Improbable? Maybe. Impossible? No.

Forgiveness is hard enough, as we discovered in yesterday’s installment of Let’s Do Lunch. As we keep reading in Matthew 5, though, rather than giving us a break after a hard challenge, it seems as if Jesus is upping the ante. We may not do it willingly, but on an intellectual level we know that it is not good to hold on to anger and bitterness - from a health perspective, to not forgive is to make a proactive decision to do yourself physical harm.

Loving someone, though, is even harder, for it demands not only an act of forgiveness but a proactive embrace of another. On so many levels, we are being conditioned in so many parts of our society to be pulled into one of two camps on whatever issue is before us. The idea being, of course, that you’re either with us or not. Contempt leads to hostility which leads to enmity. 

This is where Jesus complicates things. Christ makes it quite clear the behavior in which we are expected to engage with those opposing us. Those we might consider ‘enemies’ are actually, one could make the case, the ones who help us measure the true depth of our faithfulness in Christ. How’s this? Well, let’s hear from Jesus as found in Matthew 5:43-47:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”

More than once during our COVID-19 season, I have heard it expressed to me that there is a big conspiracy involving using this crisis as a way to shut churches down by those who hate Christians and Christianity. Usually when I hear this sort of sentiment, it is said with a since of outrage, indignation, and contempt towards those who want to, ‘shut us down.’ Now, I’m not going to get into all that, but I bring it up to say that I wonder if in our zeal to make sure no one ‘shuts us down’ we might betray some of the very teaching Christ has instructed us to follow.

What if we channeled our righteous (or self-righteous) indignation towards those we perceive to be hostile to us (individually or as a community of faith) into living out Jesus direct instruction to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us? Can we honestly look in the mirror and say that we have been people who live up to the undeniable standard Christ lays out here?

Why does it matter? Well…Jesus kind of ties our hope of salvation to our action and attitudes towards our enemies and those who persecute us. The question we must wrestle with here is one of accountability - do we REALLY want Jesus to hold us to this standard? What might have to change in order for us to live out the calling he places on us here?

As a kicker, Jesus in some ways taunts us by pointing out our quite natural inclination to want to hang out with our own kind, in our own tribes. This flies in the face of all of us who want to make our involvement in a community of faith about us all being alike. He’s triple-dog-daring us to be bold enough to reach beyond those similar to us - “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have…if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?”

Let us be people who look for the opportunity to love those we might consider an enemy. Let us be people who look for the opportunity to pray for those we might consider oppressing us. Let us be people who actively love those for whom it is hard for us to love, because we want to because to do so is to be who it is Christ calls us to be as his disciples.

Grace and Peace,
Lamar