But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. – Mathew 5:44-45

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 19, 2014): Matthew 5                        

New reports are still coming out of Iraq with regard to the killing of the Yazidi people, a minority Muslim group, by a group that is made up of more radical Muslims. The Yazidi continue to be killed despite the best efforts of the United States to save them. And not far away from this human rights tragedy another one is brewing as Palestinian Arabs and Israeli forces continue to face off against each other with guns and rocket launchers, not only killing each other, but also killing anyone else who might be standing in the way. The names of the dead continue to be added to what is already a very long list. And for those of us who are separated from these conflicts by both space and ideological understanding, the conflicts and the deaths are incomprehensible. And yet people are still dying.

I realize that in both of these cases (in Iraq and Israel) there are long standing disagreements, and there are lists of pains that have been inflicted and actions that have been taken that the participants feel cannot be forgiven. But it is because the actions cannot be forgiven that the lists of the dying continue to grow. At some point it would seem imperative to stop and try to start again with a fresh slate. It is the only way to get around the things that keep bringing us back to the need to inflict pain and death. If we cannot stop the momentum, then the snowball of actions will simply continue to roll down the hill leaving hurt and death in its wake.

In some ways, this is one of the stupidest things that Jesus taught. At the very least it is one of the things that he taught that is extremely hard to put into practice. We all know what it is like to have someone in our lives that just doesn’t get us and makes our lives a lot less joyful. We all have people that we know that have inflicted pain on us. In some ways, our churches are filled with people that left someplace because someone committed some kind of wrong against them. And if we are honest, these are the people who are hard to love – in fact, we see no reason why we should love them. Yet in our world no one has died. How do we love someone who has inflicted that kind of permanent pain on us, totally changing the direction of our lives?

Yet this is exactly what Jesus tells us to do. To take the hate and wrong that has been directed by others onto ourselves and return love. The hope is that maybe, if we can do this, we can stop the snowball – and end the death and destruction. Nowhere would this seem to be more imperative than in the areas of our world where the hurt is so deep and so long standing. The future of our world as we know it may depend on our ability to learn to exchange hate for love – it may depend on our ability to do exactly as Jesus instructed us to do.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Matthew 6