Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. These words from Luke 6, heard in our congregations on February 23, are for me, a vivid reminder of why the season of Lent is so important. Lent, as we are reminded of on Ash Wednesday, is a time when people were/are prepared for Holy Baptism. It is also a time when we are reminded of the need to renew our own repentance and faith. I hear Jesus’ words to love my enemies and my first thought is not fit to say out loud. And so Lent, a time to be reminded that identity as a follower of Jesus shapes our actions as a follower of Jesus. Lent, a time to reflect on our own baptismal vows, and how we are doing living them. Lent, a time to be grateful for the reality that God is not a transactional God! God does not love to the limit that we love, or show mercy to the level we show mercy. God loves without holding back. God loves even when we do not love. And, God invites us to live from our identity as a child of God. To live in a way that refuses the transactional world as well.
The words of Jesus are not actually about our enemies, they are about us. They remind us that how we treat others is actually, in the end, all about us. Be merciful, we are told, for God is merciful. Jesus is teaching us that we can act in this world as if the kingdom of God were here – for it is here. The kingdom of God is present and real and we can live in that kingdom and act in its ways. Or we can continue to live in the violence and separation and pain of the empires of the world. When Jesus tells us to treat others the way we want to be treated it is not simply instruction to play nice, it is about the choice between living the way of God, the way of love, or living the way of violence and separation. Let me be clear, this is not about letting others abuse us, this is not about passive niceness. The words of Jesus are active, to love, to bless, to pray, all of these are active and sometimes that love looks like resistance, but it never looks like hate.
I am grateful for the opportunity of Lent, for I know that I am not living into the words of Jesus, and yet I want to embrace them. For the vision given is a vision of the world I desire. A world of love and mercy and justice and kindness. A world of peace, a world which does not hate, does not discriminate, does not exclude. The world I desire is the world where the followers of Jesus embrace his words, live his words, and bring the kingdom into the fullness of being. And if I want this world, I live this world, and work to bring it into being. Lent gives me the chance to be in self-examination and repentance so that I can see where I need to make changes in my own life, in order to live into this vision.
A blessed Lent to all of you.
+ Gretchen