Saturday of the First Week of Lent

Lectionary: 229

But I say to you, love your enemies, 

and pray for those who persecute you,

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.

Today's first reading reminds us that we should be peculiar:

...and today the LORD is making this agreement with you: you are to be a people peculiarly his own, as he promised you...

The authors of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were, for the most part, practicing Episcopalians, schooled in the promise of the Enlightenment. Unlike the French who went overboard in their rejection of the Christian and Catholic religions, the Founding Fathers supposed that the practice of religion is reasonable and practical. Given their adult experience of rogues, wastrels, cheats, and cynical British bureaucrats, they hoped that an attentive practice of religion would guide most people in a civilized and prosperous way of life. They shunned enthusiasts like the Methodists, avoided the mysticism of Catholics, and denounced atheists as immoral. They preferred the middle way of the English, between Catholic Rome and Calvinist Geneva. They wanted an agreeable religion; not too hot, not too cold, not too anything. 

If their religion would be peculiar, it would be peculiar in the sense that devout citizens should first enact and then live by sensible laws. They carefully avoided any mention of God in those founding documents, and the Trinity was frankly alien to their beliefs. 

But without a deep appreciation and reverence for the Trinity, loving your enemies and praying for your persecutors is simply bizarre. Which is way beyond peculiar. There may be no law against such things​ but neither can they be promoted as standards for citizenship. 

When we hear this teaching of Jesus our first response should not be, "You must be joking!" Nor should we withdraw in self-conscious remorse, saying "I have never lived, and can never live, like that." Neither reaction is helpful.

Rather, we should look past the words and to the Speaker. He does love his enemies. We will watch him pray for his persecutors from the cross. He shows us that this apparently outlandish teaching is very practicable. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, anyone can do this. We have seen it in Jesus and numberless martyrs and saints. 

With the Spirit of God the impossible is easy.

Without the Spirit of God, even the easy is impossible.

The practice of Lent refreshes our awareness of the Holy Spirit. Our daily prayers, gentle fasting, and helpful works of charity -- when guided by the Holy Spirit -- give us great satisfaction even as they prepare us for Holy Week. We don't expect heroic action from ourselves. The saints may be heroes but they act only in obedience to the Spirit of Jesus. But we will see the Mighty Works of God and, in our peculiar ways, take part in them.