United Methodist Church Westlake Village

Jesus Asked Us to Love Our Enemies, But How Do We Actually Do That?

• United Methodist Church Westlake Village

Share episode

Send us a text

What happens when you combine a children's movie about dragons with one of Jesus's most challenging teachings? A surprisingly profound exploration of conflict, empathy, and the radical power of loving your enemies.

Using "How to Train Your Dragon" as a creative entry point, we dive into the timeless wisdom behind Jesus's command to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." The film's protagonist, Hiccup, discovers that dragons—long considered mortal enemies of his Viking community—aren't the mindless killers everyone believes them to be. Through understanding and connection, he transforms a generational conflict into peaceful coexistence.

This cinematic journey parallels our real-world struggles with Jesus's difficult teaching. We wrestle with honest questions: Is there a limit to loving our enemies? What about the Hitlers of the world? Yet history offers us powerful examples in figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., who employed nonviolent resistance to overcome oppression. Their approach wasn't just moral idealism but strategic wisdom—holding a mirror to oppressors and creating space for transformation.

The sermon reveals a profound truth: often those who harm us are themselves responding to harm. Just as the dragons in the film were forced into aggression by a larger, more fearsome dragon, our human "enemies" frequently act from their own places of wounding and fear. When we create space to understand this reality, we open possibilities for reconciliation that violence could never achieve.

Perhaps Jesus, who demonstrated the ultimate example of loving enemies, knew something fundamental about human nature. We share common anxieties, fears, and desires. By embracing this teaching, we don't just follow a commandment—we tap into a transformative power that can break cycles of violence and create pathways to peace. Loving our enemies might be difficult, but what if it's the only approach that truly works?

Support the show

Speaker 1:

So you remember that time you're doing a movie series in church for your messages and on kickoff Sunday, when all the kids will be here, you pick a cool movie like how to Train your Dragon, so that the kids will think you're cool Because you're preaching on a cool movie finally, and then the kids all go to Sunday school so they're not here anyway. Yeah, that was this morning, I guess, or this week, when I finally kind of realized that. So some of you may be asking the question why movies here in church on a Sunday morning? It's August, we're having a little fun. Your pastor likes movies, so this is why we land here. But it's more than that, I feel like with our movies. This is how we kind of teach ourselves our stories, we teach ourselves how to process our values, and in particular, a kid's movie or a superhero movie, which we've done both it allows us kind of a little distance from some of the values that are being expressed. In other words, we can talk about things that we might argue with, but in this context a kid's movie we don't always know that we're talking about them. So it's a neat way to be able to have conversations in a way that we don't get too flustered with. So how to Train your Dragon digs right into the arena of cultures clashing. What do we do when we have established enmity with some other group?

Speaker 1:

This is the plot for how to Train your Dragon, right? It's the story of this main character. I think you see him here. By the way, there's three movies now. The first movie was animated but now it's been live-action version so you guys can catch up with it. It came out this summer and Carissa's niece is the one who recommended it and so you know it's a star recommendation. So you're seeing the live action one With computer graphics to make the dragon, because we don't have dragons today. Just to be clear. I think I shocked Stephen with that.

Speaker 1:

No, it's a story of hiccup and you see him there kind of a goofy name, but he's this young Viking and his dad is the community leader in the whole society there and he feels the pressure from that, amidst that community, as he's growing up and that's the main relationship dynamic that's going on in the movie is him trying to get respect from his dad and become a man and have his place in this community in which his dad is such an important figure. Also in the story, there is a violent relationship with the dragons in this world. Right, so it's the Vikings versus the dragons. And right there you probably can see, when you make the enmity group the group, you're having trouble with dragons. It's so much easier to talk about having clashes, because who wouldn't be afraid and be wanting to act against a dragon? But that's the gist of it, and they've effectively lived in this violent killing each other mode for for generations. As it goes in a typical kind of kids movie, hiccup ends up befriending a dragon and they learn with each other that they don't need to hate each other, and then he spends the length of the movie trying to convince his community that this is true, that they don't need to hate the dragons, that they can live in some peace and dragons are actually pretty cool. That is the flow. Sounds like a kid's movie, right? Okay, maybe not. You're free to think however you want on that.

Speaker 1:

But when I think of culture clashing, that's when this scripture starts coming to my mind, this scripture with this tough phrase love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. My guess is most of you have heard that scripture before. That's not an unfamiliar one. And because it is such a significant teaching and such a challenging teaching. I think it sits in our brains maybe a little more deeply than some others. You know, living that scripture it's not easy, am I right? Pray for your enemy. Anybody got that pulled off and you're 100%. So far. Anybody getting I don't know a B in that class? I know it's a tough one, right? Loving your neighbor, pray for those who persecute you.

Speaker 1:

Now, it is a challenging teaching for us and, to be fair, we've got living examples of people that were pretty convinced we couldn't afford to maybe not act violently against Right. I've talked about my good friend Charlie back here. I know we're going to have a conversation about this sermon again, because he's got the big question then what do we do about Hitler? What do we do about the really, really bad folks? He did a lot of evil. He was intending to do a lot more. That was evil. Most of us in this room feel we were justified in stopping him, despite this teaching from Jesus right, love your enemy. Unless it's Hitler, then you got to go after this guy. Right, and poor Hitler, right, I mean, he's always our bad example, isn't he? The other ones are a little too polarizing. I didn't want to get into it. So we just do a nice and easy one here.

Speaker 1:

I think we can all agree something had to be done way back when. But in doing so we probably ought to acknowledge the reality that we've opened the door to some thinking. We ought to be honest with ourselves. Yes, hitler led the effort. They killed 12 million people, 6 million Jews. So now we're saying, okay, we don't have to love this enemy. So is that the line? 12 million people and that's it. We don't have to love you anymore.

Speaker 1:

Jesus didn't get to that part when he was lecturing at the time, but obviously that was what was going to come next. If he gets 6 million Jews, then that's the line. Or maybe the line is lower, I don't know, but you can see kind of that world. It puts us in of like okay, so when does this teaching apply? When does it not apply? We're sitting here thinking to ourselves okay, is there a number? It's a little bit for those of us in the Genesis class. I'm thinking of Abraham. Only Abraham was negotiating with God for how many people were going to live. We're landing in this spot where we might be negotiating with God about how many. We feel like we can off because they've offed other ones. So it's complicated. I hope you're hearing it the complication of this teaching and how do we follow it in any real way in this complex world that we live in.

Speaker 1:

Meanwhile we've also got examples like Gandhi and MLK right, people who have lived out this teaching In fact in their living. Out of this teaching they were able to overcome a certain amount of the oppression that their people were receiving. Gandhi in India he was able to get the British Empire to release a lot of their oppressive control over India. He was even able to get people to change their mindset about people in society that they would consider untouchables. He was able to raise their presence in our society, getting us to understand we needed to love them as much as anybody else.

Speaker 1:

It was done with this philosophy and I'm probably going to say it wrong satyagraha, which is essentially a non-violent approach to ending injustice. It is a mirror put up to the oppressor and to the oppression in a way that that oppressor has to look at himself and make that decision about who he really is and where the problem really is. Some would call this loving your enemy. Instead of reacting with violence, with aggression, with war. Against that enemy, you react in what Jesus would call a loving way, helping them to understand how they are falling short not only of what God wants for them but what they probably would want for themselves.

Speaker 1:

Martin Luther King doing the same kind of thing for the black people in America at a time where we had decided to segregate our society. In many places I should say California was a little more progressive than a lot of other places, so credit there but in many ways we had decided it was okay that there were two things I'm not going to say separate, but equal, because we know it wasn't equal but it was separate and in the midst of that where prejudice, where oppression was so clear, at a time where a black person in many ways would have to be concerned about his or her life just walking through the street, martin Luther King was able to embrace this same thinking again, helping his people to understand this nonviolent way to deal with their oppression. And in doing so, in holding that mirror up, the oppressors were getting a full view of themselves and again forcing them to ask who really was the sinning person here, the sinning community, who really was falling short of God's call for them To be fair, both of those oppressed societies wouldn't have been able to fight violently in the same way. We took down a Hitler, or helped Russia take down a Hitler. That wasn't an option that the oppressed people were able to do, because they would have just been beaten down further, because that's how that society existed. So, because they were able to do it in this nonviolent way, they were able to open everyone's eyes, at least a little bit more, to a better way.

Speaker 1:

So here we sit in the midst of this complicated teaching, one in which we'd probably all agree. Okay, we can't do it all the time, and yet, hopefully, we can recognize too the power that it has, this power of loving one's enemy in a way that we can overcome at least a certain amount of the oppression that we develop for ourselves. So here we are again with this complicated teaching from Jesus. How do we do it? What do we do with this teaching Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you. That's a big old matzo ball in the soup of a problem, is it not? How do we deal with it? I returned you to the grand wisdom of how to train your dragon. Are you ready?

Speaker 1:

What Hiccup learns is that there is an extremely large and oppressive dragon that is oppressing all the other dragons, and a lot of the aggressive behavior of those dragons, especially against the Vikings, was because their oppressor was forcing them to give these sacrifices to him, this large oppressor, forcing the other dragons to have to go out and do things they wouldn't normally do in order to survive amidst their own oppressor. And so the movie continues on, with the Vikings learning this, teaming together with the regular dragons, overcoming the big beast, and then, like a kid movie, is supposed to end it's all happily ever after and the Vikings and the dragons are living together and everybody has their own dragon and they're flying them around and it looks great. Are you ready for that world? Right, bring it on Right. So maybe I've got some maybes now as we try to figure out this teaching.

Speaker 1:

Maybe the teaching is something that we refer to when we say, well, everybody's going through something. Have you not learned that in life, when you really start to get in with somebody and you start realizing like wow, they're really kind of going through it a little bit, especially when the relationship has gotten confrontational or there's some conflict in the relationship, and then you realize, oh shoot, that person's been dealing with that, or that person grew up with this, and then you start to learn a little bit more about that other person, the one you have that conflict with. Maybe when we stop and force ourselves to rise above our anger, especially immediate anger, we create the space to hear or even to understand the other, the other, maybe our willingness to rise above revenge or maintaining our aggression, you know, when we get into those cold war situations, maybe when we relieve ourselves a little bit of that, it allows the other some space to open up into some trust where you can actually have some sort of conversation, some sort of deconstruction of how you landed where you landed. Or maybe Jesus, who came to show us a better way to live after all and we do have to give him credit he is somewhat of an authority on loving your enemies. Is that fair to say? Right? You know the Easter story, right? Okay, so we're all good.

Speaker 1:

Jesus was pretty darn good at loving his enemies. He was a model for loving his enemies. He's a fair authority on this topic. Maybe Jesus knows knows deeply and wants us to know deeply, that we're all human. We're all human beings inclined to the same tendencies of anxiety, of fear, of ambition, of lust in all the ways we lust, from relationships to money, to power. Maybe Jesus knows that we are all, to a certain extent, driven by the same impulses. We're not that different. Maybe loving your enemies is just the best way to remind ourselves of this. If we're going to have any hope of being able to deconstruct what brings us to violence, it starts with this shared understanding of each other, this openness to maybe something better, created by understanding, created by trust. Maybe that's what comes as we pray for an enemy. Maybe Jesus, maybe he was onto something. If only there was some way of finding out if he was right, amen.