What are the marks of an Amen discipleship? How would a Yes spirit manifest itself? The second of a two-part sermon.

When your car starts making bad noises _ banging, or whining, or knocking _ you take it in to get its carburetor, or timing, or fan belt adjusted. When some people feel achy or out-of-sorts, they get a chiropractic "adjustment." There are many Christians out there this morning who are also making whiny noises or creaking and cracking and causing pain to others around them.

When Jesus urged those listening to his lengthy sermon at that "level place" to do good, bless and pray for their enemies, he wasn't advocating some "kill them with kindness" tactic. Jesus was not suggesting that loving your enemies was a type of insidious torture for them. The love Jesus was advocating was to be genuine. Let me suggest three ways we can both love our enemies and do it genuinely.

1. Be a Take-It-on-the-Chin Christian

We all can learn from criticism. In The Godfather II, Michael Corleone preaches the following principle: "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer yet." Powerful information is wrapped up in criticism. You will always learn more from your enemies than from your friends. Enemies can provide a largely untapped source of truth; they give us tips, either about us or (if the critique is off-base) about those who criticize us. Either way we receive valuable information.

Proverbs 23:12 can be translated as: "Don't refuse to accept criticism; get all the help you can." We all need all the help we can get _ even from our "critics." The problem is not with those who criticize you to your face. To them you can turn the other cheek. The problem is those who stab you in the back or who say nothing and go elsewhere. Keeping your enemies close at hand helps keep you at your critical best.

Practitioners of some of the trendiest "feel good" therapies would cringe at Jesus' apparently masochistic suggestions in this week's gospel text. Why open yourself up to all that negative energy? But Jesus' advice wasn't to urge us to wallow in a sea of hurtful, negative experiences. By squarely facing the criticisms and cut-downs our enemies throw at us _ as Jesus suggests "taking it on the chin" _ we have all the more negative energies that we can put towards positive purposes _ adjusting our own attitudes.

2. Be a So-Be-It Disciple

If you must say "No," consider grounding it in a "Yes." It is easy to become a "No-Christian." It is easy to find yourselves sitting with people only in their troubles and bad times and seldom sitting down with them for celebration and gratitude.

Look how quickly we become "No-families." Look at our family meals. Are they special occasions for celebrating the joys and successes of family members? Or are they times of "picking" on one another and underlining the negatives in each other's lives?

We are taught not to be a "Yes-man" or a "Yes-woman." Hearing criticism and learning how to dish it out are highly touted skills in the corporate world and educational arena. Our educational process teaches that in order to appear "smart" you have to say something critical, tear things down, analyze, nitpick and dissect. Being agreeable is thought to be reserved for those who really don't know or can't understand the question at hand.

In his 1991 convocation address at WycliffeCollege, Toronto, Canon Herbert O'Driscoll said that:

We have lost the capacity to say "yes" as our first word in reply to the question, "Do you believe ...?" To questions of belief we have learned to reply tentatively and carefully. We employ such phrases as, "Well, it depends on what you mean by ..." or "Are you asking me if ..." or "Perhaps if I can reshape your question ..." If this is at all true, then I suggest that we very badly need to recapture a way of response that expresses what I will call the child of faith in us rather than the adult of ambiguity.

Let me suggest a perfectly viable succession of questions and responses we might consider. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God? Yes, I do. Do you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? Yes, I do. Do you believe that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin? Yes, I do. Do you believe that the Bible is the word of God? Yes, I do.

If we do indeed believe, then, without haranguing people or invading them, let us quietly communicate the fact that our first word to God is not "maybe," not "perhaps," not "it depends on ...," but a simple YES. [As quoted in Donald C. Posterski and Irwin Barker, Where's a GoodChurch, (Winfield, B.C.: Wood Lake Books, 1993), 25].

Despite the fact that Jesus repeatedly encountered negative energies and continually confronted his enemies head-on, Jesus himself had an affirming spirit. Indeed, the Incarnation was God's absolute affirmation.

How did Jesus affirm people? Romans 12:10 instructs us if we want to imitate Christ, we must "love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor."

- When Jesus showed honor: he picked out rather than picked on those most "put-down" and "down-and-out."

- When Jesus showed honor: he honored people's needs. Jesus would stop what he was doing and allow others to waylay and interrupt him. For Jesus, no importance was unimportant.

- When Jesus showed honor: he honored others by his needing them. Jesus affirmed people by demonstrating and acknowledging his need of them (the disciples, Peter, James and John especially, the Bethany family, etc.); he depended on them; he counted on them. Jesus demonstrated that we all need to be needed.

Jesus often said "No!" But he said "No!" because he had already said "Yes!" to God. We too can say "No!" because our loyalty to Christ makes all other loyalties relative. But when we say "No," let us ground it in a "Yes." This is a So-Be-It Spirit.

3. Embody a So-Do-It-Spirit

Be a "Now" person. Christians are a "Now" people. If someone wants your coat _ give it to him, and your shirt also. Jesus says to act out in love without considering what may or may not be in it for yourself. Christian love is action _ not talk, rumination, investigative committees or long-term studies. Be a "Now" Christian, not a "maybe later" fence sitter or an "I'll get around to it" procrastinator.

Part of what makes "enemies," enemies of Christ as well as personal enemies, is that when they are so wrapped up in criticizing others, "enemies" have no time for positive action. The problem with all this criticism, in Wendy Steiner's words, is that "Criticism makes nothing happen" (see her review in Times Literary Supplement, 15 November 1991, 29). Chekov complained about critics in these terms:

Critics are like horseflies which prevent the horse from ploughing. The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a double bass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes ... he has to twitch his skin and swish his tail. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: "Look, I, too, am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything" (as quoted in Times Literary Supplement, 18 May 1991, 14).

Our biggest problem now is that we are running out of horses, and the flies are getting thick.

You can always find a reason not to say "Yes." Indecision is the byproduct of the critical method. Using the modern scientific method, we can sometimes disprove a hypothesis, but we can hardly prove one. No matter how many times the sun rises each morning, there is no way you can prove conclusively that the sun will rise tomorrow. Indeed, you can more effectively prove that there is reason to doubt whether indeed it will rise tomorrow. That is why scientists have such a hard time reaching conclusions on such cause and effect relationships as smoking/cancer; acid rain and hfc/climate changes; carbon dioxide/greenhouse effect.

A So-Do-It Spirit doesn't wait for the last confirming report to drag in. Undoubtedly, there is still some clerk somewhere trying to determine if the "frisbee" will really catch on. A So-Do-It-Spirit jumps in and does it. Jesus promises that "the measure you give will be the measure you get back" _ so pour it on!

Be a Now people. Just Do It! Do you remember from last week? Somebody say "Amen!" And again I say ... "Amen!"