It’s my honor to celebrate this Easter Vigil as my 3rd year as your pastor. My first year, mass wasn’t public. Second year, we had to limit. This year, it’s wonderful to see so many here. Tonight’s meditation actually builds upon what we talked about at Christmas. In short, the message at Christmas was this: the world has been trying to teach you to hate your enemies. Meaning, no matter where you are, left, right, or center … It seems the world is carefully leading people to hate and not even interact with people they don’t agree with. This goes directly against one of the core teachings of Christ: if you want to be His disciple, you have to love your enemies. I think it’s been very subtle, but it’s everywhere now. So tonight’s kind of a gut check is, how are you doing with loving those you disagree with? It’s time to follow Christ’s teaching so that you can speak the truth WHILE loving them. It’s how the world was first converted to Christianity. We need it again.
You see, the reason why this message is perfect for Easter, is because if we start loving our enemies again, it’s going to begin a whole new age of reconciliation. Reconcile sounds like a Church word, but it has beautiful meaning: It means restoring union after estrangement. I think we all have those people … someone who we should be close with, but we aren’t. It’s painful, it’s awkward. To reconcile would have them be family again. It’s healing and beautiful. But to get to that point hurts … it takes time and sacrifice.
I think that’s the twofold message we need from Jesus in 2022. Love your enemies, in order to invite them to consider Jesus. Again, loving your enemies hurts. People misjudge you, or think you’re somehow dumb or ignorant for being Christian. Jesus knows the pain of loving enemies. On Good Friday, Jesus had His flesh torn and lacerated. He was punched, mocked, and spat upon. But in the end, He still loved them, asking God the Father to forgive them … because they didn’t know what they were doing. He went through all that pain, to the point of death, because it offered reconciliation between humanity and God the Father.
So, how do we love our enemies in a way that offers them an opening to connect to God? How about we begin with 2 ways on NOT how to do it. When followers of Christ offer His way of life they can do two things wrong. One, they can weld the truth like a hammer. Or two, they hide the hard parts of the Truth.
With that first one, I think it’s been depicted enough in essentially every movie and TV show. Christians are made a caricature of just telling people “no” and yelling “you’re wrong.” Jesus could have welded the Truth with a hammer, but He didn’t. People yelled at Him to come down from the cross. But that’s not the right way. Jesus showed us that loving our enemies means we INVITE them to know the Truth, not FORCE them to know Him. It’s better to answer their questions rather than screaming the truth. If you struggle with this, ask the Lord to give you more patience and trust that the invitations of God will work to people who are open.
The second one, hiding parts of the Truth. There’s a temptation to cut Christ’s teachings just to the nice parts, where people don’t have to change the way they live. But this doesn’t help anyone, because to actually heal and improve, we need everything Jesus taught. Jesus offered a way of life that is beautiful and reparative … but it IS challenging. Speaking the truth led to Jesus being killed … but He didn’t back down. Ask God for the courage to stick with His teachings in order to help people who struggle with them.
Overall, this world, with its politics, and wars is simply the result of humans trying to fix the world apart from God. The craziness in 2022 … you’re looking at the results of human wisdom without Jesus. The world is teaching things that are exactly OPPOSITE of how God the Father created things. Notice the traps and remove yourself from them. Start by loving your enemy. This is core to being a Christian. Second, offer the way of Christ with love, because the goal is reconciling, being with them. Don’t wield Truth like a hammer, but don’t hide it either. On Easter, Jesus accomplishes His salvific work and offers all of us a way home to heaven. He did this by loving His enemies and speaking the Truth. It’s time for you and me to do the same.
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