The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” Lk. 6:27-28
In his newest book, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness, Fr. Gregory Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world, writes:
“Nothing is more consequential in our lives than the notion of God we hold. Not God. The notion of God. This is what steers the ship. Our idea of God will always call the shots …. What matters, in the end, is what kind of God we believe in.”
Fr. Boyle makes it very clear that, after dedicating his life work to the most destitute and damaged human beings, his description of God can be summed up in these words, “monosyllabic. Love.”
As he puts it, “If our God makes us feel unworthy and in debt, wrong God. If God frightens us, wrong God. If God is endlessly disappointed in us, wrong God.”
He refers to God instead as “The Tender One.”
And yet we are faced with today’s Gospel of Luke and his “love your enemies.”
Really?
And if that wasn’t enough, “Do good to those who hate you … pray for those who mistreat you … give to everyone who asks of you ….”
In other words, the love Jesus is calling us to is limitless. It is like God’s infinite love for each of us!
What Jesus is emphasizing is that the God He is emphasizing through all his miracles and all his healing powers is radically different from any deity that humankind has ever embraced.
Other gods, for example, were seldom noted for virtues like compassion, kindness, and ultimate regard for the sacredness of human beings.
Instead, what was notable was their sense of distance, majesty, violence, omnipotence, and total otherness.
The God of Jesus demonstrates none of these negative qualities.
Instead, He/She is like the father who rushes out to hug the prodigal son; like the healer who cures the man born blind; like the neighbor who cares for the wounded Samaritan; like the confessor who tells the woman caught in adultery, “Go, and sin no more.”
God’s love for each of us knows no bounds, no limits. We are then asked to model our lives as best we can after the God we believe in.
The God of Jesus is not a distant overlord who remains detached from sinful and imperfect humanity. Rather, the God of Jesus chooses to be one with humanity in all its dimensions and is uniquely able to identify with the outcast and the marginalized in society.
We are asked to do the same.
The God who died a criminal’s death is also the very One who demonstrates “the power of extravagant tenderness,” who can identify more explicitly with the poor, the needy, the spat upon, and the humiliated.
We are asked to do the same.
“The Tender One” loves even his/her enemies.
We are asked to do the same.
The God of Jesus, then, stands with those whom society stands against, and is therefore both revealed and hidden in the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, and the traumatically ravaged.
We are asked to do the same.
This does not mean that Jesus disregards the rich and the powerful. Quite the contrary. What Jesus opposes are the wealthy, the comfortable, the well-fed, the socially powerful who ignore and disrespect the needs of those less fortunate.
As Fr. Boyle and his Homeboy Industries so powerfully depict, the God of Jesus is compassionately present in every outreach to the most neglected and the most world weary. The God who inspires this kind of outreach is one who wants more than anything else to destroy enmity among brothers and sisters throughout the world.
Or, to once again borrow the Homeboy language, “the Tender One keeps trying to rearrange our thinking …. What matters, in the end, is what kind of God we believe in …. This is what steers the ship …. Our idea of God will always call the shots.”
I, for one, join Fr. Boyle in calling Him/Her “The God of Extravagant Tenderness.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
P.S. The above homily was written previous to my extreme condition of shakiness, so I want to thank all of you who wrote such tender and extremely kind words of compassion concerning my present issues of dealing with essential tremors. My physician presently has me on the medication Propanalol. It is helping but is not a curative.
Again, many thanks for all your prayers!!
