(Audio)
And if you greet your brothers and sisters only,
what is unusual about that?
The LORD is calling us out of our comfort zones. He is asking of us a love that is more than what is comfortable. It is easy to hear "love your enemies," and interpret it as "avoid or at least don't cause problems for your enemies." We all have some people for which love comes more naturally. For the others who regularly cross our paths, people with no special claim on our affections, are we still able to actively love them, to allow them to be included, and to build them up? We may think we don't have enemies. But the way some people don't rise to the level of our attention is all but the same thing. We can't do everything for everyone. But we can gradually expand out from loving those who are easy to love to those who are less so.
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
How can we shine on those who aren't brothers and sisters, who aren't neighbors? How can we give nourishing rain even to those who offer nothing in return?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The Father is able to offer this love through Jesus because the persons of the Triune God are secure in who they are. They don't risk the disintegration of their identity when the love they offer isn't reciprocated. We, on the other hand, do feel as though we risk this. The need, then, is for us to become more secure of our identities in Jesus, as sons and daughters of the Father. Living for this world only necessarily means loving those with something to give over others. Living for this world only comes down to getting what we can for ourselves while we can get it. But when our identity is defined in heaven, and our treasure is there, we find no limit to the love we can show on earth.
Today you are making this agreement with the LORD:
he is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways
and observe his statutes, commandments and decrees,
and to hearken to his voice.
The LORD is calling us to be a people peculiarly his own. The most peculiar part of this is certainly the way in which we are called to love, to embody his love to the world. Let us seek our identity as members of that people, not to the exclusion of others, but precisely so that we might draw more and more with us by our good zeal.
Blessed are they whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD.
No comments:
Post a Comment