Love Enemies, Seriously

 

“But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6:27) 

Loving our enemies.  Seriously.  Who or what comes to mind when you think of that word – “enemies?” 

My wife had tears in her eyes, I wanted to scream, and my senior neighbor response was helplessness. Susan was contacted by a lady upset because she had to moved out of her apartment. Social services referred her to an emergency hotel. However, the hotel would not allow her to bring along her emotional support companion kitty. In tears, this lady surrendered her kitty to the officers at the animal shelter.

My vison is to make our farm into an educational resource center for students and faculty. However, the legal litigation attorneys could not find a way to make this land available without fear of a potential lawsuit if someone got hurt on our land.

The neighbor’s mailbox was demolished by a state snow plow. I contacted the state highway supervisor and he apologized but reported: “it is a privilege for any home owner to put a mailbox along the side of the road and if a plow destroys your mailbox the state has no obligation to replace it.” Seriously.

Jesus I believe is our spiritual mentor, but this teaching might be his toughest to swallow. After all, people need to pay for their crimes or the state when it wrecks our mailbox, don’t they? Are we supposed to let the bad guys just get away with being bad? If we can’t strike back, are we to choose to let ourselves be abused?

I think one of the hardest things for us to do as Christians is balance justice with God’s mercy. The truth is, it’s never going to be about who “deserves” mercy. We can’t let people or the system go around denying our right to have an emotional companion animal without trying to do something about it. But why does Jesus ask us to love enemies or a system that denies my dream to use our land as an educational center. He tells us to ignore insults and abuse, pray for persecutors, give to beggars, and forgive the misdeeds of others? 

If we take the first steps to love our enemies and those who hate us, Jesus tells us, “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” God’s mercy knows no bounds, no boundaries, no conditions. The sun shines on the just and the unjust. The rain pours down on the good and the bad. God is an equal opportunity provider of mercy. We are to be merciful as God is merciful – in just the same measure as we want God to be merciful to us.

Jesus is really asking, “Do you want to spend all your energy hating your enemies? Or do you really want to follow me and become children of the Most High?” Can we begin today to take one small step toward the kind of reconciliation Jesus knows is the only way forward for us all? Can we begin to love our enemies and pray for those who hate us? And if not now, when?

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends for it’s easy for this Gospel passage to be dismissed as impossible.  To hear Jesus’ words as an ideal that is unrealistic to achieve. Instead, Jesus invites us to humble ourselves and to admit how hard this is.  To let go of our impulse to hold onto the hurts and the pains that justify our hatred for someone else.  Instead, to sincerely and genuinely let Him, and His love enter in.  Letting Him guide and direct, challenge, and heal us not just into loving an enemy – but more importantly forming us into being His faithful disciples.

 

Invitation to be a Beatitude Person

 

 

What is Jesus saying in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes. He’s expressing God’s love for the poor. But I also hear what this current moment in our nation’s history is saying, and it’s very different. When I read the news coming out of Washington, I’m hearing the opposite of what Jesus’ teaching:

Woe to you who are poor, for your poverty is none of our concern.

Woe to you who are hungry, for we won’t be sending you any more food.

Woe to you who weep now, for you will go on weeping. You will catch preventable diseases, and your children will die of malnutrition because the wealthiest man in the world has decided your lives aren’t important.

And woe to you who are criticized and reviled for preaching the word of God. There will be a resolution presented in our government to condemn your sermon as a “distorted message.” The grant money appropriated to you by our government for non-religious humanitarian work will be called “illegal.”

But blessed are you who are rich. You will get even richer.

Blessed are you who are full now, for there’s a big, fat permanent tax break coming your way.

Blessed are you who are laughing now, for you are now in charge.

Blessed are you when all speak well of you, for you have really put one over on the people.

I struggle with this message. I have a definite conflict between honoring my ordination vow to preach the truth and stand up for the poor and the marginalized, and my responsibility as a retired pastor to provide a calm online worship experience which allows my Sonshine Friends to come quietly into the presence of God—blessedly free of controversy or anything upsetting.

I’m not trying to make people angry, but I am trying to say that what is happening in Washington—the arbitrary withholding of humanitarian funds and the shutdown of the United States Agency for International Development—is a direct contradiction of the Holy Scriptures.

Luke’s Gospel is full of references to economic justice. The Virgin Mary sings of God’s regard for the poor. Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in which a man wastes food but lets a beggar starve. Even dogs show the poor man more compassion than does the wealthy man. But when they both die, the poor man is carried away to the bosom of Father Abraham. The rich man is in torment in hades and is reminded by Abraham that he had Moses and the prophets to teach him about compassion. Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool as a warning against greed. Perhaps the most obvious example of all is the parable of the Good Samaritan in which we are reminded to love our neighbor as ourselves by showing mercy. Jesus tells us, “Go and do likewise.”

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that as we enter the holy season of Lent, we might give up more than candy, that we will not withhold generosity or compassion. We take up our special offerings and support the work of our parish community to help the poor, the migrants, And we will continue to pray “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done.” Keep praying. Keep your hearts open. Keep seeking God’s will. It’s more important now than ever. If someone asks you what side of the aisle you are on, instead of getting upset or defensive might I suggest this humble response: “I am a Beatitude person!”

 

 

 

Life After Death

 

In the First Reading this Sunday,, Isaiah dates a religious vision not by a day but by a death: “ … in the year that King Uzziah died.”  

 

There are some things so painful for a person that events in his life can be dated by them: “in the year my wife died”; “in the year we lost our mom”; “in the year the hurricane devastated the town.” An affliction of this sort divides a whole life into before and after: there is the life you had before your wife died, and then there is the life you have afterwards, after the death of your wife and the death of everything that made up your life together. 

 

Isaiah produced the great prophecies of the Messiah that even now give the whole world hope.

Sometimes in unbearable grief such as that stemming from the death of someone so loved, a person doesn’t know how to stand under thier sorrow. A heartbroken person has lost something central to them; and a person can fall apart when the center doesn’t hold.  

 

In those circumstances, a grieved and suffering person can want to die then too; they can want to come to the Lord too. When King Uzziah died, Isaiah came before the Lord too, but only in a vision, where the doorposts shook and the house filled up with smoke. 

 

The problem is that you can’t really come to the Lord before your time on earth is over, and falling apart under grief gets you only an increase of sorrow. Isaiah responded to that vision of the Lord by saying “Woe is me! I am doomed!” 

 

This is not the end of the story for Isaiah, though. An angel seared Isaiah’s mouth with a burning coal. 

 

And then Isaiah opened his mouth and offered to serve the Lord. When God asked, “whom shall I send?” Isaiah said, “Here I am. Send me.” All his most important service for the Lord came after the death that dates his vision and that changed his life. 

 

When Isaiah himself finally died and came to the Lord, three kings later, he had become the foremost prophet of Israel. Because in the end he didn’t fall apart but lived after King Uzziah’s death, he produced the great prophecies of the Messiah that even now give the whole world hope. 

 

If you can stand under your sorrow, rather than falling apart, then through the searing grief can come a new life, a good life that was unimaginable to you before. If you can stand and live into the period of your life after the destruction of your heart’s desire, then God’s grace can bring life out of death for you. 

 

Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends who are living after the death of their spouse, parent or worse child. Give them hope and the assurance that their loved ones walk in the loving eternal arms of our Lord and Saviour.