Can we do this? Do we want to???

 

⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’⁴⁴ But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be children of your God in heaven, for God makes sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ Be whole, therefore, as your God is whole.  Matthew 5:43-48

 

How did loving a family member or close friend go yesterday?  For some of you, I am sure, it went awesome, amazing, and it was like the world was suddenly alive with the sound of music ~ cue Julie Andrews singing!  For some of you, you fell splat flat on your face, because your love was a one-way street that the other person didn’t reciprocate or return but shrugged off or dismissed making you felt like, “What a dumb thing to do, thanks a lot, Wes!”  For some of you, you are thinking, “Wait, he was serious about that loving thing, was that really another homework assignment?  When will it end?!?”

 

Just as love is expansive, evolving, there are countless ways to express and explore love ~ you will never exhaust love.  Remember, love will look different for a spouse and a church member and a government leader.  Remember love will take your whole life, which is to say your energy/attention/intention, to embody.  Remember love is never static or all that stable.  How I love my wife today is different than yesterday.  How I love a church member continues to shift like the sand on the beach near the waves because with each interaction there is new material and movement.  How I love God is in flux and is flexible.  We want to confine, which is to say, control, love.  We want to box love in (like that box of chocolates you got a week ago for Valentine’s Day).  But love, which is another name for God, refuses and refutes our efforts to be understood.  We practice or live day by day with this energy of love.  C.S. Lewis once said if we want to love our enemies, perhaps we should not start with the Gestapo.  When we read the above verse, I think the defense attorney in your mind leaps and lands on the most hated person on your enemy list first (insert whatever political leader or serial killer or evil person you can think of here) to let us off the hook.  Because if I don’t have to love _____, then maybe I don’t have to love that uncle who is racist and homophobic and xenophobic and keeps spouting statistics that make no sense.  Our minds are brilliant at distancing ourselves from this invitation of Jesus to the ethic of love, because that way we don’t have to love those in our family who have wounded us or keep pouring salt into our wounds.  Remember, love is elastic and evolving and expanding.  Remember, love for your spouse is different than for the governor of your state, regardless of how you voted.  When we pour our energy into living an ethic of love it is a grand experiment that has the possibility of blowing up in our face like baking soda and vinegar, making all kinds of emotional messy.  And…and God’s wholistic love is what will save us again and again and again.  Keep playing with love for those closest to you.  Keep practicing love in new ways with those that are easy to show agape and those in your family that set the tiny vein in your neck pulsing.  This is not easy.  G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal (Sermon on the Mount) has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”  I pray for the wholeness of God to enfold you, empower you, and enliven you to let these words of Jesus loose in your life and those you encounter today.  Amen.