Year A
Matthew 5:38-48
The Rev. Denise Vaughn
God’s Empowering Love
There is a story told of a monk who had gotten away from his monastic disciplines of prayer and fasting and he felt too discouraged to begin again. He told this to the abba and the abba replied by telling him this story: A man had a plot of land. And through his carelessness brambles sprang up and it became a wilderness of thistles and thorns. He then decided to cultivate it. So he said to his son: “Go and clear that ground.” So the son went to clear it, and saw that the thistles and thorns had multiplied. He said to himself: “How much time shall I need to clear and weed all this?” And he lay on the ground and went to sleep. He did this day after day.
Later his father came to see what he had done, and found him doing nothing. When his father asked him about it, the son replied that the job looked so bad that he could never make himself begin. His father replied: “Son, if you had cleared each day the area on which you lay down, your work would have advanced slowly and you would not have lost heart.” The lad did what his father said, and in a short time the plot was cultivated. So, the abba told the discouraged monk, “Do a little work and do not faint, and God will give you grace.” The disheartened monk took up his prayer again with patience without trying to do everything.
In my opinion, one of the easiest things Jesus could ask of us is that we should pray. It doesn’t cost any money, there is no prerequisite for knowledge, or study needs to be met. And we know that as followers of Christ if we want to grow in our relationship, our understanding and love of God and neighbor, we need to spend some time in prayer each day. It almost seems too easy. So to quote from an old Gilbert and Sullivan line, “things are seldom what they seem.” This is always the way with Jesus who likes to say things that often run against the grain and challenge us. Like his words today, in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, where he tells the disciples “to love the enemy and to pray for those who persecute you.” To turn the other cheek, forgo revenge, give more than the required in a lawsuit, go the extra mile, give to all who beg, lend without limits, and greet the stranger; nothing like challenging us to do the opposite of what seems normal and reasonable.
In a world that is “all about me,” Jesus offers a different way to live which we find difficult to imagine and embody. If I turn the other cheek, I may get slapped again. If I give to everyone who begs, I will have nothing left for me. If I love my enemies, I may be more persecuted or even killed. No wonder we have developed ways to avoid these commands, impossible and offensive as they are. No one you or I know has ever lived up to their expectations and we certainly can’t on our own. It is ethically impossible for us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” But as impossible as this teaching is it is exactly what we need to be reminded of because what Jesus really seems to be after here is not an improvement in our morality, although we need to hear that. What Jesus is trying to do is to help us see who God is and what it means to be God’s children.
Today, as in last week’s gospel, the pattern continues where Jesus takes the commands of the law and contrasts them with a renewed way of looking at the law. He begins the statements with “You have heard that it was said” and he concludes, with, “but I say to you”; thus, presenting the true intent of the law given to Moses on Mount Sinai, through the lens of his life and message. Through his life and message Jesus presents all these challenging sayings to help us to see what it means to understand God. We are being given a portrait of the very heart of God. God loves the unlovable, comes among us in Christ, suffers our worst on the cross and rises to forgive us. If we want to follow this God, then we are to turn the cheek, give the cloak, go another mile, lend, love your enemy because that is how God loves and expects his children to love in this way also. Of course, we cannot love this way without help therefore Jesus calls us to prayer.
Christians through the centuries have realized that to be able to offer the other cheek, go the extra mile, love our enemy, requires us to stay connected to a source of love. When we do stay connected to this source which is God, the first and most fundamental truth about prayer is this: God’s love is the starting point and ending point of all prayer and prayer is an expression of our relationship with God. Therefore, there is really no one right way to pray. Our individual families of origin, our temperaments, our gifts, interests or weaknesses are combined in each of us in a special way and we need to find a way of prayer that suits us and works best for who we are. No one can tell us how we should pray but it is helpful if we adopt a definite pattern of prayer and make a committed to it. Like the abba instructed the monk, “Do a little work and do not faint, and God will give you grace.”
Prayer is something we learn to do over a lifetime but in order to grow, we must be intentional to grow and to stay connected to our source of love, because whenever we are present to God in our prayer, God is present to us. It is always by the gift of God’s grace and not the result of something we do or say. God promises to be with us, always in everything but if we want to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” we have to connect to the source of perfection. Then we will grow in love.
Several years ago I began a way of praying that I find works for me. I discovered author and theologian Phyllis Tickle’s books “The Divine Hours.” This way of praying uses the ancient way of praying the hours, with prayers, psalms, and scripture readings to pray every day according to the Liturgical season in the morning, at midday, evening, or vespers and at bedtime, or compline. I am not able to pray all the hours every day but even if I get to pray one of the hours it keeps me focused on prayer throughout the day because it is important that we spend time with God. Prayer helps us to love God and God’s world and it will help us be those Christ followers who can love our enemy and pray for those persecute us.
It’s always easier to love those who already love us. But Jesus doesn’t call us to the easy life. He calls us to discipleship and that means embracing the other. Praying for those who wish us ill and respecting the dignity of every human being, as we promise to do in our Baptismal Covenant. A covenant we made with God that is to be the base for all we do and as Paul reminds us today in the epistle, our foundation is Jesus Christ, and because we are Christ’s body here on earth, God’s Spirit dwells within us and gives us the help we need to live a life of love that will transform our world. At the heart of what Jesus taught and lived throughout his ministry was God’s empowering love that enables us to love God and through that love to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Love opens our eyes and our hearts to seek justice for all people and to work for change in the world. This is the righteousness toward which Jesus calls us to strive, every day of our lives.