More than twenty years ago, when I was training for my first-degree black belt in karate, one of our instructors would occasionally berate us with a favorite piece of dojo wisdom. He would work us to the point of physical exhaustion and then call out at the top of his lungs: “Hey, anybody can do it when it’s easy.”
We got the point. We were supposed to be different. We were expected to keep going even when things got hard—and especially when they got very hard.
I have drawn on that lesson in more life situations than I can count. In running marathons, in litigating cases, in teaching complex subjects, in raising kids, in dealing with loss and adversity—over and over again, I have said to myself in the midst of weariness and frustration and struggle: “Hey, anybody can do it when it’s easy.”
In this theme, we hear loudly and clearly one of the central messages of Jesus. In the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus pushes back against the conventional wisdom that we should love our neighbors and hate our enemies. In essence, he says: What’s so special about that? Everyone does that. Even the tax collectors do that. That’s easy. And anybody can do it when it’s easy.
The hard work, Jesus recognized, comes when we work to love those who don’t give us much reason to do so. And, let’s face it, we all have people in our orbit who challenge our capacity for empathy and compassion. But Jesus reminds us that if we want to live as the children of an infinitely loving God, then we’re supposed to be different. We love even our enemies.
In the same way, we find it easy to spread faith, hope, and love around when things are going well. Full coffers make for full hearts. But living out these virtues becomes tougher when things get rocky and we have less—whether that deficit comes in the form of less financial security, less physical security, less emotional security, or all of the above.
Again, though, anybody can do it when it’s easy. I take that as the core instruction of the story of the widow’s mite—the woman who gave her last coin out of her poverty rather than one of many coins out of her abundance. Anybody can do it when they have a lot. She knew she was supposed to be different. So she was.
The Bible features many stories of plague and pestilence, and for good reason. Such times radically destabilize us, and invite us into all manner of destructive thinking and bad behavior: fear; anger; selfishness; resentment; hoarding; scapegoating. Those are perfectly natural reactions to dire circumstances. God calls us to resist them like they were the devil himself—because they are.
On black belt testing days at the dojo, one of our other instructors would greet us by calling out: “It’s gut-check time.” Then he’d pile the challenges on us, one atop another, and we’d find out what we were made of. We all discovered the same thing: we could do it.
In the ensuing twenty-plus years, I’ve had the privilege of helping to prepare countless black belt candidates for their examinations. Over and over again, I have watched people who had good reason to believe they had nothing left inside discover that they had reserves of strength and spirit they had never imagined. I have seen people of all different backgrounds, ages, and athletic capacities tap into a dazzling, indomitable willpower and put it to fearsome use.
It’s a glorious thing to observe. It’s inspiring. In its own way, I think it’s sacred.
So here we are.
It’s gut-check time.
Anybody can do it when it’s easy.
Now comes our chance to show that we are, indeed, different.
Here is our opportunity to demonstrate what love can do, what compassion can do, what generosity can do, what grace can do, what we can do when things get tough.
Praise the Lord who goes with us as we enter the fight.
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