Most of us avoid Leviticus as it is a compendium
of ritual worship requirements. It is convinced that worship has to be done in
a proper way. It is not solely that. As in Is. 58 recently, Leviticus too sees
worship in the context of everyday life, of social life. In our passages, it
tries to limit feuding so that it would not escalate, a major move in legal
ethics. From here Jesus mines his quote about loving the neighbor as oneself.
Here in our reading Jesus takes it from the basic foundation of Jewish teaching
and extends it. it as if he says anyone can love the neighbor, but I call you
to a much higher and difficult even reckless position. Yes Christians do have
enemies. They can be the faceless enemies of terrorists or the intimate enemies
of a family falling apart.
The rubber hits the road
in Christian ethics this morning. Here is Jesus at his most demanding; to love
the enemy. I have enough troubling loving the neighbor, and this seems so
foreign to our way of thinking. As i was writing this the world was mourning the
passing of Nelson Mandela. J. Barrie Shepard said that these are words ‘ that
we would much rather leave to someone else to do.’ Human dignity and respect
loom ;large here. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Our reading
from Paul calls our joining together here in a worship makes us a temple of the
spirit. To continue to be a victim of evil or abuse strikes me as denying our
God-given self-respect, and at times, the respect due to others..
Walter Wink wrote
persuasively that he thought Jesus was urging militant non-violent resistance
in a culture based on defending one’s honor, as in dueling. In his view, jesus
is saying, OK, I will do what you wish, but I will choose to do even more. It
is a form of protest of the powerless. Jesus certainly demonstrated love of
enemy in an ultimate sense.
Perhaps, at times, we
need to remove ourselves from a situation in order to learn to love the enemy.
I would rather see an abused family leave the situation and see the perpetrator
in a new light than to be subjected to continuing torment. I don't think we
should be martyrs to someone else’s evil or illness. When a marriage is
irretrievably broken, instead of remaining in a hell of mutual distaste or
perhaps worse, indifference, it may be better to try to reconstruct a life in a
different way.
How to do this?
First admit the position of having an enemy. Consider the old adage your
own worst enemy, a line Springsteen picks up in a warning to a our sense of
ethics. Pray for them, not at them but for them. A person prayed for no longer
can be merely an object labeled enemy but a person. Can someone truly remain an
enemy if we cna pray for them? Can someone remain an enemy if they are placed
within the frame of prayer? If prayer is what creates us as a temple of the
spirit, are we then not placing the enemy with the sanctuary of prayer?
This is so hard, I do
realize. I am much better at plotting revenge than loving the enemy.
Methodists and their progeny misperceive the end of this passage. Perfect means
whole and complete, fitting a purpose like a glove, not without fault.It comes
from the same root as our word for being oriented toward a end product or goal,
the way we use the word as in a perfect fit. When we make a step to not only
loving hte neighbort, but loving the enemy, we place our lives in conformity to
the highest aspirations of christ. Our words and deeds become a perfect fit.
No comments:
Post a Comment