“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’” -Mt. 5:43-44
In a world convinced that certainty brings security, love is difficult to comprehend. For love is never certain. This is not to say that it is insecure. But the security offered by love is of a different order than the security we seek in our quest for certainty.
Love emerged in the short teaching career of a man in the Middle East. “If you love those who love you,” he said in his “sermon on the plain”, “what credit is that to you?” (Luke 6:32) Though in context this rhetorical question is meant to draw a negative response from his audience, human history responds to his question by saying, “Much indeed!” Every human being longs for the certainty of reciprocated love. We see it in the stories we cherish and repeat. We tell ourselves stories of love denied and call them tragedies. We collect stories of love reciprocated and read them to our children. “If you love and are loved in return”, we tell them, “you are blessed!” But Jesus’ rhetorical question calls for the listener to be dissatisfied with love tempered by the certainty of return. The return of affection, he says, once that affection has been secured, is too common to be rewarded.
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