Daily Devotion for Lent 2024, Day 17

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

                                                                            Matthew 5:43-48 (NRSVue)

This passage is a great example of why we need to take specific verses in context with the whole.  If you were just to take the last verse on being perfect like God as a stand-alone admonition, it becomes a ridiculous and unattainable statement.

Within the context of the whole, we can see that the perfection has to do with love.  For most of us, this still sounds like an impossible task!

Within Wesleyan theology, we have long held the idea of Sanctifying grace - this is the grace that God gives to make us holy or more Christ-like.  Within the Christian life, this would include a partnership with the Holy Spirit to make progress in our discipleship.  United Methodists try to do this through the first two General Rules - do no harm and do good which supports the commandment of loving our neighbor.  We also seek to perfect our love of God through the third General Rule which is strengthening our relationship with God through regular worship, prayer, Bible study, etc.

As we partner with the Holy Spirit, this means that we open ourselves up to God working with us and through us.  As we engage in this work, we would find that we are exhibiting the Fruit of the Spirit as shared by Paul through Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  When these become more normative for us, we are perfecting our love to look more like God's love.

It's hard not to respond in kind.

The key for today would be how we show love to those who may seek to do us harm.  For followers of Jesus, love in this sense is less an emotion that we feel and more an action in which we engage.  While we may not always be able to love everyone in a heartfelt way, we are able to respond to others with our own ethic rather than being reactionary to the latest stimuli.

This piece of the Sermon on the Mount may be important for 2024 for our churches to embrace as we seek to lead our country through another election cycle!

Prayer for the day is a prayer of Sanctifying grace from St Francis of Assisi: 

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.

 

The text of the Prayer of St. Francis (Assisi, Italy, 13th Century) is in the public domain.

Photo by John Finn via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons license.

New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.