction where there is a chance to infuse it

with love, let that be our call right now.

When we read in the Gospel of Luke that we are to offer the other cheek when we are

struck, it doesn’t mean we are to accept abuse, no! What it means that we take and turn

it, transform it into something else. So Beloved of God, wherever you feel plunged into

the abyss, know that something else can and will happen! Together we will be

indefatigable in love, may it be so. Amen.