Lent 1 March 4, Love your enemies 2020 Wednesday 5:30,
Matthew 5:43-48
Today Jesus tells us to love our neighbors,/ ourselves,/ and goodness knows,/ even our enemies. Could this commandment be related to Jesus’ recent journey Sunday into the wilderness where he meets our greatest enemy called Satan? Rachel Held Evans in her last book, Inspired, leaves with us her experience of wilderness, enemies, and how this relates to Jesus and the God of love. She reminds us that unfortunately we will be driven into the wilderness on our journey when we encounter enemies, just like our Jewish relatives before us. We try to stay connected to the God of love but sometimes we seem surrounded by situations that are harmful to us. Our best reaction often is to flee to the wilderness to escape our enemies, just as Hagar and her son are turned out by Abraham and Sarah, or Jacob flees his brother Esau, or Elijah flees Jezebel. Evans believes that even the God of love, when clothed in human form, has to make a visit to the wilderness to prepare for his meeting/ head on with the devil.
The wilderness is usually thought of as a scary or barren place where God seems even more absent,/ but I have learned from my daughter who is a wilderness forester that the wilderness is the most sacred place where we, like Elijah, best hear the silent voice of God. The wilderness is out of sync with our usual routine. It disorients us and leads us to a different way of thinking where we can learn that the only way to face our enemies within and without/ is with love.
We all have had experiences where we have been harmed: death of a loved one, loss of a job, struggling with an addiction, physical, verbal abuse, a serious illness, depression, other mental disorders, difficulty with our children, parents or siblings,/ struggling with our present political scene. Rachel reminds us that as we are driven into the wilderness from these experiences, we will always learn a great deal about ourselves and especially about the God of love that has been there before us. That is the experience of the children of Israel, Hagar, Jacob, and even Jesus,/ our constant companion. When we decide to live in this more barren place, we meet what we perceive as the enemy within or without of us, but instead meet and are saved by the God of love, and are attended by angels. I think the wilderness is where Jesus especially learns about love of one’s enemy, as he confronts the devil, the personification of evil, the one who lives without love, that part of us where love for others does not live. Jesus’ confrontation with the devil, the evil one, is where he teaches us about loving/ our enemy. First Jesus listens. This is the most loving thing we can do, to listen. Then he speaks to the evil one being obedient to the love of God, whom evil does not understand. Evil can never overcome this love./ Jesus may be reminding us how to journey through the wilderness of this political scene and see if we can also / love those whom we consider our enemy. Loving our enemy is listening/ and looking for/ the Christ within what we perceive as our enemy, and offering the Christ, the love of God within us./ The enemy may or may not be transformed, but we always will become more connected to the Christ within,/ whenever and where ever we offer Love./
Lastly, Rachel reminds us to name these wilderness experiences. Hagar names the well in the wilderness which saves her life and her son, Ishmael, “I have seen the God who sees me.” Just as Jacob is about to meet Esau in the wilderness, he wrestles with God and names the place, Peniel, which means “ Face of God.”
Tonight, we will name this, our liturgical wilderness, Lent.// Here,/
the love we find and offer this Lent will never ever be destroyed, especially when we offer it to those whom we may perceive as our enemies.
Rachel Held Evans in Inspired ( Nelson Books 2018) pp. 48-50.
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com