Jesus said to his disciples: ‘You have heard that it was said: You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes his sun to rise on [the] bad as well as [the] good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike. For if you love those who love you, what right have you to claim any credit? Even the tax collectors do as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Even the pagans do as much, do they not? You must, therefore, be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ (Matthew 5: 43-48)
Poised at the center of the Sermon on the Mount, today’s Gospel exhortation is a critical teaching moment in the life of Jesus and a critical moment of revelation for his disciples. By telling us to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” our Lord is calling on us to conduct ourselves in ways that allow our words and our deeds to show others the love of God.
By describing the type of perfect behavior to which we should aspire, Jesus is giving us a glimpse of what eternal life will be like in the kingdom of God: a life that is knowing peace, a life that is free from anxiety and filled with hope, a life that is loving and promotes good. By illuminating for us the qualities that we should display to one another, Jesus is describing for us the very qualities that God himself displays toward us and all His creation. The most remarkable of these qualities, and the one seemingly most beyond human reach, is God’s capacity to pour out his love upon those unworthy of it. This is a theme that repeats itself again and again throughout Lent.
Those who first heard the Sermon on the Mount were “astonished” at Jesus’ teaching (Matthew 7:28) and would have considered such a love beyond anything that we, left to our own devices, could ever muster. This is precisely what Jesus was telling them: Such a love could never be a product of mere humanity. A love of enemies would have to be an imitation of the divine love that God extends to each of us, regardless of whether or not we deserve it (we don’t), want it (not frequently enough), or will ever return it (impossible in like measure). If, under the influence of God’s grace, we can exhibit such a love, we will be participating, in advance, in God’s new, re-created world where no hatred or sin will exist: a world like the perfect world that he created for us in the first place, only more glorious, which will exist only when his kingdom is finally at hand. With the blunt admonition that we are to “be perfect” as our “heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus condenses the larger vision of the Sermon on the Mount, a vision that may be translated as: “You are to build the kingdom of God with love.” We who expect to find ourselves within that kingdom, he is telling us, must not only look forward to it as a future possibility but must believe that the kingdom can, in part, become a current reality and we must participate in the building of that reality. Capping his extraordinary teaching that we are to express only love, even to those who may hate us in return, Jesus reminds us that, to achieve a whole, complete, unbreakable union with God, we must imitate God. We must, like Jesus, direct all the energies of our humanity into reflecting the love of the divinity. It is a pure love so overwhelming that it can only become a force for good, a love that will one day overpower the world to usher into its place the eternal kingdom of God.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!