Lent-Day 6
Lent 2010: A Season for Listening
Day 6
Listening to the Sermon on the Plane: Part 5
But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return.
Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High;
for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. -Luke 6:35-36
In my experience it is difficult to love our enemies for an extended period of time. One of two things usually happens within moments or days of our first genuine efforts to live out this holy order in our lives. The first possible development is that we give up on truly loving our enemies and fall back into passive aggressiveness or willful apathy. We might give up on actively seeking to harm of those who oppose us, but we fail to actively seek their good. We might bury the hatchet, but we still take delight at any sign of misfortune that might befall them. While somewhat more civil behavior, this is not the radical love Jesus has called us too.
The second scenario is that we soon run out of enemies to love. It is impossible to actively and intentionally seek the good for someone and continue to count them as enemies. Foes literally become loved ones. Feuds cannot continue when one side stubbornly refuses to fight. Look at it from the other side. How fun is it to slander someone who only speaks well of you? Is there any sport or satisfaction in attacking a person who is bent only on helping you? By loving as imitators of a merciful God we extend an invitation for others to change. We give and receive permission to become different persons and the old roles are irreparably broken.
John Wesley gifted us with three general rules to guide our thoughts, attitudes and actions: 1. Do no Harm. 2. Do good. 3. Attended to all the ordinances of God. By seeking to love our enemies we can accomplish all three. Further, Wesley came to see the commandments of God not as burdens, but as veiled promises. In this instance we see a divine promise explicitly and positively stated, “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High”. By choosing to love we become interwoven in the Love of God for the world.
Today we consider our love for others. Is love just a positive emotion or pleasant attitude toward others, or is an active set of behaviors and intentional setting of our will? Is God more interested in what we feel and believe or is God more focused on what we do? While both are important and tend to inform and shape each other, actions do speak louder than words. Our families, communities of faith, and neighbors have heard enough about the love of Christ, it is well past time for them to start seeing and experiencing it! Lord help us! -Rev. John Mattox
Lord,
It is sometimes hard to love those who love us,
much less our enemies.
Help us to remember that everyone is valuable to you.
Help us to see that those we may call enemies
are just as much your children as we are
and that you love them
no more or less than you love us.
Therefore,
if there are those who would want us to call them enemies,
let us love them in return, so they can know your love.
Amen. – Rev. Katie Mattox