It’s hard to wiggle out of this clear-cut directive of Jesus. “Do good to those who hate you.” And it’s hard to live up to it. The question is, “Where am I going to dwell, in the land of death, or in the land of life?”

Most of us have no quarrel with Jesus. When he says love one another and welcome little children, and peace I leave with you, we find nothing difficult or objectionable in these sayings. Most of what Jesus has to say sounds like good moral advice or happy and reassuring thoughts.

Jesus said to his disciples: “To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.

I once was fired from a job as a parish minister. The reason that the new pastor gave for my termination was that, after five years of ministry in the parish community, there was not enough office space for me.

“I hate myself,” I heard my daughter say. “I’m so stupid!” She was struggling with a school project, and it was not coming together as she had hoped.

The brothers had been business partners for years. They were well-respected in their industry and they were making good money. It was time to sit back and reap the fruits of their labor. Instead one of the partners found out his wife was pregnant with her eighth child.

As we ponder the harder teaching of loving our enemies, we ask God to give us strength to respond to unkindness with love.

The roots of war are in the way we live our daily lives, the way we develop our industries, build up our society, and consume goods. We have to look deeply into the situation, and we will see the roots of war. We cannot just blame one side or the other. We have to transcend the tendency to take sides.