Word to the Wise
Saturday, February 27, 2010 - Saturday in the First Week of Lent
[Deuteronomy 26:16-19 and Matthew 5:43-48]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, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.......So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Many people will nod their heads as they listen to the Sermon on the Mount until the passage about loving one's enemies is read. Then they begin to shake their heads. This teaching seems so "counter-intuitive." It seems to go against our deepest fears and survival instincts. Learning to "hate the enemy" is part of competition everywhere, especially when the competition is taking place in war (or sports!). Family feuds are another example, and can go on for ages! Racial and ethnic conflict have their basis in this kind of hatred! The problem is as old as Cain and Abel! Scripture scholars remind us that the Hebrew Bible does not command hatred of enemy, but the sentiment was common in Jesus' time (and in ours), and the examples he gives in today's gospel speak to it. God's love is indiscriminate and so should ours be. The translation of the Greek word teleios as "perfect" is misleading because "perfect" in English implies a state of being without flaw of any kind, which is impossible for humans in this life. Rather the word means, "whole" or "complete." If our love is to be complete or whole we must love as God loves. "For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?" God's love goes beyond social, racial, ethnic, political, economic or whatever other bases that we humans use to discriminate. Is this impossible for humans? No, it is not and Jesus did not command the impossible. He does command the difficult and we humans tend to give up too easily in the face of what is difficult, especially when we (particularly in our secular consumerist culture) don't see any material gain to be realized. Perhaps we should ask, then, What does hatred gain for us? We are challenged to accept the whole of Jesus' teaching and not just the parts we like! That is the only way to be "complete" as our Heavenly Father is complete. AMEN
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