18 April 2006

Today's devotion follow Ronald Sider's remarks on the "clear and costly love" with which we are to respond to an enemy. From "Christ and Violence."

One should respond with the kind of astonishing, unexpected love from the evil person even when he strikes one's right cheek with the back of his hand, which was considered the most insulting of all physical blows. But that does not mean that we cannot offer any form of resistance to the evil person. The would contradict Jesus' own rebuke of the soldier who struck Him on the cheek. Rather it means that Jesus' kind of resistance to evil will be of the sort that refuses to exact equal damages for injury suffered, that refuses to consider anyone an enemy no matter how outrageous his offense and therefore that continues to demonstrate active aggressive love controlled by the need of the evil person. Thus Jesus' saying (Do not resist one who is evil) is compatible with the use of economic, legal, or political power to oppose evil as long as love for the oppressor as well as the oppressed is both the means and the end.

Just that we call this other person who threatens us or does evil to us - our enemy, seems to make it quite hard to make something positive of the situation. That is a difficult designation to "get over." And yet, what an amazing way to have the world in which we live be transformed. This will mean that we cannot be in our own world the way we would usually be here. Being transformed ourselves by the Love of God that Jesus brought to life and continues to bring into our lives through the resurrection, we are a part of the new age - we are baptized in Christ, Jesus - we are a part of the living presence of the Prince of Peace. That sounds lofty but it is quite mundane. The healing and peace making that is a part of the Reign of God begins in the ordinary, everyday aspects of our lives. The day is full of opportunities to practice this life. I think that this way of nonviolent resistance is so strange, we don't even see when we are acting contrary to its ways.

Connection: Simply look again...take the second look at the life we are putting into motion in all the things we do today. How different can it be and what will it mean to us and those we encounter - especially when we encounter someone we would consider the enemy....one of those.

We long for your love, O Prince of Peace, and yet we turn away from your ways of life in order to follow our own ways - sometimes at any cost. When we are a warring people, help us to review our lives and turn away from the temptation to repay evil with evil. Amen.