Variety: Matthew 6v44

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (Matthew 5:44)

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  said … 

When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality…. 

Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one’s enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world. Jesus is not an impractical idealist: he is the practical realist. 

I am certain that Jesus understood the difficulty inherent in the act of loving one’s enemy. He never joined the ranks of those who talk glibly about the easiness of the moral life. He realized that every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God. So when Jesus said “Love your enemy,” he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every word of it. Our responsibility as Christians is to discover the meaning of this command and seek passionately to live it out in our daily lives…. 

When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking neither of eros [romantic love] nor philia [reciprocal love of friends]; he is speaking of agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all people. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in heaven. [1]  

In the Learning How to See podcast, CAC dean of faculty Brian McLaren invites longtime peace activist, priest, and author John Dear to explore the deep connection between love and nonviolence. Dear has worked on many movements for peace in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. King to abolish war, racism, poverty, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction. Dear identifies agape love as the source of his commitment to nonviolence: 

Nonviolence to me means active love, pursuing its common truth, this basic truth of reality, which is that we’re all one. That we’re already united, that we’re already reconciled, that we’re all children … of a God of universal love. Therefore, we can’t kill anybody, much less sit by if someone’s hurting. We killed 100 million people in the last century. There are forty wars happening today. We are on track to blow up the planet and destroy the planet through catastrophic climate change. So, there’s nothing passive about love. Love is active, creative, daring, public nonviolence that resists all the forces of death.