Be Merciful - From Luke 6

Everyone has enemies.  Oh, they may not be like the arch-nemesis of a superhero in an action movie.  They might not even be like a playground bully.  In adult life, playground bullies take different forms: antagonists in the workplace, adversaries within families, and even vainglorious saboteurs within your house of worship.   The way I deal with my enemies reveals the degree to which Christ dwells in my heart--or, rather, the degree to which I'm abiding in Christ.  I can choose to allow them to disturb my inner peace, which is a path of contention.  Assuming that they are the aggressor and I am the target (the only position a child of God should be in, when conflict is present), and assuming that I resist them on their own battleground, I am bound to lose.  The fact that they are an aggressor means that they are an aggressor-type personality.  While they are used to conflict, as a Christian I should be so un-used to conflict that its ways are foreign to me.  So engaging in a battle on unfamiliar territory would be devastating to me, were I to engage in it.

Instead, Jesus teaches another way.  He tells me to pray for my enemies.  He says I should show mercy.  Do good to those who persecute me.  That's radically different from the way the world responds to bullies.  Jesus says, "Resist not evil...turn the other cheek."  If I'm going to follow Jesus' way, then I'm going to have to train myself to think differently.  I'm going to have to realize that, as Simon Weil says:

We live in a world of unreality and dreams.  To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.  A transformation then takes place at the very roots of our sensibility, in our immediate reception of sense impressions and psychological impressions.  It is a transformation analogous to that which takes place in the dusk of evening on a road, where we suddenly discern as a tree what we had at first seen as a stooping man; or where we suddenly recognize as a rustling of leaves what we thought at first was whispering voices.  We see the same colors; we hear the same sounds, but not in the same way.

To empty ourselves of our false divinity, to deny ourselves, to give up being the center of the world in imagination, to discern that all points in the world are equally centers and that the true center is outside the world, this is to consent to the rule of mechanical necessity in matter and of free choice at the center of each soul.  Such consent is love.  The face of this love, which is turned toward thinking persons, is the love of our neighbor; the face turned toward matter is love of the order of the world, or love of the beauty of the world which is the same thing.  (from Waiting for God, by Simone Weil) 

When I take myself out of the center, I begin to love my enemies.  Instead, they become my neighbors and my friends.  Absenting myself from conflict, I can find beauty in those who oppose me.  I can see God in them, too.

Today, I invite you to a meditation using the Protestant prayer beads.  As you repeat these words, let them soak into your spirit.  When you complete the meditation with the Benedictory bead, understand that just as power went out from Jesus to bring healing to everyone, so His power flows from you, bringing healing to your friends and enemies.

A MEDITATION WITH ECUMENICAL PRAYER BEADS:
(Click here to get your own)

Invitatory - vv. 27-28
I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Weeks - v. 36
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

Cruciform - v. 37
You will be children of the Most High.

Benedictory - v. 19
Power came out from him and healed them all.