How often do you actually hear people in our lives or the mass media using the word, ‘Christian?’ In my hospital setting, when I receive a referral from staff or patient or family for a visit, one of the questions we ask is one’s religious affiliation. So for me, I frequently use the word ‘Christian’ in my daily life. How about you? Let me rephrase the question a bit differently. When was the last time you heard the word ‘Christian?’ Where did you hear it? I would guess probably the media during election season how Evangelical ‘Christians’ would impact its result. The media’s use of the term ‘Christian’ is quite limited to conservative agenda such as abortion, immigrant, gun control, and other debated issues. It seems to me that this term, ‘Christian’ is most frequently used in a political manner. I personally have mixed feelings in that we are somehow taken seriously by politicians only when they want to win their races. I also find this phenomenon tragic because I firmly believe that Christians can actually bring positive changes to our society. We are not just conservative or liberal votes that only matter during election season. For this, we need to remind ourselves of Jesus’ saying, “You are the salt of the earth.” Remember it’s salt not a cult that is only preoccupied with its own interest and benefits.
And today’s gospel lesson goes right into how we become the salt of the world or how we want to be known in this world. We are commanded to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us. This radical act of loving our enemies is what we Christians want to be known for in the world. Now, let us be realistic. Do you believe you can do that? Or can you believe that God can help you love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you? Our honest answer to this would most likely be no. I think one of Jesus’ teachings that Christians don’t consider seriously nowadays would be this loving our enemy part. It is as if we no longer believe this teaching to be realizable or that Jesus’s saying really matters. This tragic reality has a lot to do with the church institution. Recent scandals around sex abuse in churches trouble us and distance us from Jesus’ teaching on loving our enemies. The church community is hurting, instead of loving, its members. We are not even talking about enemies, but about innocent people. What about in our lives? Is there anyone at Saint Agnes Church who has experienced being hurt by the church community, clergy, or leaders? I do hear people talking about how their fellow Christians have disappointed or offended them. I myself feel more damaged emotionally and spiritually when my fellow Christian does something that is far from being Christian. It’s like we all have certain expectations of high moral character and behavior from our fellow Christians. And we are quite good at not meeting these expectations. I have friends who often quote Gandhi, “I’d be a Christian if it were not for the Christians.” or “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” When we talk about love of our enemies, it is even much harder for us Christians to love one another. G. K. Chesterton once said, “God tells us love our neighbors as ourselves, and to love our enemies, because they are generally the same people.” Our enemy is usually the one who we encounter frequently or who we have some kind of relationship with. (Of course, there are some extreme cases in which someone randomly hurts us or our loved ones for no particular reasons and thus becomes our enemy. It’s not so hard for us to create possible enemies who can wrong us in different ways.) Based on Chesterton’s way of looking at our enemy and neighbor who are generally the same people, this may give us some insight on why there are so many disputes or gossips in churches than any other institutions! So far, I have discussed how hard it is to love our enemies. I think all of us can be quite good at justifying why we cannot love our enemies. It isn’t too difficult to hate our enemies. Yet, this is not what Jesus wants for us as well as for the entire world. And simply hating our enemies doesn’t serve us any good. It doesn’t make us happy but resentful. Our true happiness can only be met when we align our free will to the will of God, reaching out to the goal that God has set before us. Jesus always invites us to walk with him to the way of love. Listening to Jesus’s teaching on loving our enemies compels us to put our guard on. Our immediate reaction would be “That is impossible! I can never do this.” We might just think of all those who have hurt us and do not seem to be forgivable and think about whether to forgive and love them or not. Before we, by default, say no, let us remind ourselves that we were once God’s enemies. When Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,” he is not just saying things he himself cannot do. All of us Christians begin our personal relationship with God from realizing our brokenness, our sinful nature, or our wrongdoings before God. With this recognition of our sins, we admit we were once God’s enemies, the ungrateful and the wicked or stubborn. This is why Jesus says in today’s gospel lesson, “...he [God] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” How do we then actually love our enemies? I must say we cannot just love our enemies right away. It’s a process of dying and rising in Christ. Without our own sense of the resurrection with Jesus, we can only pretend to do so. In our first lesson, Joseph shows what this sense of the resurrection is really about. We are only reading the last part of this story of Joseph and his brothers. What happened before was quite horrendous. Joseph’s brothers originally planned to kill him out of envy and anger because he was favored by their father, Jacob. They didn’t kill him but sold him into slavery. Joseph actually has all the reasons to hate his brothers. He wouldn’t be able to love them if he had to do that right after being sold into slavery. Joseph went through struggles after struggles until he became the second most powerful person in Egypt. This is the process of dying to his old self and rising to new life in God. Joseph saw in himself the same vices that his brothers had suffered from and came to have a new way of seeing himself and others. He learned to see his brothers as God saw them. My friends, there are three things I would like us to keep in mind this morning. First, let us not be discouraged by Jesus’s teaching on loving our enemies. Also, let’s not be disappointed by our church communities when you see them not loving their enemies. When you can say that these communities are not doing what Jesus has told us to do, we can still do what they couldn’t do as One Body of Christ. We do not have to follow failures of others but uphold them in prayers and do what they couldn’t with the help of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, consider this radical love of enemies as our designation to arrive on this way of love. On this journey, we are to see ourselves with honesty and humility in the light of Jesus. Don’t look at yourselves alone. The Christian way of self-reflection is always trinitarian. It involves Jesus who looks at us with the Father’s long loving look while the Holy Spirit is holding the mirror that reveals who we really are, not just God’s enemies, that we are truly loved, and that our worth is solely founded in God. Lastly, let today’s gospel lesson be not only a wake up call for us Christians to remind and remember who we are called to be and do in this world that hates its enemies but also a holy obstacle that pauses us to hate or retaliate against the ones who hurt us. May this radical love of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit fill our hearts and this world through our baptized bodies and souls. Amen. |
Paul"...life up your love to that cloud [of unknowing]...let God draw your love up to that cloud...through the help of his grace, to forget every other thing." Archives
January 2025
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