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.” That is from the fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, verses forty-four and forty-five.
It’s one of my favorite sayings of Jesus. Only Matthew records it, and it comes early in his gospel. I feel so drawn to it, I suppose, because it’s a great leveler of human experience and of human pride. It’s an antidote to our tendency to pronounce judgement on others (or at least entertain the thought). More than that, it’s the biblical corrective to making such judgments about ourselves, when we’re apt to say to ourselves, “I must be a bad person for this (whatever ‘this’ is at the moment—coronavirus or change in the stockmarket or an accident of some kind)—I must be a bad person, or this wouldn’t be happening to me. Of course in certain instances we know that we’ve acted foolishly or made bad choices, but that’s different from being a bad person, rejected by God.
If we look at that quote in its context, we see that Jesus is saying that all of us are God’s children, and our enemies as well as our friends. All of us, no exceptions, and we all get rained on, and we all bask in the sun. Neither of those conditions is an indication of God’s judgment on us. Neither is the coronavirus, for that matter. It happens as surely as rain and sunshine and tsunamis and beautiful spring days.
You might be thinking, “Michael, we’ve just read, like, six pages of scripture, and here you go, quoting something that doesn’t appear in any of that.”
True. You’re right. But bear with me—here comes the connection that occurs to me. It’s in the first paragraph or so in the Passion, when Jesus says, “Father, let this cup pass me by.” The rest of that sentence, to be sure, is of paramount importance: “Yet not what I want but what you want.” Or, as we commonly hear it, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” That needs to be appended to every one of our prayers, of course. Otherwise we seem to confuse ourselves with God, saying in effect, “Do this and do that, and everything will be just fine,” as if God were here merely to carry out our orders, since we know exactly what needs to happen—and when, and where.
Back to the first part of Jesus’ heartfelt prayer, his petition to God: “Let this cup pass from me.” Now the rain-and-sun quote and this one are both from Matthew’s gospel. So Matthew’s Jesus, if we can call him that for a moment, was well aware of the equal-opportunity nature of the good and bad which befall us. More than that, even, Jesus knew that decisions he had deliberately made had landed him on that lonely hill, praying in this desperate way, anticipating his trial and imminent death.
Still, as any other thoughtful, feeling human would, Jesus says please let me sit this one out. He knew, though, how things had to go, just as surely as Martin Luther King, Jr., knew two thousand years later, and so many others whose lives (rather, their deaths) were the price paid for the greater good. Here we could fill pages with the names of many a military, or political, or medical hero. There is a big difference in this one price paid, however, this death on behalf of others.
That difference is what Holy Week is all about: this death—and let us be clear about that stark word, death (it is not some illusion of death or mere three-day hiatus from life; Jesus died dead on the cross, a victim of religious, political, and social corruption, as dead as any victim of the current pandemic). This death and subsequent resurrection served to signal God’s love for all those gathered around Jesus, for all those who have been gathered around him in the intervening centuries, for all of us gathered around him now, regardless of how far apart we may be physically separated.
This death and resurrection which we commemorate and celebrate as Holy Week and Easter signal the utter triumph of life over death, of love over hate.
The resurrection from the dead we celebrate a week from today is for all of God’s children for all time. Back to that declaration from the fifth chapter of Matthew: We are all of us God’s children, and as painful and sad as it is to say goodbye to so many of those we love (and those unknown to us) as this pandemic peaks and eventually runs its course (a course shortened by courageous women and men working to end it), not one of them will be lost in God’s economy. God’s love and grace extend to every single one, because God is greater and more merciful than we can imagine.
As we move through the events of this Holy Week in these unique circumstances, may we remember and be ever thankful that God willingly entered into this life of ours, took on the inevitability of a human death (a cruel and unjust execution) in order to know the life of a creature of God, to know the instinct to pray “let this cup pass me by,” in order to redeem our lives—yours and mine, and all who have gone before and all who will come after us. This redemption means that our lives have value here and now, that we are not alone in our struggles, and that God’s love, and our love for each other, extends beyond the grave.
May we enter fully into these observances of Holy Week, confident in the victory of God’s boundless love.
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It’s one of my favorite sayings of Jesus. Only Matthew records it, and it comes early in his gospel. I feel so drawn to it, I suppose, because it’s a great leveler of human experience and of human pride. It’s an antidote to our tendency to pronounce judgement on others (or at least entertain the thought). More than that, it’s the biblical corrective to making such judgments about ourselves, when we’re apt to say to ourselves, “I must be a bad person for this (whatever ‘this’ is at the moment—coronavirus or change in the stockmarket or an accident of some kind)—I must be a bad person, or this wouldn’t be happening to me. Of course in certain instances we know that we’ve acted foolishly or made bad choices, but that’s different from being a bad person, rejected by God.
If we look at that quote in its context, we see that Jesus is saying that all of us are God’s children, and our enemies as well as our friends. All of us, no exceptions, and we all get rained on, and we all bask in the sun. Neither of those conditions is an indication of God’s judgment on us. Neither is the coronavirus, for that matter. It happens as surely as rain and sunshine and tsunamis and beautiful spring days.
You might be thinking, “Michael, we’ve just read, like, six pages of scripture, and here you go, quoting something that doesn’t appear in any of that.”
True. You’re right. But bear with me—here comes the connection that occurs to me. It’s in the first paragraph or so in the Passion, when Jesus says, “Father, let this cup pass me by.” The rest of that sentence, to be sure, is of paramount importance: “Yet not what I want but what you want.” Or, as we commonly hear it, “Thy will, not mine, be done.” That needs to be appended to every one of our prayers, of course. Otherwise we seem to confuse ourselves with God, saying in effect, “Do this and do that, and everything will be just fine,” as if God were here merely to carry out our orders, since we know exactly what needs to happen—and when, and where.
Back to the first part of Jesus’ heartfelt prayer, his petition to God: “Let this cup pass from me.” Now the rain-and-sun quote and this one are both from Matthew’s gospel. So Matthew’s Jesus, if we can call him that for a moment, was well aware of the equal-opportunity nature of the good and bad which befall us. More than that, even, Jesus knew that decisions he had deliberately made had landed him on that lonely hill, praying in this desperate way, anticipating his trial and imminent death.
Still, as any other thoughtful, feeling human would, Jesus says please let me sit this one out. He knew, though, how things had to go, just as surely as Martin Luther King, Jr., knew two thousand years later, and so many others whose lives (rather, their deaths) were the price paid for the greater good. Here we could fill pages with the names of many a military, or political, or medical hero. There is a big difference in this one price paid, however, this death on behalf of others.
That difference is what Holy Week is all about: this death—and let us be clear about that stark word, death (it is not some illusion of death or mere three-day hiatus from life; Jesus died dead on the cross, a victim of religious, political, and social corruption, as dead as any victim of the current pandemic). This death and subsequent resurrection served to signal God’s love for all those gathered around Jesus, for all those who have been gathered around him in the intervening centuries, for all of us gathered around him now, regardless of how far apart we may be physically separated.
This death and resurrection which we commemorate and celebrate as Holy Week and Easter signal the utter triumph of life over death, of love over hate.
The resurrection from the dead we celebrate a week from today is for all of God’s children for all time. Back to that declaration from the fifth chapter of Matthew: We are all of us God’s children, and as painful and sad as it is to say goodbye to so many of those we love (and those unknown to us) as this pandemic peaks and eventually runs its course (a course shortened by courageous women and men working to end it), not one of them will be lost in God’s economy. God’s love and grace extend to every single one, because God is greater and more merciful than we can imagine.
As we move through the events of this Holy Week in these unique circumstances, may we remember and be ever thankful that God willingly entered into this life of ours, took on the inevitability of a human death (a cruel and unjust execution) in order to know the life of a creature of God, to know the instinct to pray “let this cup pass me by,” in order to redeem our lives—yours and mine, and all who have gone before and all who will come after us. This redemption means that our lives have value here and now, that we are not alone in our struggles, and that God’s love, and our love for each other, extends beyond the grave.
May we enter fully into these observances of Holy Week, confident in the victory of God’s boundless love.
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