Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins composed a poem titled “Aimless Love” that speaks to me about how broad our American concept of love is.

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore, I fell in love with a wren and later in the day with a mouse the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,  I fell for a seamstress still at her machine in the tailor’s window,

and later for a bowl of broth, steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,  without recompense, without gifts, or unkind words, without suspicion, or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut, the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door — the love of the miniature orange tree, the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower, the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor —  just a twinge every now and then for the wren who had built her nest on a low branch overhanging the water and for the dead mouse, still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail to a pile of leaves in the woods, I found myself standing at the bathroom sink gazing down affectionately at the soap, so patient and soluble, so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again as I felt its turning in my wet hands  and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

Is this the sort of love that Jesus was talking about when he told us to “love your enemies?” Did he mean that we are to love our enemies as we might love a dead mouse or a bar of soap? If so, I’ll be honest that I do NOT love a dead mouse very much at all. I’m sure we could all insert something into the poem that we do love in a way similar to the poet. Maybe it’s pizza or a television show or a computer game or bacon. This is a superficial sort of love. We can apply this sort of love to almost anything…even to people. Millions of people LOVE Taylor Swift. Chiefs fans LOVE Patrick Mahomes. I LOVE the person who snowblows my sidewalk during the winter without me ever having asked them to. There are many people we can love in this way, but is that what Jesus meant when he told us to love our enemies? If so, I feel like it would feel more like loving a dead mouse than loving bacon.

But that is not what Jesus is asking of us. The kind of love Jesus is calling us to here is far greater and therefore even more challenging. April and I have talked in the past about the fact that there are multiple words in the Greek that we translate as “love” in English. Each of those Greek words have distinct meanings that we don’t get with our English word. In the Bible, there are three words translated as “love.” The one used the least is storge. Storge is a familial love. This would be love that exists because of a familial connection. I would say that my love for most of my cousins is storge love because I don’t really know them, yet I love them as part of my family. Storge is only used three times in the Bible and two of them have a negative prefix on them, making them about being unloving.

The second word used for love is phileo. This is the word from which philosophy and Philadelphia derive. You may know that Philadelphia is nicknamed the City of Brotherly Love. That’s because it comes from phileo meaning love and adelphos meaning brother. Phileo is the sort of love between two close friends. It is an affection toward someone due to fondness. There is an emotional attachment. When Lazarus died and Jesus wept, the people saw that and said, “See how we loved him!” They were talking about phileo love. Phileo love is a love between people who share common interests and a common purpose. It is a love between people who enjoy one another’s company and respect one another. Phileo is the most common type of love.

The final type of love we are going to talk about is agape love. If you’ve been around the Church for a while, you probably already know a bit about agape love. Agape love is the type of love most commonly associated with God’s love for us. Agape love is merciful and gracious. It has no conditions upon the one receiving it. Agape love is a love that is freely given. For us humans, agape love is hard work. We humans are prone to judge others, to hold grudges, to put all sorts of conditions on our love for others. To love even one person unconditionally feels nearly impossible, let alone loving everyone in that manner. Our typical attitude then is to say that agape love is a love only God can do. We will stick to phileo and storge love.

God doesn’t let us off that easily though. In one of the post-resurrection scenes with Jesus and his disciples, Jesus is talking to Peter and asks him, “Simon son of John, do you agape me?” Peter then responds, “You know I phileo you.” Jesus responds, “Feed my lambs.” Then Jesus again asks, “Simon son of John, do you agape me?” And Peter responds the same way. And Jesus says, “Shepherd my sheep.” So Jesus then asks, “Peter, do you phileo me?” Peter is ashamed of himself. He says to Jesus, “You know everything. You know that I phileo you.” “Then feed my sheep,” Jesus says. Jesus calls Peter to agape him, to love him unconditionally, to love him as God loves him. Peter can not do that. But even so, Jesus still asks Peter to take over Jesus’ role as shepherd of Jesus’ followers.

In our passage for today from Matthew 5, Jesus references a common saying of the day. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Jesus uses agape love there. It was the common opinion of the day that you could hate your enemies but you had to love those close to you. But Jesus doesn’t agree with that statement. He says to them, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Again Jesus uses agape. Love your enemies with an unconditional love. Now, I don’t know about you, but my initial reaction to this was something along the lines of, “Yeah right.” Agape love is the hardest type of love already and then having to love our enemies in that way? It just seems like an impossible task.

But as I’ve thought about this and thought about the different types of love we’ve discussed, could we love our enemies with any other form of love? The other forms of love have some conditions on them. Are they like family? Are they close friends who share things in common with us? Agape love is the only type of love that doesn’t consider the characteristics of the other person in the decision to love them. Of course that doesn’t make it any easier. The charge Jesus is giving us here is not meant to be easy, but it is meant to set us apart from the rest of the world. Jesus says a couple verses later, “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” Tax collectors were known for swindling people and were therefore not well liked by most people. They seemed like callous thugs, yet they weren’t entirely without love.

Jesus adds to that something interesting. “And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” Jesus doesn’t say anything about love in this part. He talks about greeting or welcoming instead. And this time, he is comparing how the Jews welcomed other Jews compared to how they welcomed Gentiles, those not a part of the nation of Israel. Was leaving out a directive for the Jews to love their Gentile neighbors just implied here by Jesus? Or did Jesus leave that out intentionally? I think perhaps it was both. In the context, Jesus was certainly still talking about agape love here. But I also think that Jesus left that word out of this statement for a reason. The question then becomes, “Why?”

Jesus seems to be defining three distinct categories of those we might consider enemies. First, are those who are openly hostile to us. There is a safety issue at play there, so love for a dangerous enemy may look a lot different from the other categories. The second category Jesus seems to be laying out is those who are deceptive. Tax collectors may not have been openly hostile or directly harmful, but they certainly caused damage in more subtle ways. I think we all know people in our lives that would fit that bill. The final category presents a quite different enemy though. This is the enemy who we simply do not want to welcome. They are different from us. They are unfamiliar. They make us uncomfortable. We don’t understand them. This category is challenging to love for a very different reason that the other two. So Jesus’ approach to it looks different. He doesn’t specifically talk about love (though it is implied). Instead he talks about welcome.

Jesus challenges us to love our enemies no matter what it is that has made them our enemies. How we love each person we encounter will look different. But we can learn how to love from the example God gave us in the person of Jesus…who dined with tax collectors and sinners, who talked with the Samaritan woman at the well, who welcomed the questions of Nicodemus, healed lepers, and cast out demons. Jesus loved those who most of his kindred viewed as the enemy. As Jesus’ followers, perhaps we should try to do the same. May God help us have the courage and openness to do so. Amen!