Perfect

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, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:43-48

God, how shall I be perfect
as your perfection calls
whose light strikes mead and desert,
who makes the rain to fall?

To love who sins against me,
who wounds me, then to bless,
as you have loved your enemies,
as you have loved myself?

Can anyone fulfill this?
For who can be like God?
You, you alone can do it—
unless you touch our hearts.

Unless you heal that hardness
that turns all hope to fear,
unless in love you pardon us
and touch our eyes and ears.

Have mercy on my blindness,
though you are God Who Sees,
and in your loving kindness
have mercy, too, on me.

And let me, too, have mercy;
let me hear those who call.
Your rain falls on the thirsting;
your light shines on us all.

Rain near the village Lunde, The north of Funen, Denmark by Malene Thyssen, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=276654

Not Perfect

“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,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:38-48

The sun you made shines on us, bad and good;
your rain turns field and fallow both to mud.
You water weeds and wheat; you give them light,
and love us when we're wrong, as much as right.

This is the love you ask us in return:
to love the ice and love the fire that burns;
to love the noontime and the deep of night;
with all the stars to shed alike our light;

so to be wounded when our love is spurned;
so to be frozen; so, too, to be burned;
pierced by the sun and blinded by the dark;
shining on all the same our brief, bright spark.

Is this a weight that mortal flesh can bear?
Not since we've known what good and evil were.
How shall we carry love for all the world?
O, help the wheat, and help the weeds, my Lord!

Let what I am grow ever toward your light,
both in the sun and in the stars of night.
I am not perfect, and I am not just,
but pour your mercy down upon my dust.

Rain falling on a field, in southern Estonia By Aleksander Kaasik – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63681273

The Law Is Heavy

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.
Settle with your opponent quickly while on the way to court.
Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.
Matthew 5:17-37

The law is heavy, Lord:
I cannot bear it all
or keep it, whole in every word.
Beneath its weight I fall.

But you have borne its dread,
fulfilled its every jot,
and set before us life and death—
Choose life, for I cannot!

I am not clean within:
My brother knows my guilt;
against my sister I have sinned
and cannot pay the debt.

Forgiven I must be
and washed, as if a child.
To lay my gift before your feet,
I must be reconciled.

Come, earth and heaven's son
who bridged the great divide—
In you alone could they be one,
and so, in you, can I:

At one with earth and heav'n,
with sisters, brothers, too.
In mercy, let me be forgiv'n;
let me be whole in you.

A an etching by Jan Luyken from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations housed at Belgrave Hall, Leicester, England (The Kevin Victor Freestone Bequest). Photo by Philip De Vere. https://www.flickr.com/groups/the_phillip_medhurst_collection_of_bible_prints – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20116195

Will You Bless Us?

For today’s Gospel reading of the Beatitudes:

Lord, we come to you confessing
all our struggle and our need,
and we ask you for your blessing.
Will you give us what we seek?

Will you make us poor in spirit,
like a king who left his crown
so that nobodies can wear it
when he comes into his own?

Will you give us tears for mourning?
There's so much we need to grieve;
drench our hearts, for they are burning!
Christ who wept, grant us relief!

Will you give us thirst and hunger
for the kingdom that you bring
and the justice that we long for,
and then fill us with good things?

Will you give us, Lord, your mercy?
Oh, then make us merciful!
We will bear each other's burdens
as you bear them for us all.

For you came to help and cure us
of the ills that we have made.
Make a blessing of our curses;
bring new life out of our graves.

The sermon on the mount By Harold Copping – https://www.meisterdrucke.de/künstler/Harold-Copping.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84021899

You Send the Rain

Jesus said 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,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:43-48

You send the rain to all the earth;
you scatter it like ash,
and in its passing, life gives birth:
We spring up as the grass.

Or strong or gentle, showers fall;
they do not judge the ground
but only speak your constant call
and let your life abound.

And just or unjust, still we grow
or wither in our thirst,
bowed down by all the winds that blow
and by your sunlight nursed.

So heaven seeps into the world, 
a haze of sun and rain
that blooms in every leaf unfurled
and ripens into grain

or is cut down and cast aside,
a harvest havoc-wrecked.
But still the sun is steady-eyed,
the morning dew-bedecked.

Give us the courage of the sun,
O Father of us all,
to shine alike on everyone
before the sickle falls.

Give us the mercy of the rain
(O, do not close the skies!)
still, still to love through joy or pain
and with the green shoots rise.