Dear Friends,
I am so grateful for the kind notes I received last week and knowing that you are all still so wonderfully engaged on this journey with me. It gives me the push to figure out what to say during a week like this when, at first, I simply couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say. That’s because this week’s Gospel is about love and, while it’s always about love, sometimes it’s harder to know what to say when love is addressed directly. And, even more, when that love goes against our deepest impulses.
Or does it? Because doesn’t this sound familiar -
This well-known part of this week’s Gospel is the easy part, and it’s also the essence of countless traditions and your average preschool curriculum - The Golden Rule. But it is bookended by the more challenging aspect of the text in which we are instructed to love our enemies and to pray for those who abuse us.
That is more than we usually see as reasonable and our instincts typically tell us to approach with caution, to keep our distance from those who wrong us. It’s how we set boundaries, how we protect ourselves and those we love from harm. How, then, do we turn this kind of love into action? This is where it gets complicated.
In the Episcopal Church, we have so many tools meant to help us understand what love looks like in practice. Numerous Way of Love programs and resources provide tools for all ages to move deeper into scripture ad to live faithfully.
Some excellent resources on the Way of Love if you aren’t already using one of these programs include:
This primer from Building Faith
Forma’s Way of Love Resources page
The main TEC Way of Love page
The Way of Love isn’t the only approach to coming closer to these practices. Before arriving at my current congregation, they were using a work-in-progress curriculum called Love First. It’s been a joy to stumble upon various snippets of the Love First program as I make sense of my space. You can even access their Level One (early elementary) Lent Lessons here, perfect timing for churches looking for something special to do this season or families seeking something to explore at home. It’s easily adaptable, so if you’ve been feeling stuck on home formation practices lately, this might be ideal.
By focusing on the simplest actions comprising the Way of Love, especially steps like praying, how can we push back against our instincts to reject those who we view as a threat to us, or who have even proven themselves to be harmful? And how do we teach children the same?
I point to prayer here because as unsettling as it is, putting the life and heart of the person who hurts us into God’s hands can be freeing, especially when we aren’t trying to be falsely kind. Ask that God bring peace to them, that they come to know mercy, that they experience the kind of transformation we know is possible through God’s grace. Remember, the Good Samaritan was part of a network of enmity with the person he helped. Despite that, he helped. Did he pause? Perhaps. But being God’s hands in the world is how we work towards good neighbor relations that don’t yet exist. And when that feels impossible, it starts with prayer. And, often, it starts with context.
I think often of the “problem children” who were my elementary school classmates, the ones who, retrospectively, I know to have experienced significant trauma. The past hovers over all of us, and while as adults we can understand how trauma and stress influence others actions. What if that insight is something we offered more of to children? A few books that might be of use to start these conversations:
The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes
The Silent Selkie by Juliet Tfofa
I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott
Though Jesus and the disciples were certainly dealing with prosecution in the context of this week’s Gospel, he also does not point to particular people they should treat kindly. Indeed, it’s important to consider that, given how their persecution would increase after Jesus’s crucifixion, this lesson is a reminder of the importance of preparation. When we prepare our children and ourselves to act with kindness, to be good neighbors even to those who are not kind to us, we are offering the same message. Read the books. Prepare and practice for those troubling interactions. Begin to chart the Way of Love. We will always have challenging instincts, moments when we want to lash out, but the Gospel contains what we need to rise above them – especially when those lessons start early.
Go in peace. Go in love. Teach it through your life.
A. Bird