+ It seems that of all of Jesus’ restatements of the Old Law, this one seems the hardest to
do, mainly because we each have so much experience with it; we each are in a
never-ending series of conflicts with other persons, or other groups of
persons. Jesus tells us to love our enemy,
basically, as much as we love our
neighbor and ourselves: this seems like an impossible task as we look at
the opposition that it pits us against; but the key to certain victory in this
regard is in the last sentence of the gospel passage: be perfect, just as your heavenly
Father is perfect!
What is amazing here is that
this statement is not just a command, it is also empowerment for execution, it is the very outfitting of us to do what is said: God’s word is always effective and powerful, it quite literally
does what it says: that is why we have to read it daily, study it and find out
exactly all of the wonderful powers that are already ours for the discovering.
And so, we have placed within
us the very power to be perfect, to do seeming contrary things, to do really
impossible things: like loving our enemies and persecutors. The main reason
that we must do this is because God does: he loves both the just and the unjust, the
good the bad, the pleasant and the mean: why? to affirm the good and to
offer a never-ending palm-branch of peace and conversion to the wayward: if God
can do that, and we as Christians truly are supposed to be living our entire
lives IN GOD, then we can do it too; it is only when our base humanness, our
un-supernatural selves gets the better of us, that we fail in our resolve to do
this.
And so today, let us rethink
our position with opponents, wish them the same good things that we would want
for ourselves, pray for them, and pray constantly for the completion and
fulfillment of the Kingdom of God – where all will be evened out and everyone
will get what is coming to them: and we will get many points for trying to be as perfect as we could be, as
our heavenly Father is perfect!
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