The Monday in the 2nd Week of Lent
March 6, 2023
Luke 6:27-28
“But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.”
In reading, my first thought is of a scene in season 1, episode 1 of Highway to Heaven that always appealed to me. Jonathan, the angel, gets drawn to an alley behind a bar to defend his buddy Mark. Mark had drunkenly insulted a few bad dudes and quickly made some powerful enemies. They’d “taken it outside” and when Jonathan arrives, Mark is getting beaten up pretty badly by his new enemies. Jonathan asks the men to stop. They don’t. Instead, the biggest dude punches Jonathan right in the face. Unfazed, Jonathan asks the man to hit him again. He does. Jonathan looks dutifully toward heaven, says “I turned the other cheek!” and mops the floor with ‘em. Fight won. This is my kind of Christianity…Butt kickin’ Christianity. Vanquished enemies are easy to love.
But those guys aren’t real. Even if they were, they wouldn’t be real enemies. Those guys were situational adversaries. They fought. There was a winner and loser and then everyone moved on.
So, what about real enemies? What of the people that do not like me and want to harm me for reasons that I cannot figure out? What’s in it for me to love, do good for, bless and pray for these people? They intend to do me harm! Why be nice when it’d be so much more fun to whip ‘em, Highway to Heaven style! The only thing I can think of is that maybe it’s in the journey. In an attempt to love these bad people, I learn to understand them. In doing good for them, my heart is softened. By my blessing of them, perhaps they can be won over. In praying for them, maybe I learn more about me and what I’ve done to create these enemies in the first place.
Of course, they could just be bad. If that’s the case, at least I can sleep at night knowing that I’m doing what I need to do to reconcile and hope that one day they’ll change, too. If they never change and continue to attack, at least I know I’ll have God with me when we “take it outside”!
Richard Bradford