Readings:
Deuteronomy 26:16-19; Psalm 119; Matthew 5:43-48
“And Yahweh has today made this declaration about you, that you will be his very own people as he promised you, but only if you keep all his commandments… and you will be a people consecrated to Yahweh, as he promised.”
Deuteronomy 26:18, 19
Jesus said to his disciples, “You have learned how it was said: you must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, in this way you will be children of your Father in heaven, for he causes the sun to rise on the bad as well as on the good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike… You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5-43-45, 48
It is difficult enough to keep loving those who love us, or to love our friendly neighbours, but Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies’, those who have damaged us and may still wish us harm. He tells us to do this because God acts in this way, and ‘you will be his people as he promised you, but only if you keep all his commandments’.
‘Be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect’ is a phrase often repeated out of context and the cause of anxiety neurosis among many Christians, ‘perfect’ being interpreted as complete conformity to a system, a set of rules, ritual observances. I knew one headmaster who preached to his pupils on this phrase, and then applied it as God’s demanding the perfect observance of all the school’s rules, which were many, and included a permitted length of hair! It is possible to be perfect in this sense, so utterly dedicated to the system, or rule book, that we have no time or energy left to love even those who are nearest to us, never mind our enemies. In fact, the greater our allegiance to a system, to perfection in this sense, the more people we shall find to dislike, because they do not conform to our system. We often hear people described as a ‘most dedicated’ priest/vicar/deacon/parishioner. The question is, to what are they dedicated? Jesus spoke of the dedication of the Pharisees, ‘you who travel over land and sea to make a single proselyte’, and then added ‘and when you have him you make him twice as fit for hell as you are’, going on to describe them as a ‘brood of vipers’, ‘whitewashed tombs’. The test of true dedication is to be found in the dedicated person’s attitude to those who criticize, disagree, or oppose their ideas and actions. True dedication will always be tolerant, will listen carefully to opponents, think well of them and treat them as friends.
Rules of life, religious observance and ritual are all useful and necessary, but if they are not leading us to greater love of God, our neighbour and our enemies, then they avail nothing, no matter how many hours of prayer and days of fasting are observed.
Love your enemies’ includes accepting and loving ourselves, our dark side, those parts which are far from perfect and of which we are ashamed. We cannot do this through an act of the will, but only by acknowledging this side of ourselves, showing it to God, trusting that he accepts us as we are, is full of compassion and saying to us “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”(Isaiah 1:18).
Prayer
Deliver us, Lord, from every form of self-righteousness, from any glorying in our own goodness. Give us the eyes to see and the courage to face our own sinfulness and disorder, so that acknowledging it, and trusting in your love for us in our sinfulness, we may show that same compassion even to our enemies. We ask you this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Amen.