Loving your hatred will rot your soul; Jesus challenges us to love love

Matthew 5: 19-26 (The Message Bible)

“Trivialize even the smallest item in God’s Law and you will only have trivialized yourself. But take it seriously, show the way for others, and you will find honor in the kingdom. Unless you do far better than the Pharisees in the matters of right living, you won’t know the first thing about entering the kingdom.

“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill.

“This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters. If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God.

“Or say you’re out on the street and an old enemy accosts you. Don’t lose a minute. Make the first move; make things right with him. After all, if you leave the first move to him, knowing his track record, you’re likely to end up in court, maybe even jail. If that happens, you won’t get out without a stiff fine.”

Jesus did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to build on their theology in the context of the vibrant Judaism of the First Century. The setting for this teaching is the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus explains to his disciples that not all violence is physical; the bodily act of murder is sinful, of course—but so are name-calling, shaming, grudge-holding, and all forms of hating the other.  “The simple moral fact is that words kill” (5: 22).  Jesus’ new commands are commonsensical and easy to understand but admittedly hard to execute—he’s saying we’re the ones who must make things right.  Make amends. Apologize. Be the bigger person.

You know, I am always gob smacked by the way some folks prize their own hatreds, the way they seem to cultivate and feel nourished by them. The short-term gratifications of tribalism, of smacking certain others down, quash the long-term project of working to lift us—all of us—up.    The psychic junk food of contempt can satisfy in the moment, but over time it changes the body, the mind, the eyes, until one sees only faults and enemies. The Rev. Jean Dalby Clift wrote a prayer that should convict us all, “Oh God of grace, give us your grace that we may not savor the evil in others in order to disguise the evil in ourselves. Amen.”

This Lent, I ask you (and I am working on this too!) to work on letting go of the short-term satisfactions of anger, regret, and revenge. Indifference isn’t the answer either. Loving your hatred will rot your soul. Jesus challenges us to love love.

prayer

Lord Christ, our eternal Redeemer, grant us such fellowship in your sufferings, that, filled with your Holy Spirit, we may subdue the flesh to the spirit, and the spirit to you, and at the last attain to the glory of your resurrection; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

—Book of Common Prayer, Friday in the First Week of Lent