When folks watched our worship service on Sunday they heard me say that I was recording the message two weeks in advance, hoping no big news would occur before January 10th that I would normally address on Sunday. Because God guides us even when we don’t know we need to be guided, I had selected a passage telling us to pray for those who hurt or harass us. As it turns out, there was a huge news event, and God had prompted me to choose exactly the right passage for the day. Thanks be to God.
Scripture. Matthew 5:43-48. CEB.
You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you 45 so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.
*************************************************
Good morning! Today I am doing something very very scary. I am recording this message two weeks in advance! Why is this scary, you ask? Because there have been way too many occasions when things happened in the world that completely changed what I had been planning to preach - often on a Saturday. So I am praying that no big earth shattering news event will happen between today - the day after Christmas - and January 10th when you watch it. Why am I doing this scary thing, you ask? Because we are giving Jordan time off after all the incredible amazing work he has done for this whole last nine months but especially during the Christmas Season. Talk about above and beyond! In order for him to have this week off we had to record all the parts of today’s worship by December 30 (when I will be enjoying my after-Christmas hibernation). So here we go.
This morning we continue our month long focus on prayer.
Now, I realize that this love your enemy passage generally leads to a message about loving even people you don’t like - feeding them and not killing them and stuff. But then there is that pesky phrase, “Pray for those who harass you.” Like, bullies? Internet trolls? The mean girls at school (or work)?
Y’know. Jesus keeps asking us to do all this hard stuff. Love your enemy. Pray for those who harass you. How in the world are we supposed to do these things with any sort of sincerity?
And there’s another pesky phrase. “How in the world are we supposed to do that?” Well, we are not supposed to conform ourselves to the world, so that means that this is one of those places where we must stand aside from what the world tells us is the accepted thing to do. It is so unusual for us to want good things for our enemy, for those who have hurt or harassed us, that when, for example, a family asks for mercy for the murderer of their child, it makes headlines.
As Jesus says, if you only love those who love you or only greet your brothers and sisters, how is that different from everyone else? It is what the Gentiles do. It is what the world does. The world says “You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Jesus says we need to be different. We need to love even our enemy, even the one who wishes us harm. We need to want the best for everyone, regardless of our relationship with them. Praying for them is the beginning of love.
Ok, fine. So we have to pray for them. A friend of mine was told to pray for a person who had caused him quite a bit of trouble. “No problem”, he said. The next day he reported that his prayer for her had been that she might go to heaven. Tonight. *sigh* This is not exactly the intent of “pray for the one who hurt you.” So he was told to try again, but this time to pray that she receive all the good things he wanted in his life. Not the muscle car. But serenity, peace of mind, love, compassion . . . all of those good things. Even if he had to pray through gritted teeth, he needed to pray for her to get all of these good things. The time would come when that prayer became easier - he wouldn’t have to force the words out. He would begin to mean what he was saying. And eventually he would stop considering her an enemy, having healed himself and learned better how to love. Having tried this myself, I know that it works.
We can certainly use this practice of praying for those with whom we disagree in our current national situation. There are disagreements over wearing masks and getting the vaccine and whether or not the pandemic is real. There are disagreements over the security of our recent elections. Those who hold differing positions on these issues can get very angry, even confrontational. An important part of this praying for the one who harassed you thing is that we do not get to impose our own desires for that person in our prayers. So we pray for those with whom we disagree, not that they come over to our way of thinking, and suddenly embrace our own beliefs and positions on these issues, but rather for them to receive the good things we desire, perhaps an open mind and willingness to listen. We will receive these things, and more often than not that will help us see our opponent in a very different light.
But what if someone has really hurt us - a stalker, an attacker, an abusive partner? What then? How do we pray for that person? This is difficult - really difficult. For the longest time, when I thought of my abuser, my rapist there was no willingness to forgive or pray for them to have anything good happen in their lives. For years, if a male person moved too suddenly or picked up anything they could hit me with, I would duck or move away as quickly as I could to get out of range. Panic attacks were easily triggered. Pray for them to receive good things? . . . I don’t think so. And yet, once I was able to, once I started praying for them to receive peace of mind and other spiritual gifts I began to heal. And forgive. And to truly want good things to happen in their lives. I began to love, even my abuser, even my rapist.
In his Christmas homily the Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem said: “Love is the only path to salvation. We are all connected to and responsible for each other.” He preached these words at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the city of David. To get to Bethlehem from Jerusalem he had to go through a wall dotted with gun turrets, and guarded by soldiers. Israel calls the wall a separation barrier against terrorism. Palestinians call it a racial segregation or apartheid wall. To preach love in Bethlehem, the Patriarch had to go through that wall, stop at the checkpoints, and show his passport.
There is little love lost between Israel and Palestine. They have been at odds, even sometimes at war, with each other since Israel was declared a nation in 1948. But in Bethlehem, the city of David, a predominantly Muslim town behind that separation barrier, Muslims, Jews and Christians live and work side by side in relative harmony. In Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace was born, peace prevails most of the time. Acceptance and unity prevail, most of the time. God’s love prevails, most of the time.
Jesus said, “just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.” We must let our love and compassion fall upon all persons, and not limit ourselves to loving only those we like, or those who are like us. Because that is how the world is. And WE are not to conform to the ways of the world. Just as God “makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous” so too must we pour out our prayers, and shine the light of Christ’s love on even those who have caused us harm.
The practice of praying for the one who has hurt or harassed us leads to love for everyone. The practice of praying good things for others leads to acceptance of the other, and to unity of purpose. And that is how God would have us live - loving one another, loving our neighbor, loving our enemy, doing for others as we would like others to do for us - reconciling all God’s children with one another and with God. That is our purpose in carrying the Good News of God’s forgiveness, love and grace as we have been commanded to do by Jesus, the Christ, our Lord and Savior.
It’s easy enough, as Jesus said, to pray for our friends and neighbors and siblings. It is harder, much harder, to pray for our enemies, for people we disagree with, and for people who have hurt us. Let us take that as our discipleship challenge this week - to pray for the people we don’t want to pray for, that they might know all the good that we wish for ourselves. In this way let us bring unity and acceptance of the other into our hearts and into God’s world.
No comments:
Post a Comment