‘Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you’. Surely that’s a recipe for becoming a  doormat, yet this is what Jesus is asking us to do in today’s gospel.

The six o’clock news fuels our anger. We want to fight back at the aggressors. We want to hit back at the terrorists who hurt us. We want to see consequences for those who kill or maim or take away from us. Jesus’ advice doesn’t make any sense. How can we love those we don’t even like! How can we  forgive when punishment feels more human?  But in the words of Martin Luther King Jr “When you live by the rule ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, you end up with a nation of blind and toothless people'”.

These are tremendous words, because they tell us that when we respond to those who hate us with love instead of recrimination, we defeat evil. So how do we make it work? Firstly we have to know that love isn’t a warm fuzzy emotion that leaps out of a Valentine’s card. Love is a  decision. Love is not a feeling it’s a choice. We have to make decision to do good and then do it. We know we are loved by the way we are treated, and in the same way we have to show others that we love them by the way we treat them. Next come the rules. Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be  condemned. Give and it will be given to you. In short we have to treat everyone the way we would like to be treated ourselves whether we like them or not. If  everyone could live their lives by Jesus’ teaching conflict and war would be confined to dusty history books.