Tuesday is Independence Day. Tuesday is the day we set aside to celebrate our blessing as a nation unlike any other nation in the world. We are blessed beyond measure. Just in case those blessings haven’t been foremost in our minds, the wise persons who created our lectionary and therefore selected the Scripture for our service today have given us a collection of readings that focuses clearly on the goodness of God to the people of God. We begin with the reading from Deuteronomy, which praises our God as the mighty and awesome one who accepts no bribes and is not partial, who executes justice for the orphan and widow and who loves strangers. This reading reminds us that our God loves and provides for strangers, and lest we forget, underlines that we also have been strangers, that we also have been the recipients of God’s love.
Our psalm is a hymn of praise for God’s mighty works and concludes by pointing out that the attributes of God—the things we understand about God’s self—are even greater than God’s works: The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is loving to everyone, and his compassion is over all his works.
The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that our faith supports us in our life journeys. We can never be quite sure where we’re going or where our journeys will take us. We can be sure that we are always moving into the promises God has made to us.
Our readings begin by reminding us that we are blessed and by recounting to us just how those blessings come to us. The first three readings invite us to acknowledge that we are blessed and then our gospel reading calls us to respond to that blessing.
Today’s gospel is a portion of the Sermon on the Mount. You probably remember that this teaching occurs early in Jesus’ ministry and is Jesus’ inaugural address to the disciples he has gathered around him. You may also remember that this teaching—this sermon—begins with the Beatitudes, the list of ways that God blesses God’s people. Jesus began by reminding the disciples—and the people who were gathered around listening—of their blessings and then went on to teach them how they should live in response to those blessings.
But his lesson had a different slant than the teachings the disciples had heard before. Jesus tells his disciples that they are living examples of God’s will for the world. They are to show how lives can be lived, they must be like the salt that brings out the essence of food, their lives must be lights to the world, giving evidence to the glory of God. Now, that must have been a scary thing to hear that day. As people who claim discipleship in Christ, it’s still a scary thing for us to hear on this day.
Having told the disciples – and us – that their work is to be exemplars Of God’s will for the world, Jesus sets about turning upside down everything his disciples have ever been taught. For three chapters—and that’s a lot of words—he says, “You have heard it said...” Then he describes a teaching, then follows the old teaching with, “but I say—” and his teaching. Jesus brings the law into new light, interpreting the old teachings in ways that go to the center of our lives as humans. He interprets the law to mean that our thoughts and feelings are as important as our actions. Jesus asks his disciples—he asks us—to take the Law one step forward: To refuse to be victim when persecuted, to see our judging of others as a crime as heinous as murder, to act in charity rather than righteous justice.
In today’s gospel portion Jesus says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love our 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 our Father in heaven.
What does it mean to love our enemy? What does it mean to pray for those who persecute us? It may be easier to approach this question from the negative perspective: what doesn’t it mean?
To love our enemies probably doesn’t mean that we will have a warm fuzzy feeling when we think of those who would harm us. To love our enemies probably doesn’t mean that we can or should expect a welling-up of good feeling and positive regard to occur every time we think of those who position themselves in animosity and anger against us. To love our enemies doesn’t mean that we should neglect to respect ourselves as children of God or that we should allow people to do violence to us or to others. To pray for those who persecute us probably doesn’t mean that we need to ask God to fix those folks. To pray for them doesn’t mean asking God to make them behave as we believe they should.
To love our enemies means something much more difficult than that. Loving our enemies means that we must recognize them as children of God, as people made just like us. And that means something even more difficult—to acknowledge that we are made just like them. To love our enemies means that we acknowledge that we are capable of the same things we hate in them. To love our enemies means that we admit we have done hateful things in the past. To love our enemies means that we admit that we may probably do hateful things in the future.
To pray for our enemies means to go with them into God’s presence. We can’t just send them into God’s presence. We can’t just send God after them. We can’t sic God on them like we sic a dog on an intruder. To pray for our enemies means that we just go with them—that we must be part of the healing—that we must seek healing for ourselves just as we seek healing for those whom we see as evil.
We have been blessed by the God who makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good. We have been blessed by the God who sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. We have been blessed by the God who knows the secrets of our hearts. We have been blessed by the God who knows the evil and the good and the righteous and the unrighteous – in our hearts and in the world. We have been blessed by the God who loves us – who yearns and longs for us. We have been blessed by the God whose deepest desire is that we show that love to all the world.
Thanks be to God.