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February 27, 2021In our first reading today, Moses instructs the people how to be in relationship with God – “to walk in his ways and observe his statutes and commandments, and to hearken to his voice.” And if the people do this, they will be God’s people – a people “peculiarly his own.” Jesus fleshes this out for us today in the Gospel reading. When Jesus begins with “you have heard that it was said,” you can bet Jesus is going to turn our usual way of doing things on its head. We get the advice to love both our friends and our enemies, to do good to those who persecute us. Something peculiar indeed.
This whole business of being a Christian makes us peculiar. We follow not the ways of the world, but the ways of the Lord. This commandment to love our enemies which we receive today is just one example of this. The season of Lent is another -- a season where we seek to free ourselves from our attachments so that we can be totally dedicated to the Lord; a season where we can empty ourselves so that we can be refilled and reformed. In the eyes of the world, this is peculiar. But for the Christian, it is a way to emulate God – to seek to be perfect, just as our heavenly Father is perfect.
