"Jesus said to [Peter], 'One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you. For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, 'Not all of you are clean.' After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, 'Do you know what I have done to you?'" [John 13:10-12]
"When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing'." [Luke 23:33-34]
If there had been any question, any question at all, whether Jesus really meant (and lived!) the notion of love for enemies, let those questions now be put to rest.
Together, these two snapshots from Thursday and Friday remove any shadow of a doubt--Jesus understood his life, his ministry, and indeed the whole Reign of God, in terms of showing love for those who have shown the greatest unkindness first. Jesus didn't just say it in the Sermon on the Mount when the stakes were low and he was just building public awareness, and then walk it back when push came to shove. Jesus consistently lived as though the words that came out of his mouth were--and are--the God's-honest truth, which is to say that Jesus lived as though God really does rule the universe through suffering love that embraces enemies.
And I believe that these two passages together make the case that this is not a fluke, but the core of Jesus' mission and person.
Now, the skeptic in me wants to say that if we only had one of these two passages from the gospels, we might be able to dismiss it. If all we had was John's account of the footwashing, it might be easy to overlook John's clear chronology that puts Judas on the scene and in the room when rabbi Jesus takes the towel and washes his disciples' feet. We might miss that Jesus knows exactly what is coming, and who is responsible, or we might think that Jesus is just a poor helpless victim who didn't know he was about to be turned over to the police by one of his own inner circle. You could say that it's easy to be nice to people who are later rotten to you, because they haven't been rotten yet... but as John tells it, Jesus knows even before the betrayal and the kiss in the garden. But like I say, if all we had in the Passion stories was just this scene of the footwashing with Judas in the room, we might miss that Jesus is consciously, intentionally practicing love-for-enemies there in his few remaining hours of freedom... and life.
And on the other hand, if all we had was the lone verse from Luke about a crucified Jesus praying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do..." we might dismiss that, too. We might hedge or water down what Jesus is doing--we (who have a way of letting our own vindictiveness off the hook) might rationalize this word from the cross and say, "Well, this is only for those who didn't know what they were doing... or didn't understand that what they were doing was wrong!" We might skeptically disregard anything a dying man says while being tortured to death as the mad ravings of delirium. Just like we wouldn't necessarily trust what your relative says when they are coming out of anesthesia or lost in the fog of dementia, we might try the same with Jesus on the cross: "Oh, he can't possibly really mean to call on God to forgive the very people who are knowingly murdering him! He must mean someone in the scene who is just an innocent bystander caught up in the action without knowing what's going on."
But as it happens, we have both of these scenes from the Passion of Jesus. Before the horror begins, we have Jesus, consciously and with clear eyes choosing to wash the feet of the one who is about to betray him over to death. And then once the bottom falls out and the crucifixion has begun, we have Luke's note about forgiving those who have nailed him to the wood. Together, these leave us no room for doubt--the way of Jesus is the way of love for those who are rotten to us.
Now, that may sound like good news to you... or it may sound like the hardest thing in the world. (It is possible, and I think in fact the best sign that you are paying attention to Jesus, if it sounds like both at the same time to you.) It may sound like the most difficult part of this whole Christianity thing, honestly. Come on, let's just say it: we are great with the idea of going to heaven when we die. We like the idea of God always being "with us," and we just eat up all that "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," business. We really don't have that hard a time with the notion of rules and commandments, either--we just learn to think of them as boxes to check off of a list in order to earn a heavenly prize when we die.
But all of that allows us to picture Christianity as basically a religious game in which we get to decide who is "worthy" of mercy and who is not. All of that allows us to picture ourselves as worthy--and thus we get the heaven-prize--and then to picture the people we DON'T like (or the people who don't like US) as UN-worthy, and thus excluded from grace. Neat and tidy, huh, isn't it? I get to pat myself on the back, because I must be a good-little-boy since I have all these great promises of God's favor... and I get to look down on the people I can't get along with, because they must be on the wrong side, and God's love can only be for one side or the other. Dust off your hands, and we can all sleep well at night with that picture...
And yet, when we get these two moments in the Gospels, there is no way of keeping that neat and tidy religious game up any longer. There is no more illusion that God's kindness to me is really because I am so great and moral and nice, while I get to keep nurturing grudges and bitterness toward everybody on my enemies-list. No, because Jesus insists that the whole Passion--and thus his whole life (and death and resurrection)--is a theme-and-variations on love that embraces enemies. From washing the feet of thick-headed dopey Peter and conniving, betraying Judas, to forgiving his executioners in his dying breath, Jesus makes it clear that everything has always been about the way God rules by loving those who are turned away from God.
And this is the turn that makes it possible for us to hear this challenging truth as good news, too: if Jesus' love is even for enemies, then there is nothing, really nothing, that can shake Jesus' love for you and me, too. Even when we are being arrogant jerks who think we know better than everyone else. Even when we say and think hateful things about others without realizing how terrible we sound. Even when our priorities are turned dead-set away from God's. Even when we have been letting hate and bitterness overtake the good soil in our hearts like weeds. If Jesus' love does not draw the line at those who were crucifying him or the one who betrayed him, then Jesus' love will not cut me off, either. The same truth that is so difficult for me because it forces me to see how self-centered, bitter, and hypocritical I had become hating other people and nursing grudges against the people I don't like... turns out to be the truth that gives me the only sure comfort and confidence there is in life.
In the next twenty-four hours, Christians around the world will be contemplating once again the story of Jesus' execution on a Roman cross, with the smiling approval of the religious authorities of his own nation. Don't let that storytelling pass in your consciousness without hearing it the way Jesus lived it--as a love story... the love that embraces while it disarms, the love that includes all, even those who are my enemies, and even those who are Jesus' enemies. Don't miss that such a love is the only hope for people who mess up and flounder... people like you and me.
Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For the cross. For everything. For the love that will not let us go.
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