Loving Your Enemies

September 7, 2025March 17, 2026
by Sara Baron

“Making Space" based on Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18, Luke 14: 25-33

I spent some time this week annoyed at myself for my scripture selections and wishing for a do-over. Particularly relevant, I should share, was that I have been *a little* tender over kindergarten starting this week so a text on hating mothers wasn’t resonating super well. Add to it a Psalm that is beautiful and wonderful and also has been used in the anti-choice movement for decades and I was ready to throw my hands up in the air.

So, I turned to my commentaries, and the Jesus Seminar colors the line about hating families and life PINK meaning it is likely to have been spoken by Jesus. They say,

“The severity of this saying can only be understood in the context of the primacy of filial relationships. Individuals had no real existences apart from their ties to blood relatives, especially parents. If one did not belong to a family, one had no real social existence. Jesus is therefore confronting the social structures that governed his society at their core. For Jesus, family ties faded into insignificance in relation to God’s imperial rule, which he regarded as the fundamental claim on human loyalty.”1

So, while the language itself IS about hating family, and is meant to be shocking, there is something even more going on there. Jesus is taking down fundamental identities, and claiming that God’s love is more than even the things we identify with most.

Then, out of the blue, Helen Ryde died. Helen (they/them), was an organizer for the Reconciling Ministries Network, which is the largest group in the United Methodist Church been working for the full inclusion of queer and trans people in the church and the world. Helen was assigned to the Southeastern Jurisdiction, which is the Southeastern United States and that wasn’t necessarily an enviable area.

Unless you were Helen.

Helen was queer and non-binary, and Helen had a special heart for those who thought Helen and those like them were going to hell. In the days since they died, I watched a sermon they gave where they talked about the people most resistant to change, most set in their ways, most unable to be reached. In organizing language, those people are called “the laggards.” Officially, as organizers, the laggards are to be ignored, because they can’t be reached.2

In their sermon, Helen talked about reaching out anyway.

And, in my experience, that was Helen to the core of their being. My most significant experiences with Helen were in the Love Your Neighbor Coalition Strategy Teams. Let me unpack that. The Love Your Neighbor Coalition is a group of coalition partners including all of the racial-ethnic caucus groups in The United Methodist Church, all the groups that have worked for Full Inclusion of queer and trans people, umbrella justice groups like MFSA, and those working for disability rights, and creation care, along with those seeking justice for Palestinians. The Love Your Neighbor Coalition worked together as one at our United Methodist General Conferences where the rules of The United Methodist Church are written and can be changed. The Coalition has many different teams for General Conferences, and the Strategy team works with committees and the plenary floor to support legislation, oppose legislation, build alliances, organize talking points, name speakers, and work with the boundaries of parliamentary procedure.

So, Helen (and Kevin) and I were on this team and we were preparing for General Conference and there are always these fundamental questions about how we treat those who are working against us. I mean, even that language is kind hard, right? We don’t want to perceive anyone as the enemy or the opposition, but how do we talk about those who were organizing just as hard as we were but for the opposite priorities? And, how do we do it in CHURCH?

We would talk about wanting to acknowledge the fact that everyone was a beloved child of God, even those who wanted to prevent the church from sharing that everyone is a beloved child of God. We would talk about praying for people. We would talk about loving them.

And Helen would be quiet.

And then sometimes we’d talk about our frustrations, about the “how dare they”s about how clearly the people “on the other side” are beloved by God but they are GETTING IN THE WAY of God’s work on earth and it is time to stop them…

And then Helen would speak up.

Because somehow, Helen loved everyone with God’s love for them. Someone said this week that Helen was the best of us in the progressive UMC and that person was right. With Helen around, we could never dehumanize the opposition, we could never forget God’s love for the other side, and we could NEVER consider underhanded strategies counterbalanced the underhanded strategies being done to us. Stuff like that wasn’t possible when Helen was around because this quiet saint wouldn’t allow it. They would remind us about God, and God’s love for others, and that we were in the church, and that we had to model the love even if it meant losing for the time being.

That was Helen.

And sometimes I’d want to contradict them because I wanted to protect my queer and trans friends and family and parishioners but I couldn’t fight with Helen about it because they were vulnerable and engaged with love first anyway.

Helen is the one who, this past May after The United Methodist Church FINALLY shed its homophobic skin, stood up on the floor and spoke FOR letting the churches that disaffiliated from The United Methodist Church BACK in if they changed their minds.3

That’s who Helen was. They’d had their heart changed, and they therefore always left space for others to to change too.

And, on Tuesday, suddenly and in their 50s, Helen died. And for me and many, many others, it was as if the world itself changed colors. In the following days my Facebook contained nothing but tributes to Helen. Helen stood with people in their hardest moments. Helen saved lives. Helen loved. Helen called us to love. Helen changed us. So many of us, it is hard to fathom their death. After Helen’s death, I came back to this scripture, and it had changed.

Because Helen was the best of us in The United Methodist Progressive Movement, because Helen was the one who loved the conservatives the best (and the rest of us too.) They showed that whoever can’t see beyond their own team cannot be following Jesus. Whoever can dismiss another person’s full humanity, isn’t working for the fullness of the kindom of God.

Whoever has limits on their love isn’t doing things God’s way.

All of a sudden the scripture made sense, in the light of Helen’s life.

And, beloveds, this is terrifyingly applicable to us now. There are people we perceive to be on the other team, in a few ways ;). In Helen’s life I hear the echos of Martin Luther King’s teachings that the change we seek in the world is the change that is better for everyone, even the ones currently engaged in oppression.

“hate for hate only intensifies the existence of hate and evil in the universe. If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that’s the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. … You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. “love your enemies.”4

We don’t seek to change hearts with hate, but with showing the power and depth of love. It is LOVE that changes hearts, even the hearts that seem too brittle to change.

There are people doing harm right now, there are people doing us harm right now, there are people who we experience as the opposition. We need not be naive about this (Helen wasn’t), but it turns out we are still called to love them. May God help us. We need it. Amen