Monday, February 12, 2007
Jesus' Radical Challenge: A Meditation on Luke 6:27-35
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. " Luke 6:32 RSV
A radical view. If you only love those who love you, what credit is that to you?
If you only act lovingly to your family, your clan, your co-workers, the people in your village, the people like you and who you like, how are you different from anybody else? Jesus challenges, demands for us to be more. "If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?" He asks. "And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?"
He challenges us to love those we don't want to love, the unlovely, the low status, the mean-spirited, the ones who want to harm us. He challenges us to act kindly to those we will get no gain from, for who it is hard to care for.
His model for this is how the Father loves all of us: "Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish."
He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. But are we? How hard it is to be kind to the ones who make us feel like we should turn away! How hard it is to act with love to the ones we know want to hurt us!
Jesus never said it would be easy. His life and death shows us how hard it can be. But it starts by praying, like Mary, "Be it done to me according to Your word," and like Jesus, saying, "Not my will, but Yours."
Mother Teresa once said: "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." She also reminds us that "It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters. "
Let us pray for tender hearts that are willing to act with love when we don't want to, to see the eyes of Jesus in the face of a person we would rather ignore, and be His peace to those whose lives we touch.
Lord, soften our hearts and teach us how to love, so we can be your light in the world!
A radical view. If you only love those who love you, what credit is that to you?
If you only act lovingly to your family, your clan, your co-workers, the people in your village, the people like you and who you like, how are you different from anybody else? Jesus challenges, demands for us to be more. "If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?" He asks. "And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?"
He challenges us to love those we don't want to love, the unlovely, the low status, the mean-spirited, the ones who want to harm us. He challenges us to act kindly to those we will get no gain from, for who it is hard to care for.
His model for this is how the Father loves all of us: "Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish."
He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. But are we? How hard it is to be kind to the ones who make us feel like we should turn away! How hard it is to act with love to the ones we know want to hurt us!
Jesus never said it would be easy. His life and death shows us how hard it can be. But it starts by praying, like Mary, "Be it done to me according to Your word," and like Jesus, saying, "Not my will, but Yours."
Mother Teresa once said: "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." She also reminds us that "It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters. "
Let us pray for tender hearts that are willing to act with love when we don't want to, to see the eyes of Jesus in the face of a person we would rather ignore, and be His peace to those whose lives we touch.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
Lord, soften our hearts and teach us how to love, so we can be your light in the world!
Labels: Following Jesus, Love
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