Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C

Well... if you thought that Luke's version of the beatitudes last Sunday was challenging this Sunday's Gospel is going to make you very uncomfortable. I know that is how it makes me feel. I mean, turn the other cheek, let those that take from you get away with it, love the one who insults you.

Don't get me wrong, on an abstract level I agree wholeheartedly with Jesus on this one. Turning the other cheek makes sense. Responding to violence with violence can have no other effect than to escalate the situation. As Dr Martin Luther King so eloquently put it, 'Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.'

And when my children argue - and boy do they give it a crack - I can still see the sense in both Jesus' and Dr King's exhortation. 'Don't listen to her,' I say. 'Don't come back at him. Just walk away. You're only making things worse.'

All things I've said, just in the last 48 hours.

But then somebody cuts me off in traffic! And the horn is right there!

In the first reading we get a glimpse into the conflict between King Saul and the man who will succeed him; the young and beloved future king, David. Believing himself to be wronged by this young man on whom God and even his own people are lavishing all of their attention, Saul pursues David all the way into the wilderness of Ziph to strike out at him.

We hear how God protects David, even placing him in a position to destroy Saul. And yet David chooses not to.

This is the same David who will later send a rival that has served him well to certain death on the battlefield, and who will commit adultery with the wife of his closest friend. The David whom God refused to allow to build the Temple because he had shed so much blood. And still God loves him. Because God knows that David is essentially good. Because that is how God created him.

And that is what today's Gospel challenges me to do. Not to cower, not to surrender, but to love. To have compassion. To get that everyone else is just as complex a character as David is. As complex a character as I am. That they are essentially good - even if I have encountered them at less than their best.

To leave the horn alone. To hug the child that screams at me. The colleague that takes a swipe at me. Even when I find myself in the wilderness. To love, even when it is messy and hard.

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