We’re into the second week of Advent: Love. Monday we observed Jesus’ example of washing the disciples’ feet and Tuesday we noticed Jesus’ explicit command that we go and do likewise. Yesterday we saw where the power to do that comes from: right back to love.

Love God, love people – nothing to it, right? Not so fast. Jesus came into a world dominated by Romans who wanted nothing more than to stamp out all allegiance to anyone or anything other than the Roman emperors. His prescription?

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, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? (Matthew 5.43 – 47, ESV)

I was motivated to write this blog by an article in the Sunday Colorado Springs Gazette. Mikey Weinstein, enemy of all things Christian, is at it again. Here’s the start:

A nationwide tradition viewed by some Americans as a patriotic display recognizing service and sacrifice represents for others a sectarian religious symbol amounting to desecration.

Complaints about the popular Wreaths Across America Day, when fresh evergreen wreaths are placed at gravesites of military veterans at national and local cemeteries, are climbing in the weeks leading up to this year’s event, says the founder of a civil rights advocacy organization that’s protesting the practice.

“We have no problem if people reach out and want a wreath on their deceased veterans’ graves, but to put them everywhere, to blanket them without permission of the surviving families is unconstitutional, an atrocity and a disgrace,” said Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Debbie Kelley, The Gazette, December 5, 2021

According to Jesus, our response is clear: we need to love Mikey Weinstein and pray for him. It might help to remember that Mikey is no worse than Saul of Tarsus, who became the Apostle Paul:

I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities. – Paul, speaking to Agrippa, Acts 26.9 – 11, ESV