Love

Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, 

I pray that you are blessed. I pray that you are remaining safe and healthy. Let us continue to pray for the wellness of our community and the world, that we are guided by wisdom in our decisions to move forward. Let us also pray that we consider those most at risk as we make those decisions, that the health and safety of all people are taken into consideration, for each and every life is sacred and precious in the eyes of God. 

The Gospels this past week spoke of loving our enemies and praying for our persecutors. These “radical” commandments are often dismissed as impractical or even impossible. But nevertheless, this is precisely what our Lord commanded us to DO. In Tuesday’s Gospel passage Jesus even took it a step forward by commanding us to be as “perfect” as God. Yes, we are only human, flawed and some would say, sinful by our very nature. But we are also “Children of God,” we are “The Body of Christ,” we have the “Indwelling of The Holy Spirit.” With God all things are possible. And so, we must constantly strive to walk the narrow path, to do those things that seem impossible to those who are blind and cannot see. 

The entire approach to the concept of an “enemy” is to strip them of their humanity. “They” are evil, and of course, “we” are good. God is on “our” side. “They” are a threat to all we believe in and even our very existence. A military has to convince normal men and women to not see the opposing side as human beings, but a threat, even a non-human, certainly to not see them as sister and brothers. Without this marching into battle would not be possible. Slavery was all built upon defining Black people as non-human. They did not have souls. Without this it would have been near impossible to continue to justify such a practice. How else could good people, even priests and bishops own a fellow Child of God? 

Those are two extremes, but we do similar things all the time. Whenever we label someone as a foe, or see them as less important, less deserving of our love and respect. There are all kinds of ways in which we label people so we do not recognize the presence of Christ within them. We do it in small and subtle ways, and we do it in blatant and unashamedly ways. We do it when we label someone as inconvenient, whether that is someone who interrupts our busy schedule or it’s an unplanned pregnancy. We do it with specific individuals, and we do it to entire groups of people, like those who stand at our border asking for a better life, or even a chance to survive. We do it by labeling people with with blanket terms, such as, conservative or liberal, traditional or progressive, wealthy or poor, thus we are blind to them as an individual and we ignore everything they have to say and everything they have to offer. 

Of course there are many more ways we do this. The real challenge is to accept the commandment of our Lord and truly strive to love ALL people, whomever they are. To love them and treat them with the dignity that belongs to every child of God. Jesus didn’t say we had to agree with everyone. He didn’t even say we have to like everyone. But He did command us to LOVE every single human being. He commanded us to be perfect just as our heavenly Creator is perfect. That is a tall order, so let us begin by admitting it is an actual commandment of our Lord, and that we have to at the very least try. So let us begin with the people right around us, the people who come into our daily lives, perhaps it’s those who inconvenience us, or those who irritate us, or those we disagree with. Consider that it may very well be Jesus Christ Himself, standing before you and waiting for you to recognize Him, embrace Him, and love Him. …You never know!

 In the Redeemer, Fr. Rick