Power Rangers, Enemies, and Weird Love
Luke 6:27-28
7 "But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."
As a kid, I was a big fan of the Power Rangers, as all children should be. I couldn't possibly calculate the hours of my childhood I spent watching this show - I mean, it had everything. Colorful-spandex warriors? Check. Cool teenagers? Check. Are trash-eating pig monsters being destroyed by robot dinosaurs? Checkity check check.
At the heart of it, though - behind all the expertly choreographed fake-fighting and firework explosions and dramatic posing - was a battle for morality. A battle between good and evil.
It's immensely satisfying watching the good guy win, isn't it? It's like those 15-second Facebook reels of slime being made and stretched - it just scratches an itch deep in the corner of your brain. The serotonin releases in a flood that says, "Yes - yes, this is good, good guys should win, bad guys should be exploded by a combination battle-ax/sword/bow/dagger ray gun."
There's something really interesting about these old kids' hero shows. The bad guys are always repulsive-looking slime monsters or witches with a name like "Sinister Susan Stinksalot." The heroes, on the other hand? Elegant, beautiful gymnasts with lustrous hair and sparkling eyes - you know, the kind that makes you go, "Wait, do I wanna BE them, or do I wanna be WITH them?" It made it really clear - the good guys are always good, and they're good-lucking. The bad guys? The enemy? I mean, they're barely human - you know right from the first look that they are Not On The Light Side.
Something in me would love for life to be like that… where the good guys are always good, they're kind and beautiful, and they fight for you. And the bad guys? Well, we defeat them and their nasty faces. Maybe that's why this passage in Luke can be so challenging for me… Jesus flies right in the face of every impulse I have to dehumanize my enemies. I don't want them to love my enemy, if I'm honest - I want to place every possible barrier between us. At my worst, I find myself ruminating on the faults of those who hurt me- distorting them from the Image of God they are into villains with nothing good to offer.
It's not just me - we're living in a polarized world where it often feels that disagreement is synonymous to attack. It's been a hard few years in our society, globally and nationally, and many of the folks around us seem frayed and ready to snap. I don't mean to make light - many of the angers, tensions, and anxieties are real and valid. At the end of the day, though, the people we disagree with, the people who hurt us, and the people who we call enemies - they are not cartoon villains or inhuman monsters. They're real people with their own stories, made in the image of God.
It seems the world Jesus is building isn't a world of the Power-Ranger-Mentality. Jesus calls us to love those who hate us and bless those who curse us. He's building a world where we can heal the ear of the soldier who would strike us, where we can pray for forgiveness for the people who crucified us, and where we can call brothers those that we have called enemies. It's a weird love Jesus has called us to… but what else would be appropriate for me, the recipient of such big, weird love?
