What are we spreading as Jesus’s Church? Is it the same old judgment and condemnation the world’s violent battles are made to arouse in us? Or does what we have to offer the world have a different source? A source that is mercy. A source that is love. Gift. Forgiveness. Give these away with your life, says Jesus, especially to your enemies and opponents, and these are what will come back to you and fill up your life. And when a good measure of some small mercy we’ve managed to give away, pressed down, shaken together, running over is put back into our laps, won’t we wonder why we spent even a moment of these short and precious lives of ours spreading anything less?
His words blessing the poor and the hungry and the weeping and the hated are every bit as miraculous as his words blessing the bread or inviting Peter out into the deep water. Again and again, Jesus offers a world that is more than pain and logic.
Unconditional love is a love that is too busy pouring itself out on the world to wonder whether enough love comes back to it to be worth the effort. Unconditional loving is its own reward. It’s a vibrant way of being alive in the world, not a grim Christian obligation.
What makes plans holy? I believe they are plans conceived and bathed in prayer, with little pockets of air dispersed throughout them to give room for the blowing breath of the Holy Spirit.
If you’re looking for holy scriptures that present a single, unadulterated, and righteous perspective, I’m afraid you’re going to have to look elsewhere than the Bible of Christians and Jews. But I’ve come to believe that these contradictions are not flaws. They are features. They are essential to how scripture goes to work on our common life over time.