Eighteenth Sunday in Pentecost: Love your enemies

Sermon Text: Matthew 5:38-48

"Love your enemies. Be perfect like your father in heaven is perfect." Hard passages. Thousands of pages have been written trying to pick apart this passage and see what it "really means," yet maybe it isn't so hard to understand as much as it is to believe that Jesus actually calls us to do it and believes that we can. Getting slapped on either cheek is hard work, but how can prepare our hearts to live in Christ's Kingdom and trust that God's way of enemy love is a legitimate way of Christian Life?