Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Many folks want to make a strong distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. It is a familiar argument: the God of the Old Testament is ruthless, permitting and even commanding killing; the God of the New Testament, incarnate in Jesus Christ, is a God of love and forgiveness. The perceived difference is so great in some people’s minds that is leads to a crisis of faith, a crisis from which some never recover. The God of the Old Testament, thus described, becomes irreconcilable with Jesus Christ and the whole of Scripture is thrown into question.
I am not able to address this concern completely, a concern I’ve heard from students, family members, friends and strangers. But today’s readings can be helpful in this discussion. We have in the gospel reading arguably one of the best known and most difficult of Jesus’ teachings. He says to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” When we hear the first part, we are tempted to generalize it as the thrust of the Old Testament itself. We are tempted to think that Jesus is overthrowing the whole thing, starting something completely new and leaving behind that picture of God we have in the Old Testament. But what I want to propose is that Jesus stands in the very tradition of the Jewish people, a tradition we value so highly that we read its texts as our own, and as part in parcel of Revealed Scripture.
In that tradition, we see foreshadowed the love and forgiveness embodied and taught by Jesus Christ. In Jewish interpretation, God is always oscillating between justice and mercy. Even in one story, you can see these two dimensions of God’s character. In today’s first reading, we see mercy, a mercy that Jesus embodies as God incarnate and a mercy that he learned as the child of Jewish parents. God stalls his justice on Ahab because Ahab humbles himself before the Lord, even though the demands of justice would allow for due punishment. When Jesus instructs his disciples and us to love our enemies, then, he means for us to embody the kind of mercy that stalls even the most justified anger. This is what makes Jesus’ instruction so difficult: it is in the very moments where we would be most justified in our vengeance or even hatred where God calls us to more.
God calls us to a love that transcends vengeance, to be merciful as God is throughout the Old Testament (really!) and to be “children of our heavenly father.” As we reflect on what it means to love our enemies then, let us reflect on those most difficult and most vulnerable of moments. It is in those very moments where Jesus wants us to embrace the mercy and love of God.
- Katherine Schmidt