Independence Day (United States)

Matthew 5:43-48

For several years, I was a member of a rowing club. It was an intensely competitive atmosphere—we competed during tryouts, practices, scrimmages, and races. We even competed to bake the best apple pies.

But, as I reflect back on that time, I must admit I’m surprised to remember that that spirit of competition did not engender a culture of vituperation, of backbiting and undermining. It easily could have, but it didn’t. Our culture, our shared language, the “currency” of our community, as Donald Nicholl puts it, was instead mutuality: mutual growth and thriving, love of the sport and commitment to integrity.[1]

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus speaks to this sense of common language, or currency, for his followers: “Love your enemies” (Mt 5:43). It’s easy to love those you already love—those you agree with, those you share something in common with. It’s a lot harder to put “love” into circulation for those who have set themselves against you.

Saint Benedict, in his Rule, picks up on this command and shows why it’s so important. Toward the end of a listing of “tools” in the monastic “workshop” are the following: “To pray for one’s enemies in the love of Christ” and “To make peace with one’s enemies before the sun sets.”[2]

These tools are for the cultivation of a stable common life, and they point to the vital project of peacemaking within a community. It’s not then, just about love, but about how love, the love of Christ, serves as a binding, integrative force. The exercise of love attends to what Rowan Williams calls “the daily discipline of mending” and challenges the notion that conflict is a “default position” in the common life.[3] Instead of anger and resentment, Jesus, and Benedict, challenge us to let love and respect become our currency of exchange.

On this Independence Day in the United States, we may well ask ourselves what the currency of exchange in our nation is. What do we talk about, and how do we talk about it? I think that many of us would list very highly outrage, hostility, anger, fear, and denial of humanity.

These emotions are real. The denial of the humanity and dignity of so many of our siblings is real. And because of this, so too is our responsibility to put new, Christ-centered currency into circulation. Jesus’ command is not saccharine or sentimental, but deadly earnest. Benedict’s injunction to his monks isn’t about papering over conflict, but about acknowledging it as real while asserting that it is not all. Love is all.

None of us is likely in a position to change our national currency of outrage, hostility, anger, fear, and denial of humanity on our own. But Jesus and Benedict both make clear that we have agency, we have responsibility, in doing our part, even in small ways. We can’t change the currency we receive, but we can choose what we put into circulation.

What is your community? It may be a family, a work team, a friend group, or a congregation. What is that community’s currency of exchange? How is God calling you, in even these small and local ways, to inject new currency into circulation.

When so many are bent on tearing things up, how is God calling you to the “daily discipline of mending”?

When so many accept conflict as our “default position,” how is God calling you to be a peacemaker?

Amen.

[1] Discussion cited in R. Williams, “‘Shaping Holy Lives,’” in The Way of St Benedict (New York, 2020), 17.

[2] Cited in ibid., 16.

[3] Ibid., 16-17.