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

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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?

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Episode Transcript

Pastor Darren (00:00):
So you remember that time you're doing a movie
series in church for yourmessages and on kickoff Sunday,
when all the kids will be here,you pick a cool movie like how
to Train your Dragon, so thatthe kids will think you're cool

(00:22):
Because you're preaching on acool movie finally, and then the
kids all go to Sunday school sothey're not here anyway.
Yeah, that was this morning, Iguess, or this week, when I
finally kind of realized that.
So some of you may be askingthe question why movies here in

(00:46):
church on a Sunday morning?
It's August, we're having alittle fun.
Your pastor likes movies, sothis is why we land here.
But it's more than that, I feellike with our movies.
This is how we kind of teachourselves our stories, we teach
ourselves how to process ourvalues, and in particular, a

(01:08):
kid's movie or a superhero movie, which we've done both it
allows us kind of a littledistance from some of the values
that are being expressed.
In other words, we can talkabout things that we might argue
with, but in this context akid's movie we don't always know

(01:29):
that we're talking about them.
So it's a neat way to be ableto have conversations in a way
that we don't get too flusteredwith.
So how to Train your Dragondigs right into the arena of
cultures clashing.
What do we do when we haveestablished enmity with some

(01:54):
other group?
This is the plot for how toTrain your Dragon, right?
It's the story of this maincharacter.
I think you see him here.
By the way, there's threemovies now.
The first movie was animatedbut now it's been live-action
version so you guys can catch upwith it.

(02:16):
It came out this summer andCarissa's niece is the one who
recommended it and so you knowit's a star recommendation.
So you're seeing the liveaction one With computer
graphics to make the dragon,because we don't have dragons
today.
Just to be clear.

(02:37):
I think I shocked Stephen withthat.
No, it's a story of hiccup andyou see him there kind of a
goofy name, but he's this youngViking and his dad is the
community leader in the wholesociety there and he feels the
pressure from that, amidst thatcommunity, as he's growing up

(03:01):
and that's the main relationshipdynamic that's going on in the
movie is him trying to getrespect from his dad and become
a man and have his place in thiscommunity in which his dad is
such an important figure.
Also in the story, there is aviolent relationship with the

(03:28):
dragons in this world.
Right, so it's the Vikingsversus the dragons.
And right there you probablycan see, when you make the
enmity group the group, you'rehaving trouble with dragons.

(03:48):
It's so much easier to talkabout having clashes, because
who wouldn't be afraid and bewanting to act against a dragon?
But that's the gist of it, andthey've effectively lived in
this violent killing each othermode for for generations.
As it goes in a typical kind ofkids movie, hiccup ends up

(04:08):
befriending a dragon and theylearn with each other that they
don't need to hate each other,and then he spends the length of
the movie trying to convincehis community that this is true,
that they don't need to hatethe dragons, that they can live
in some peace and dragons areactually pretty cool.

(04:29):
That is the flow.
Sounds like a kid's movie,right?
Okay, maybe not.
You're free to think howeveryou want on that.
But when I think of cultureclashing, that's when this
scripture starts coming to mymind, this scripture with this
tough phrase love your enemy andpray for those who persecute

(04:55):
you.
My guess is most of you haveheard that scripture before.
That's not an unfamiliar one.
And because it is such asignificant teaching and such a
challenging teaching.
I think it sits in our brainsmaybe a little more deeply than
some others.

(05:16):
You know, living that scriptureit's not easy, am I right?
Pray for your enemy.
Anybody got that pulled off andyou're 100%.
So far.
Anybody getting I don't know aB in that class?
I know it's a tough one, right?

(05:36):
Loving your neighbor, pray forthose who persecute you.
Now, it is a challengingteaching for us and, to be fair,
we've got living examples ofpeople that were pretty
convinced we couldn't afford tomaybe not act violently against

(06:00):
Right.
I've talked about my goodfriend Charlie back here.
I know we're going to have aconversation about this sermon
again, because he's got the bigquestion 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 lotmore.

(06:20):
That was evil.
Most of us in this room feel wewere justified in stopping him,
despite this teaching fromJesus right, love your enemy.
Unless it's Hitler, then yougot to go after this guy.
Right, and poor Hitler, right,I mean, he's always our bad

(06:41):
example, isn't he?
The other ones are a little toopolarizing.
I didn't want to get into it.
So we just do a nice and easyone here.
I think we can all agreesomething had to be done way
back when.
But in doing so we probablyought to acknowledge the reality
that we've opened the door tosome thinking.

(07:04):
We ought to be honest withourselves.
Yes, hitler led the effort.
They killed 12 million people,6 million Jews.
So now we're saying, okay, wedon't have to love this enemy.
So is that the line?
12 million people and that's it.
We don't have to love youanymore.

(07:25):
Jesus didn't get to that partwhen he was lecturing at the
time, but obviously that waswhat was going to come next.
If he gets 6 million Jews, thenthat's the line.
Or maybe the line is lower, Idon't know, but you can see kind
of that world.
It puts us in of like okay, sowhen does this teaching apply?

(07:48):
When does it not apply?
We're sitting here thinking toourselves okay, is there a
number?
It's a little bit for those ofus in the Genesis class.
I'm thinking of Abraham.
Only Abraham was negotiatingwith God for how many people
were going to live.
We're landing in this spotwhere we might be negotiating

(08:09):
with God about how many.
We feel like we can off becausethey've offed other ones.
So it's complicated.
I hope you're hearing it thecomplication of this teaching
and how do we follow it in anyreal way in this complex world
that we live in.

(08:31):
Meanwhile we've also gotexamples like Gandhi and MLK
right, people who have lived outthis teaching In fact in their
living.
Out of this teaching they wereable to overcome a certain
amount of the oppression thattheir people were receiving.

(08:51):
Gandhi in India he was able toget the British Empire to
release a lot of theiroppressive control over India.
He was even able to get peopleto change their mindset about
people in society that theywould consider untouchables.
He was able to raise theirpresence in our society, getting

(09:16):
us to understand we needed tolove them as much as anybody
else.
It was done with this philosophyand I'm probably going to say
it wrong satyagraha, which isessentially a non-violent
approach to ending injustice.
It is a mirror put up to theoppressor and to the oppression

(09:44):
in a way that that oppressor hasto look at himself and make
that decision about who hereally is and where the problem
really is.
Some would call this lovingyour enemy.
Instead of reacting withviolence, with aggression, with

(10:08):
war.
Against that enemy, you reactin what Jesus would call a
loving way, helping them tounderstand how they are falling
short not only of what God wantsfor them but what they probably

(10:29):
would want for themselves.
Martin Luther King doing thesame kind of thing for the black
people in America at a timewhere we had decided to
segregate our society.
In many places I should sayCalifornia was a little more
progressive than a lot of otherplaces, so credit there but in
many ways we had decided it wasokay that there were two things

(10:51):
I'm not going to say separate,but equal, because we know it
wasn't equal but it was separateand in the midst of that where
prejudice, where oppression wasso clear, at a time where a
black person in many ways wouldhave to be concerned about his
or her life just walking throughthe street, martin Luther King

(11:15):
was able to embrace this samethinking again, helping his
people to understand thisnonviolent way to deal with
their oppression.
And in doing so, in holdingthat mirror up, the oppressors
were getting a full view ofthemselves and again forcing

(11:39):
them to ask who really was thesinning person here, the sinning
community, who really wasfalling short of God's call for
them To be fair, both of thoseoppressed societies wouldn't
have been able to fightviolently in the same way.

(12:00):
We took down a Hitler, orhelped Russia take down a Hitler
.
That wasn't an option that theoppressed people were able to do
, because they would have justbeen beaten down further,
because that's how that societyexisted.
So, because they were able todo it in this nonviolent way,
they were able to openeveryone's eyes, at least a

(12:22):
little bit more, to a better way.
So here we sit in the midst ofthis complicated teaching, one
in which we'd probably all agree.
Okay, we can't do it all thetime, and yet, hopefully, we can
recognize too the power that ithas, this power of loving one's

(12:44):
enemy in a way that we canovercome at least a certain
amount of the oppression that wedevelop for ourselves.
So here we are again with thiscomplicated teaching from Jesus.
How do we do it?
What do we do with thisteaching Love your enemy and

(13:05):
pray for those who persecute you.
That's a big old matzo ball inthe soup of a problem, is it not
?
How do we deal with it?
I returned you to the grandwisdom of how to train your

(13:26):
dragon.
Are you ready?
What Hiccup learns is that thereis an extremely large and
oppressive dragon that isoppressing all the other dragons
, and a lot of the aggressivebehavior of those dragons,
especially against the Vikings,was because their oppressor was

(13:49):
forcing them to give thesesacrifices to him, this large
oppressor, forcing the otherdragons to have to go out and do
things they wouldn't normallydo in order to survive amidst
their own oppressor.
And so the movie continues on,with the Vikings learning this,

(14:10):
teaming together with theregular dragons, overcoming the
big beast, and then, like a kidmovie, is supposed to end it's
all happily ever after and theVikings and the dragons are
living together and everybodyhas their own dragon and they're
flying them around and it looksgreat.
Are you ready for that world?
Right, bring it on Right.

(14:32):
So maybe I've got some maybesnow as we try to figure out this
teaching.
Maybe the teaching is somethingthat we refer to when we say,
well, everybody's going throughsomething.
Have you not learned that inlife, when you really start to

(14:55):
get in with somebody and youstart realizing like wow,
they're really kind of goingthrough it a little bit,
especially when the relationshiphas gotten confrontational or
there's some conflict in therelationship, and then you
realize, oh shoot, that person'sbeen dealing with that, or that

(15:17):
person grew up with this, andthen you start to learn a little
bit more about that otherperson, the one you have that
conflict with.
Maybe when we stop and forceourselves to rise above our
anger, especially immediateanger, we create the space to
hear or even to understand theother, the other, maybe our

(15:48):
willingness to rise aboverevenge or maintaining our
aggression, you know, when weget into those cold war
situations, maybe when werelieve ourselves a little bit
of that, it allows the othersome space to open up into some
trust where you can actuallyhave some sort of conversation,
some sort of deconstruction ofhow you landed where you landed.

(16:10):
Or maybe Jesus, who came toshow us a better way to live
after all and we do have to givehim credit he is somewhat of an
authority on loving yourenemies.
Is that fair to say?

(16:30):
Right?
You know the Easter story,right?
Okay, so we're all good.
Jesus was pretty darn good atloving his enemies.
He was a model for loving hisenemies.
He's a fair authority on thistopic.
Maybe Jesus knows knows deeplyand wants us to know deeply,

(16:55):
that we're all human.
We're all human beings inclinedto the same tendencies of
anxiety, of fear, of ambition,of lust in all the ways we lust,
from relationships to money, topower.
Maybe Jesus knows that we areall, to a certain extent, driven

(17:21):
by the same impulses.
We're not that different.
Maybe loving your enemies isjust the best way to remind
ourselves of this.
If we're going to have any hopeof being able to deconstruct
what brings us to violence, itstarts with this shared

(17:42):
understanding of each other,this openness to maybe something
better, created byunderstanding, created by trust.
Maybe that's what comes as wepray for an enemy.
Maybe Jesus, maybe he was ontosomething.

(18:04):
If only there was some way offinding out if he was right,
amen.