"Love your enemies"
Monday musical meditations on God's good news
An opening prayer:
Son of God, eternal Savior,
Source of life and truth and grace,
Word made flesh, whose birth among us,
Honors all our human race,
You our head, who, throned in glory,
For your own will ever plead:
Fill us with your love and pity;
Heal our wrongs and help our need.
Come, O Christ, and reign among us,
King of love and Prince of Peace;
Hush the storm of strife and passion;
Bid its cruel discords cease.
By your patient years of toiling,
By your silent hours of pain,
Quench our fevered thirst for pleasure;
Stem our selfish greed for gain.
Bind us all as one together
In your Church's sacred fold,
Weak and healthy, poor and wealthy,
Sad and joyful, young and old.
Is there want or pain or sorrow?
Make us all the burden share.
Are there spirits crushed and broken?
Teach us, Lord, to soothe their care.
As you, Lord, have lived for others,
So may we for others live.
Freely have your gifts been granted;
Freely may your servants give.
Yours the gold and yours the silver,
Yours the wealth of land and sea;
We but stewards of your bounty
Held in solemn trust will be. Amen.
Luke 6:27–38
- "But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also. And if anyone takes away your coat, don't hold back your shirt either.
- 30 "Give to everyone who asks you, and from someone who takes your things, don't ask for them back. 31 Just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them.
- 32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do what is good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full.
- 35 "But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High. For he is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.
- 37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you; a good measure— pressed down, shaken together, and running over— will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you."
Good new questions
- How merciful to you has God the Father been? How merciful will he be forever? What does that mean for you now? Forever?
For others pray
- That God spreads the good news of the kingdom of the Son he loves in Ecuador
J.S. Bach's beautiful music for today
- BWV 24 (YouTube, "An unstained character")
- The cantata unpacks Jesus's command to love our neighbor in radical ways.
- "A Christian's deeds and actions ... should rest on the same foundations ... If our heart strives for goodness, it must be governed by God's own Spirit."
- Practically that means what the cantata says: "Do not make your neighbor your enemy ... Make yourself the image of what you would like your neighbor to be."
- We pray that in place of hypocrisy we be full of faithfulness, forgiveness, and sincerity.
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