For sure this is one the most challenging, most
difficult, most confounding passage in all of the gospels. And it is also the most fundamentally
Christian, because it is the passage that calls on each of us to be the most
like Christ. More than that, it
calls on us to be “perfect, like the Father is perfect.” That is a tall order. And
look at what it entails. Turning the other cheek. Giving away your cloak. And
the most radical and counter-cultural of all: Loving your enemies and praying
for your persecutors. It sounds so nice and reassuring. But do we know what that means? Let us stop for a moment. Let us do
this. Consider all the people who have hurt you. Those who have lied to you. Stabbed you in the back. Remember the
ones who spread rumors about you that were untrue. Those who have gossiped about you, or judged you, or mocked
you, or bullied you. Consider the friend that you trusted, who betrayed
you. The co-worker who broke a
confidence. The person whose name
you’d rather forget who wounded you, or disrespected you, or took advantage of
you or even abused you. Look back
on all the people in your life who have left bruises and scars, with a word or
a look or a touch. Now, imagine doing what Jesus commands. Love them. Love them
and pray for them. Pray for their good.
Pray that grace will come into their lives. Pray that their eyes may be opened, and their hearts may be
healed. Because the chances are,
if someone has hurt you or persecuted you…it’s probably because someone once did
the same to them. It is a vicious cycle.
As Shakespeare put it: “Sin will pluck on sin.”[1]
And that fundamental truth of our humanity – that the cycle just keeps going —
may be one reason why Jesus, in this gospel passage, says: “Stop. Enough. Break the cycle.
Let it go.” Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. It’s
actually pleasurable to do the opposite—to hate your enemies and to wish the
worst on your persecutors, to enjoy their setbacks and suffering. When you’re
angry, I’ve found, it makes you happy.
It puts a spring in your step. But that kind of thinking is ultimately
self-destructive. And Jesus himself knows that. He knows we can do better. He knows we can aim higher. Be perfect,
he says, just as your heavenly Father is perfect. In the final moments of his
life, he showed us that perfection.
He taught us what he meant.
Surrounded by his enemies and his persecutors, he hung on the cross, stripped,
bleeding, gasping, as they gambled for his clothes and waited for him to die.
And in that moment, Jesus pleaded and prayed: “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”[2]
Here is Christian perfection and our model for living, captured at the moment
of death. Here is love beyond
measure: a prayer for a broken and unknowing world. At one time or another,
each of us has been suspended on our own cross, feeling helpless, or hopeless,
facing cruelty or injustice. Maybe
some of us are there now, angry at what life has done to us. How do we pray
for, and love, those responsible? How do we begin? A popular Protestant
preacher during the Depression, Emmet Fox, once explained it in a way I think
we all can understand. And it
starts with something so simple, but so hard: forgiveness. It is a necessary first step. He says:
by not forgiving we “are tied to the thing [we] hate. The person perhaps in the
whole world whom you most dislike is the very one to whom you are attaching
yourself by a hook that is stronger than steel. Is this what you wish?”[3]
I think we all know the answer. We
need to detach ourselves from that hook.
Then, and only then, can we begin to heal, and to love, and to pray for
those who have hurt us so deeply. Today, as we walk the sanctuary to receive
the body of Christ, le tus pray to detach that hook. Pray for the grace to love
the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable, and to remember in prayer those
you’d rather forget. I personally have a long way to go to achieve that. I think most of us do. But only in
beginning that journey toward love, only then can we dare to approach the
perfection Christ spoke of – a perfection we can never fully attain, but to
which we all have to strive, day by day, prayer by prayer. Work to be more than
what you are, Christ said. Strive to be perfect, like the Father. Jesus showed
us the way. How could any of us not try to follow? • AE
[1] Richard III: Act 4 Scene 2.
[2] Cfr. Luke
23:34.
[3] Emmet Fox (1886 – 1951) was
a New Thought spiritual leader of the early 20th century, famous for his large
Divine Science church services held in New York City during the Great
Depression.
