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March 11, 2022“Love Your Enemies”
Jesus speaks several times in the gospels of those who will or will not enter the “Kingdom of Heaven.” Only those who do the will of the Father (not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’); only those who become like little children; that it’s easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for the rich to enter; only those who enter by the narrow gate; only those born from above. And in today’s reading he says, “I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven.”
This may seem an odd thing for Jesus to say, given his views of the scribes and Pharisees (“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!”). It’s questionable whether Jesus believed they had any righteousness at all. But they were considered the models of piety in Israel of their time. Nevertheless, Jesus would warn his disciples that they could listen to their teachings but that they were not to be like them. “Beware the yeast of the Pharisees!”
The Lord then becomes rather explicit in what he means by surpassing their righteousness. It all centers on how we treat others. To call someone worthless (raqa) or a fool has enormous, perhaps even eternal consequences. Obviously, Jesus does not mean this literally for how many times in our minds do we do precisely that? But the point is clear. To judge others, to hold them in contempt or even in any critical way, to take offense at them or resent them in any way cannot be the behavior of a disciple of Jesus.
We are all quite familiar with taking offense at other’s behavior or at what they say. How many times a day do we find ourselves settling on an idea of someone that is critical, dismissive, even contemptuous, resentful or angry? And we often do this without much thinking or evidence, quite immediately and then find ourselves acting on that idea. How many times have we said that someone “drives us crazy” or that we simply don’t like them or even that we can’t stand them!
In the Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous, in the book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions on page 90 it says, “It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.” (my highlights) In other words, it is not that another has given offense, that they have somehow caused us to be disturbed or resentful, rather it is we who have decided to take offense, we who have allowed ourselves (we have chosen) to be disturbed by them.
This can sometimes be difficult for us to fully embrace. What it simply means is that no matter what a person does or says to us, our reacting in any negative way with either anger, resentment, rage or self-righteousness is all about us, not about them. We are not responsible for the behavior of others, so why do we take offense at it? We have judged them by doing so. And often condemned them in the process as well. And Jesus had much to say about judging others. When Jesus sat before the soldiers during his passion after having been whipped with the thirty-nine lashes, wrapped mockingly in a purple robe they had thrown over him, after having pressed a crown of thorns into his head, beaten it with sticks, slapped him and spit on him all the while viciously mocking him throughout it all, do you think Jesus felt any resentment or anger against those men? I say most emphatically that he did not. He felt only sorrow and love for them. How could he, the Christ, have felt anything else? Later, dying on the cross, he would confirm this in one of his last words, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
St. Theresa of Avila famously prayed, “Let nothing disturb you; Let nothing frighten you; All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.” The next time our pride and vanity cause us to take offense at another, let us ask God to help us to love them instead of judging them. To forgive them instead of cursing them. To simply accept them as they are, not as we think they ought to be. To be patient with them and kind to them. No one has ever regretted being kind and gentle. “If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? Even the godless do that.” “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven.”
