In case you haven’t noticed, today is St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps some of you are planning to go out for a not-very-Lenten Guinness later, or some cabbage and corned beef, or perhaps some are wearing green. Often your celebrants would be wearing green vestments: it’s the most common liturgical color in the church year, symbolizing growth. But today is the second Monday in Lent, so of course I am wearing purple. A color of serious self-examination, as is appropriate to the season. But also, in Jesus’ time, a color of dignity and even of royalty. Because our symbols and our stories can (and usually do) have more than one meaning.
Patrick knew that, of course. You have probably heard the same mythological tales about the saint as I have. He is said to have used the common three-leaved shamrock as a means to illustrate the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. One God in three persons, as our theology teaches. It’s not an easy concept to grasp, so little wonder that Patrick used something quite ordinary to explain one of the great mysteries of God. As did Jesus in his parables. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, he might say, meaning that we have to use our imaginations to figure out how it grows within and among us. We might have different interpretations, and surely God respects that.
But the Gospel we heard today is no kind of parable. It’s one of our Lord’s pretty direct and incontrovertible teachings. Given from a level place, as Luke introduces it, so what we just heard is often described as Luke’s sermon from the plain. And as I’m sure you noticed, it pretty well parallels the Sermon on the Mount. “Love your enemies, do good…expect nothing in return.” And “Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.” Good and right instruction, especially needed in our divisive times. And also easier said than done, as all of us who’ve tried it know.
But it’s just when we struggle most with the ethical demands of Christianity that the witness of the saints comes into clear focus. What the good humor of our secular St. Patrick’s celebrations tends to obscure is the saint’s serious fidelity to Jesus’s hardest teaching. Born to a prominent family in Roman Britain in the 5th century, Patrick was kidnapped by raiders at 16 and spent his young adulthood as a slave in Ireland. Escaping slavery, Patrick returned to Britain and was educated as a monk and priest and eventually became a bishop. The latter, however, was only after he had returned as a missionary to the island of his captivity. He not only forgave his enslavers, he became their great apostle: the bearer of the Good News of God in Jesus Christ.
There’s a Lenten lesson in the spiritual journey that begins in bondage, finds its way to freedom, and then returns with Good News for people still needing the kind of freedom found in Christ. Good News even for the people who may have taken advantage of us. Because freedom, like every robust theological concept, has more than one meaning. It might be about the release from captivity, but it also might be about claiming the freedom to love our enemies, even when they hate us, curse us, or abuse us. To do good for them, bless them and pray for them. That, my friends, is freedom indeed! And because it’s something we humans generally are not very good at, claiming the freedom to love our enemies is a sure sign of God’s grace working in us.
Loving our enemies doesn’t mean we should put ourselves at risk, or grit our teeth and try to do the impossible. But the Gospel is our invitation to seek out and welcome God’s transforming grace, most especially in the difficult relationships of our lives. I think that Patrick offers us a lesson here too. If we can’t pray for our enemies, then let’s go back to the source or the location of our enmity. Which may include memories of a specific betrayal or wound, but our persistent hurts always reside deep within us. The personal captivity of antipathy can only exist if we continue to give it a home within ourselves. Can we return to the hurt places in our hearts and claim the freedom to love anyway? Can we grieve our anger and disappointment, and trust in God’s capacity to transform it into Good News? Even for those who hurt us? Let us pray for ourselves, and for each other, that we may be given the grace to do so.
