We
have been listening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount for the past several
Sundays. It is a powerful statement,
beginning with the Beatitudes that lift everyone who is suffering into the firm
hands of God and continuing into statements that broaden the Ten Commandments
in ways that we sometimes have a hard time keeping or even understanding. Love your enemies is a difficult
thing to do particularly in these times that we are living in where this nation
seems to be so divided between right and left, Republicans and Democrats. We have groups who are for the president and
those who are focused on repudiating everything that he says and does.
But loving our enemies is a key to
peace. It leads us to Jesus’ final
commandment: be perfect as your heavenly
father is perfect. That sounds
like something that is impossible for us mere mortals, but the word “perfect”
means something other than what we generally use it to mean, such as when my
wife cooks dinner, I always tell her that it is “perfect”, meaning that it is
the best that I could ever hope for. I
believe that what our Lord means by perfect is for us all to be complete, to be
moral, to be all that we can be. That
may not qualify as perfect according to our vocabulary, but it brings us closer
to each other, and that is what Jesus intends.
Loving one another begins with
listening to one another. There are many
things on which we can disagree without being enemies. Listening to each other is how we learn, how
we change our minds, how we can come to agreement in part, even if we can still
disagree in whole. I usually learn
something when I have a discussion with someone about things that we see
differently. In these conflicting times,
it is essential that we be open to each other and to share our opinions without
rancor. If we can do this, we will all
learn and be better for it. I also think
that is the way that we can come to the kind of peace that our Lord wishes for
all of us, the peace that passes understanding.
In this time of conflict, I am particularly
worried about the status of immigrants in this country. We seem to have a great concern brewing that
allowing people to cross our borders is dangerous. In my family, both my father and mother had
foreign accents in their homes as they grew up.
My dad’s father, my grandfather, came from Stoke-on-Trent in
England. He had been a carpenter in a
pottery factory in that town and when they came to America, they settled in
East Liverpool, Ohio because they had pottery factories in that place. My mother’s father, my other grandfather came
from Halsingborg, Sweden. He became the
superintendent of Carnegie’s steel mill in Vandergrift. Both of these immigrants brought great talent
and wisdom to this country and they are the reason that I am here. But the
immigrants in my family were all white people.
Those who are black or brown, African Americans, Latinos and Arabs have
a different problem. I remember being in
an airport once waiting for a flight. A
group of Muslim men went past me heading for a gate to board their plane. I was startled by this, not because I was
afraid, but because it was different. There
are currently many refugees fleeing from the chaos in Syria. They are Arab and
most of them are Muslim. Some of them
are finding homes in European countries.
We have currently barred any of them from coming to this country. I know that some of them have great talent
and wisdom and could help us in many ways just as all of our former immigrants
have helped us. I would hope that our
current disagreement about who can enter our country can be settled fairly
quickly and that some of them can be admitted.
It would do all of us good.
Our Lord loved us all so much that
because of his way of life and his preaching, he was finally rejected and tried
by the establishment, crucified and buried.
Three days later, he rose from the dead and gave to us all the promise
of eternal life. I am always awe struck
by Easter. It is the most improbable of
feast days. None of us have any proof at
all of eternal life. It is something
that we accept because of our faith. Faith is a wonderful word that expresses what
we generally know without concrete proof.
One of my favorite theologians, Marcus Borg, called himself an eternal
life agnostic, meaning that he didn’t know about eternal life at
all. He died earlier this year, so I am
sure that his concerns have all been settled now. That really doesn’t matter. What our Lord has given us is the certainty
that our lives will continue into eternity with our Lord and our God and with
each other. That is the best gift that I
can imagine.
While we are living our lives in
this world with each other, the closest that we can come to God’s heavenly
kingdom is to find ways to live in peace together. Listening and caring is the way to do
that. Know always that God loves
you. Jesus says that God sends the rain
on the evil and the good. We are all here
together and peace is the way that our God wants us to live in this world. God’s blessing is with us as we do this.
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