My Dear Shepherds,
We’re in a dangerous business. Any pastor who’s been at it awhile will have a limp or hearing loss, a blistering burn or symptoms of nerve damage.
I talked with a young pastor recently who, along with the elders, had been viciously attacked by contentious members. “I’m not sure I’ll recover,” he told me. The shepherd David wrote “Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me.” (I hear that Amen!)
Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain wasn’t from the Joel Osteen playbook. He starts with, “Blessed are the poor” and moves down to…
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also….
(Luke 6:27-29)
Jesus was speaking primarily about the hateful enemies his disciples face in the world. But let’s apply his words to help us deal with the painful wounds we occasionally suffer in caring for our congregations.
Some hurts can be forgotten but others cannot and should not be stuffed down. Wounds fester and lead to grudges, a besetting sin of pastors. Instead, Jesus tells us how to leverage even the hatred of enemies to kingdom advantage.
He instructs us in the kingdom secret to becoming merciful, a sacred virtue that can only be gained if we’ve been hated, cursed, or mistreated. But if we learn to be merciful…
Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. (v.35)
The fourfold remedy Jesus gave is like a poultice drawing the poison out of the wounds caused by those who hurt us.
- To love our enemies we first outfit our souls in hospital scrubs: “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with and forgiving one another.”
- To do good is to mimic our Father in his kind acts to wicked people, to do something, anything, that is saturated with grace, perhaps anonymously.
- To bless can mean to speak well of them, whether to them or others. But more importantly, to invoke God’s blessing on them, a private benediction. After all, he’s in on this with you.
- To pray for them. You may see better than others what good they most need from God, and you know personally how only God can make his mercy clear to them.
The thing about showing mercy is that there is no guarantee it will change the person who’s hurt you. As kind as God is to “the ungrateful and wicked,” most do not change. But what is guaranteed is that we will be changed. No amount of study or spiritual discipline will produce such a resemblance to our Father. Nothing else will be so rewarding in this life or the next. And nothing will be so sure to bring healing to our own hearts.
Years ago, a brother’s quibbling and questioning of my work did a number on me. He wasn’t malicious, not an enemy at all, but he seemed to personify people I couldn’t satisfy. Even after I moved, the hurt traveled with me. Then in the wee hours of a Saturday night God brought this passage from Luke to my mind and commanded, “Whenever you think of him, I want you to bless him.” It was that simple. Frankly, I thought of him a lot, so he got a lot of blessing from me for a while. But then, in a healing miracle, my grudge was gone. Mercy—God’s and mine—did its work.
Be ye glad!
