Welcome to the Nonviolent Jesus Podcast. I'm
John, Father John Deere, and today I want to
reflect with you on the climax of the Sermon
on the Mount, the command from Jesus to love
your enemies. This is a project of BeatitudesCenter
.org where you can find many other podcasts and
regular Zoom programs on the nonviolence of Jesus
and practicing nonviolence and working for a
more nonviolent, more just, peaceful world. So
let's begin with a little prayer. I invite you
to just take a deep breath wherever you are.
Just relax and center yourself again. And together,
let's enter into the presence of the God of peace
and universal love who loves you infinitely and
all people. And let's welcome the risen nonviolent
Jesus here with us and ask for the grace to follow
him ever more faithfully. to love with his same
universal nonviolent love, and so to do God's
will. God of peace, thank you for all the blessings
of life, love, and peace that you give us. Be
with us now as we reflect together on your call
to follow the nonviolent Jesus and love everyone
with a universal nonviolent love. friends, and
enemies, and so work for a more nonviolent, more
just world. Bless us, inspire us, disarm us,
strengthen us, and send us out to do your will
and to do our part to help end poverty, racism,
greed, and war, and every form of injustice and
nuclear weapons and environmental destruction,
that we might fulfill these Sermon on the Mount
teachings and be your... Holy Beatitude people,
your holy peacemakers, people of universal nonviolent
love, we ask this mighty blessing in Jesus' name.
So today, as I said, I'd like to reflect with
you on the sixth antithesis of the Sermon on
the Mount. I did a podcast earlier on the fifth
one. offer no violent resistance to one who does
evil. This is the sixth one, the climax, Matthew
5, verses 43 to 48. In those days, the writers
put the key teaching in the center of the text.
It wasn't at the very end like a climax like
we write. So everything in the sermon leads up
to this verse. I submit everything in the entire
Bible leads up to this verse. And therefore this
verse is everything God is trying to say to the
human race today. And it's the one thing we don't
want to hear the most. So I invite you to hear
this verse as I read it now, as if for the first
time from God, and just let it sink in and take
it to heart. Here we go. You have heard it said,
you shall love your countrymen and hate your
enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you, that you may
be sons and daughters of your heavenly God. For
God makes his sun rise on the bad and the good
and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
So friends, here's my thesis. These are the most
radical, political, revolutionary words ever
uttered and ever written. up until that time.
Love your enemies. They're certainly the most
radical revolutionary political words in the
entire Bible. And I think the most profound spiritual
teaching in all of human history. And we know
historically that no one ever said or wrote these
words before. And we know historically that for
1700 years now, Christians have consciously,
deliberately disobeyed them and set them aside.
So my point is going to be, if we really want
to follow the nonviolent Jesus, and these words
are his bottom line, fundamental teaching, the
heart of the whole Sermon on the Mount, then
we really need to take them to heart and grapple
with them and listen to them and figure out how
to apply them. concretely to our own day -to
-day lives and together globally in the church
and in the world in this terrible moment of permanent
war and global destruction. And so on a personal
note here, these words are why I got involved
in peace and justice work. Love your enemies.
So I lobbied in the Jesuits as a young kid. And
in 1985, they let me go to El Salvador to live
and work in a refugee camp near where the U .S.
was bombing. And my sole job was when the death
squads came into the camp, I was to go out to
greet them in the hopes that they would leave
because a gringo was here. U .S. was waging a
terrible war that killed 30 ,000 people in Nicaragua.
funding the wars that killed 200 ,000 people
in Guatemala and 200 ,000 people in Colombia.
And so I went to Nicaragua, right into the war
zone, went to Guatemala, spent a month in Colombia,
meeting every day with the survivors of massacres,
you know, all funded by the U .S. government.
Been several times to Palestine, tried to get
into Gaza, but Israel wouldn't let me in. Been
to the Philippines for a month where there was
a war in the Far Islands. Nobody knew about it.
Haiti, South Africa, and most of all Iraq, which
was life -changing. And then Afghanistan, also
life -changing. All of this as a way for me to
actually go and be with people, human beings,
who are under the threat of death by my country.
I'm trying to actually meet them and love them.
And I did. I met tens of thousands of people,
tens of thousands. That led me over time to doing
so much civil disobedience and organizing and
protesting. Ultimately, my plowshares action
in 1993 when I hammered on an F -15 nuclear capable
fighter bomber to fulfill Isaiah 2 and face 20
years in prison. Later, when I moved to New Mexico
and led the annual nonviolence campaign at Los
Alamos Labs, the birthplace of the bomb. Why?
Because I was thinking maybe the best way I can
love my country's enemies. is to try to stop
my country from killing them. You know, like,
instead of moving to Salvador or Iraq, the work
needs to happen here. I think it's really critical
to note right from the get -go that when Jesus
commands us to love our enemies, he's talking
about... People targeted with death by our nation
state. This is explicit nation state language.
He's not referring to the disagreeable neighbor
or a difficult boss or a mean relative. You know,
love your neighbor. That's that. Here he says,
you know, love your countrymen. Yeah, patriarchal
language, patriarchal society. And hate and kill
your enemies. I say to you, love the people that
your nation is attacking and killing. So what
does that mean for us as North Americans? Over
the last five decades, the three million people
we killed in Vietnam and Indochina, all the hundreds
of thousands of people we killed in El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, Grenada, the many
more thousands, millions that have been killed
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Palestine.
Jesus would want his North American followers.
not only to stop the wars against these people,
but to actively love them, the people of those
nations specifically. Why don't we do what he
wants? I think it's ultimately because we're
just afraid that we'd get in a lot of trouble,
starting with our families and colleagues and
neighbors and lose our jobs, but the government
would get involved. And if you're siding nonviolently
with the people our government is waging war
upon, you're going to get into trouble. And we
don't want to get into trouble. We actually even
think that's what it means to be a Christian.
Don't rock the boat. It's actually the exact
opposite of that. We are afraid of the consequences.
I'm afraid. We all are. And the journey is to
let go of your fears. It's why Jesus keeps telling
the gang, do not be afraid and follow me. And
he's loving all the wrong people all the time.
He's going where he shouldn't go. We instead
just go to church and disobey Jesus and go along
with the nation state and sit by while our people
are sent off to kill and be killed. And we, in
our silence, support the culture of permanent
war and hate. Let me, a little story. I always
think about October. 2001, just after 9 -11,
I was working in New York City, full -time at
Ground Zero, and as the coordinator of chaplains
at the Family Center. So it was a terrible time,
and I was working 12 hours a day. And as you
remember, the first week of October, George W.
Bush declared war on Afghanistan, even though
Afghanistan had nothing to do with the 9 -11
attacks. Clearly, everybody says it was funded
by Saudi Arabia. I came home one night and turned
on NPR's All Things Considered, and they were
recovering the U .S. Catholic Bishops Conference
that day. They voted all the bishops to fully
support the war and bombing on Afghanistan. I
remember they gave the count. It was something
like 90 to 5. I was not surprised, but I was
so sad and discouraged. And later that evening,
I went over in the community house. To visit
with my friend and teacher, Daniel Berrigan.
I told him the news and his face fell and he
was so sad. And then he said to me, this is the
point I wanted to tell you. We should just burn
the Gospels. And process into mass holding up
the army rule book. And we should incense it
and bow to it and open it and read the great
commandment. Kill your enemies. Well, I never
forgot that, friends. That was Daniel Berrigan,
my teacher. When Jesus commands us to love the
enemies of our nation state, he uses that specific
Greek word agape, which we don't have in the
English language, which means unconditional,
non -retaliatory, sacrificial, all -encompassing,
all -inclusive, non -violent love, the universal
love of Jesus, a love in which we give. our life
for the other, in this case, our enemy, without
inflicting any violence or harm. Jesus commands
us to practice universal, nonviolent love. And
if we can't say, yeah, we're doing that, Jesus,
I love everybody, if at the same time our country
is killing people around the world and we're
not doing anything to stop it. You see, I think
this commandment actually outlaws war. war preparations,
killings, bombings, and the development of weapons
of mass destruction. I think it actually leads
to the end of the nation -state system and empire
because it's calling for a whole new world of
universal love in the concrete. He's trying to
get us to welcome God's reign of universal love
and nonviolence, which means we have to see beyond
borders and embrace every human being nonviolently
as a sister and brother to learn to welcome God's
gift of peace for one another. Especially we
have to do that as his followers when people
are being killed by our own people. I think the
Sermon on the Mount was a call to no longer obey
the war -making state, but the peacemaking Christ,
to obey the God of peace and universal love.
And notice, notice, notice, I read you the sentence.
There's no exceptions. He doesn't say love your
enemies, but if they're really bad and they're
really violent and hateful, go ahead, you can
kill them. Nope, there's no exceptions, no justification,
no permission for killing. And I never heard
this kind of talk in churches and sermons around
the country because this isn't fun and inspiring,
uplifting. But this is what the church has done,
all of them. gotten around this, found a loophole.
Killing enemies is completely forbidden because
we are commanded to love them with this agape,
unconditional, non -violent love, which means
we can't come up with any excuse to go, well,
actually with Hitler, you got to kill him. Oh,
you got to kill Saddam. No, you got to kill Osama.
There is no such thing as a just war theory.
And there's never mentioned in the Sermon on
the Mount or the four gospels or the New Testament.
The beginning of it came three centuries later
when the Constantine emperor theoretically converted
and made Christianity a legal movement and religion
and said, you don't need to be nonviolent anymore.
Use Cicero, the pagan philosopher. He has some
good conditions where sometimes it's okay to
kill and you should all join the Roman Empire's
military. And we all went, oh, great. And here
we are 1 ,700 years later. Now, you're not going
to like this, but when I was a kid, I heard a
Jesuit friend saying, well, if you're going to
have just war theory, let's have justified racism,
justified rape. And he went through the conditions,
justified adultery. It's for a good cause. When
he read it out loud, you just go, that's so ridiculous.
All of this is just created so that the empire
could take over the Christian community. But
it's antithetical to everything that the nonviolent
Jesus taught and lived. And the just war theory
today, which is various versions, there actually
is no one. So, for example, one of the conditions
is no civilians can be killed. But before World
War I, every war would have casualties of 90
% of those killed would be soldiers. Today, in
all the wars in the world, at least 90 % of all
those killed are civilians. Now that we know.
So this just war theory has nothing to, can't
be met. as well as not having nothing to do with
Jesus. I think it's heresy and it's blasphemy.
That's why I was so pleased when at the Vatican
conference, Pope Francis agreed and said, there
is no just war. Those of us who care about Jesus
need to start talking about this and talking
about it with our ministers and churches and
priests. And now notice the next exact words,
if you're still hanging in here with me. Love
your enemies and pray for your persecutors. Huh?
If you start loving the enemies of your country,
the people your country is trying to kill, you're
going to get in trouble. It's not going to go
over well. They're not going to give you the
Nobel Peace Prize. Starting with your relatives,
neighbors, coworkers, and church people. Listen,
just take my word for this. This isn't going
to go over well. And eventually the ruling authorities,
if you keep at it. That's the sign, if you're
in trouble, that you're truly beginning to follow
Jesus, that you're loving with that universal
love. When you're in trouble for making peace,
and really, we're talking about the way of the
cross. That's why the commandment right after
love your enemies is pray for your persecutors,
and nobody talks about that. And in fact, since
we don't read the actual words, we misquote it
all the time. I hear this wrong all the time.
Pray for your enemies. No, that's not what he
says. Pray for ourselves. No, that's not what
he says. This is the first time prayer, we're
told how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount.
And the people you pray for are the people who
are persecuting you for going against the empire.
It's a command to pray for, well, to continue
that universal love. We pray for them that they
might be converted. It's universal nonviolent
love. I remember, though, when I was a young
Jesuit and I was really grappling with this and
I was going, okay, I'm really going to try to
do this. I don't know how. For some reason, I
was obsessed with the question, okay, Jesus,
yeah, I don't get it. I'll do it. But can't you
just tell me why? This is just the way I am.
My friends sitting here, I'm thinking they're
nuts. But I was obsessed. Why, Jesus? So I would
go around to other priests. Why does Jesus want
us to love our enemies? And they'd go, I don't
know. I couldn't find anybody. Finally, I come
to Martin Luther King's collection of sermons.
It's called Strength to Love. Oh my God, I can't
recommend that book highly enough. Everybody
go and get it and read the sermon he gave on
love your enemies. It just leaves me in the dust
here with what I'm talking about. And you'll
have to forgive me because I've been drinking
coffee, but here's my interpretation of Martin
Luther King going. You can imagine him in Ebenezer
Baptist Church. Jesus doesn't say love your enemies
because it's the right thing to do, even though
it is. Jesus doesn't say love your enemies because
it's the moral stand to take the philosophical
good to be done, even though it is. And then
this. Jesus doesn't say love your enemies because
it's the only practical political solution left
for the planet, even though it is. Dr. King said,
it's right there in the rest of the sentence.
It's like I didn't even read it. I say to you,
love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you. Then you really will be sons and daughters
of your heavenly God. For God makes his sun rise
on the bad and the good and his rain to fall
on the just and the unjust. Dr. King said the
obvious, right? We love our enemies because God
loves every human being on the planet. We are
sons and daughters of this God of universal love.
So we just go out into a world of war and do
what God does. It's so obvious to me now, 45
years later. But I needed Dr. King to teach me
that. It's really a revolution in our understanding
of God. Because here, if you're still with me.
In this most political sense in the entire Bible,
Jesus gives us the clearest description of the
nature of the mystery of God. In fact, I don't
think Jesus talks that much about God. If you
read the four gospels, he's always getting in
trouble. People want to kill him. He's hanging
out with the wrong people and healing people.
And here he says, God loves every human being
no matter what. If you want to worship, serve,
and be related to this God, you have to do the
same. Didn't we just agree to this in the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the peacemakers. They are the sons
and daughters of God. We go into the culture
of war and work to end war and make peace because
God is a God of peace. Now he's saying, Well,
the same thing. God, peacemaking is universal
nonviolent love. We are sons and daughters of
God, so we do the same. I think this one sentence
is the greatest breakthrough in human history
because it not only points a way out of empire
and warfare, but toward the living God of universal
love and maybe even toward the fullest understanding
of what it means to be a human being. people
of universal love. This is the spiritual life.
This is the heart of the gospel. And this political
sentence challenges us to question all our lifelong
images of God, everything that we were raised
on, to think that God is a mean, white, old man
who can't wait to throw us in hell, or at least
them, the bad guys. So the question I always
ask when I read this is, is your God violent
or nonviolent? Even more shocking way to put
it is, do we want a God of universal nonviolent
love? You know, we don't understand what that
would mean. We actually kind of prefer a God
of, I mean, hateful, violent God, because we
can get that. Do we want to be sons and daughters
of universal love? Are we willing to practice
the same universal nonviolent love as God? And
to accept the social, economic, racial, political,
environmental consequences of such a universal
stand, I think nothing is working in life. And
this is actually the path of happiness because
you're totally free if you love everybody. You
know, I could flip these questions around too
and say, if we have spent our lives going along
with the United States or whatever country you're
in, and supporting its wars and weapons and killing
their enemies and completely disobeying and violating
Jesus' commandment to universal love. What does
that say about our image of God or ourselves,
our own image of who we are? Who are we then?
I remember Philip Berrigan and I in jail talking
about this. if we're not then the sons and daughters
of the God of universal nonviolent life, who
are we the sons and daughters of? And Phil said,
I said, the culture of violence and war and death.
And Phil said, we're sons and daughters of the
bomb. I never forgot that. We worship a false
God of war. So I think we all need to get with
our friends and start talking about this. And
how are we loving our nation's enemies? Or how
could we start doing that more and more? And
why don't we want to? And what are we afraid
of? And has that helped during our life, keeping
our head buried in the sand? Or maybe you were
part of the Vietnam protests or the anti -Iraq
war or anti -Afghanistan war protests or the
wars to trying to stop the Israeli war in Gaza.
And you've discovered. an inner joy that comes.
That's the consolation. That's the blessing.
What can we do today to stop our country from
killing our sisters and brothers in Palestine,
Haiti, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria,
Sudan, and elsewhere? And I mean the actual physical
killing, but also the selling of weapons in every
war. The U .S. is selling weapons to both sides
in every war and the nuclear threat, which is
now toward the whole human race. Okay. As we
come to the end of the text, Jesus goes a little
farther and asks a series of penetrating questions
to try to persuade us into the wisdom of agape,
universal nonviolent love. I wrote a whole book
called The Questions of Jesus, you know, years
ago with Doubleday. And I found Jesus asked 350
questions in the four Gospels. He only answers
four of them. So not only being the great teacher,
he's the great interrogator. He's the one with
not just the answers, but the one with the questions.
And I began the book talking about Real K, who
said, when you get to a big question, whatever
you do, don't answer it. Just kind of live your
way, and over time, you'll enter the answer.
So listen to these questions, and this leads
up to my favorite question of everything Jesus
asked in the four Gospels. If you love those
who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same? Holy Toledo.
If you greet your brothers only, and here's my
favorite question, what's so unusual about that?
If you just, you know, you love the people around
you, who cares? That's obvious. Do not the pagans
do the same? Now, that's like insulting to the
people he's talking to there by the Sea of Galilee.
You say, well, then you're just like tax collectors
and pagans. Well, you know, the tax collectors.
practicing, to put it mildly, a very limited
love. They stole all the resources of the people
and kept them in debt. The pagans are the Romans
and the ruling authorities who are oppressing
and killing the people and coming through and,
you know, wiping out village after village. And
Jesus is going, well, actually, you're not that
far different from them because they love each
other too. But I want something unusual. What's
so unusual about that? Isn't that an interesting
word? If we do not rise to the level of universal
nonviolent love and become who we were created
to be, the sons and daughters of a God of universal
nonviolent love, then how different are we from
anybody else, beginning with tax collectors and
pagans, and we can go forth with other words.
Jesus wants an unusual. outrageous, extravagant,
universal love, the love that goes beyond borders,
politics, and expectations, that reaches out
across the planet and welcomes and embraces every
single human being and loves them and wants them
to have the fullness of life, dignity, freedom,
and joy, as well as good food, clean water, housing,
healthcare, education, and jobs, that everyone
could be happy in God and one another. As his
followers... You and I are done with this puny,
tiny, limited love that just serves our country
and the culture of war and the empire and ends
up supporting the death of our sisters and brothers
around the world. We want to go all the way with
Jesus and somehow practice the same outrageous,
unusual, universal, political, nonviolent love
that he showed. His bold, boundless, fearless,
shocking, godly love that... kind of sides with
the people being targeted, the poor and the oppressed,
and then goes in further, the enemy of the empire.
And therefore, the love that threatens the culture
of war, that threatens the entire nation state.
and the big business of killing. If we're like
Dr. King and practicing a universal love and
calling all the poor to Washington, D .C., the
Poor People's Campaign, and then says we're going
to take all those 50 ,000 people across the Potomac
River and shut down the Pentagon to end the Vietnam
War, well, then you're a real threat to the United
States government, and so they killed them. The
last line has always been difficult throughout
history, and I think the translation has caused...
problems. So this is the very end there of chapter
5 in Matthew. So be perfect as God is perfect.
You know, I think the word perfect, doesn't it
mean to have no imperfections, no flaws, no brokenness,
no weakness? And yet, isn't that the epitome
of every human being is flawed, broken, weak,
and literally imperfect? I don't think that's
what the original Greek word means, teleos. It's
something different. You know, you can look it
up and it means going to the end or complete.
I have been grappling with this for years. I
think Jesus saying, be like God, go all the way
to the end, be complete and fulfilling total
universal love. Go all out to your last day.
So in other words, he ends by kind of saying,
so keep going forward and making progress in
our global outreach of universal love till we
love everyone universally and our love is complete
like the love of God. We are weak, flawed, broken
people loved infinitely by a God of universal
love called to the fullness of nonviolent universal
love. So we go out and we try to live it. as
completely as possible. That's how I read the
text, so that we might be who we were created
to be, who, in fact, we already are and don't
know it, the sons and daughters of the God of
universal love. Luke, you know, a couple years
later, changes that last line, and because, and
I think it's helpful, he says, so be merciful.
As God is merciful. Be compassionate, other translations
say, as God is compassionate. That's the same
thing, to practice universal compassion, universal
mercy, and to keep making progress on that journey.
That's the goal. That's the teaching of the Sermon
on the Mount in a nutshell. Do this and you will
be sons and daughters of the God of universal
love. So friends, let's all pray for one another
and the churches that we might all... You know,
start all over again and strive to practice this
great universal non -violent love of God and
Jesus for friends and enemies. Why not go all
out into the unusual love? And in doing so, seek
God's reign of universal love and compassion
and peace here on earth. I love that phrase from
St. Paul. In other words, that we might know
the height and breadth and length and depth of
the fullness of God's universal love. You know,
as I finished writing this this morning, I was
thinking, we have so much more power than we
realize because we have the love of God available
to us. Let me end with a quote from John and
Paul of the Beatles, my favorite band. Limitless,
undying love that shines around me like a million
suns. It calls me on and on across the universe.
May we go forth to love everyone everywhere nonviolently
and universally in the limitless, undying, shining
love of Jesus. Thanks, friends, for listening
to this Nonviolent Jesus podcast. You can hear
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Nonviolent Jesus. See you next time.