Relationships tell us who we are, whose we are and what is expected of us. Our relationships define where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going. In Matthew 5, Jesus teaches us that we are to love our enemies. “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, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” When it comes to loving and praying for our adversaries, Jesus’s words are inspiring and challenging, encouraging and convicting. Jesus reminds us that beyond the appearance of our most difficult adversary is a person loved by God and capable of good. Today’s gospel invites us to see our spiritual life in the context of a God who sees me, hears me, knows me, and provides for me. When I open my eyes up to that God, I truly want to get to know Him better. Holiness means imitating God and trying to be as generous as we can. We are to act as God does in loving all, just or unjust, good or bad. His mercy and graciousness are radical, disproportionate, and outrageous.
Many of us have been hurt by another person at one time or another. Broken relationships may manifest as fights, divorce, violence, abuse and war. That’s why God calls us, as a faith community to not just think about the relationship between justice and mercy, but to really live it out. When it comes to personal relationships, Jesus reminds us that our first and foremost response must be one of mercy rather than retribution. We are called to seek and restore, rather than to tear down. God is “gracious” and “compassionate.” And if God is “gracious” and “compassionate,” then we who claim to be His beloved children must also be “gracious” and “compassionate.”
In today’s gospel, Jesus is showing us an example of compassionate offered healing. Repeatedly we read that Jesus “had compassion on them” in stories of healings. Compassion and grace offer something real and tangible. Kindness is demonstrated. It is shown. It is offered to another. Grace and compassion do something. Compassion is not simply a feeling. Compassion acts. Compassion enters into the darkness with the one who suffers, and does something about it. Compassion costs us something. It demands something of us. We must step in, get dirty, invest something of ourselves and our resources to demonstrate kindness to the other. We have to be willing to risk. As Henri Nouwen phrases it, “Who can take away suffering without entering into it?”
God offers us all grace. He reaches out to every one of us. He reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ and has extended the offer of new life. God’s grace and compassion are not just an abstract. They can and should do something to who we are. Finally, grace and compassion are inherently indiscriminate. Just as God’s grace and compassion are freely given, so too must ours. Just as God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked, we too must be kind and gracious even to those we may not want to. We far too often hold back our love and kindness from some people. We see the sin, the brokenness and poor choices. We use all sorts of excuses to get around helping people.
So what does it mean to love our enemies? And how can we love our enemies the way that God loves His enemies? How do we express love for our enemies when they are our enemies precisely because they have perpetrated acts of violence on the innocent? How do we love the innocent victims of violence while at the same time expressing grace and compassion for those who are rightly our enemies because of their actions?
What would it look like if the Church as a whole decided to actually imitate the compassion of Jesus Christ? What if we offered good news instead of a threat of retribution? What if we told sinners God is for them instead of God is angry? God’s compassion lifts up, it doesn’t tear down.
Lord You desire all Your children to love others as Christ loved us, but my love is poor and weak and is far removed for all that You desire of me. Fill me I pray with the love of Christ that I may love others in the same way that Christ loved me – so that as Your love pours into my soul, so I may be used as a conduit for Christ’s love to stream out to others with whom I come into contact.
Help me to demonstrate Your love not only to those that are lovable, but also to those that who lash out at me through pain or anger, disappointment or loss. May the love of Jesus be manifested in me and may the love of Jesus be distributed, by grace through faith – to all with whom I come in contact, in Jesus name I pray. Amen