Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 23 February 2014 by the Rev. Judy Chan. The scripture readings that day were Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23 and Matthew 5:38-48.

Since the beginning of February, our Gospel readings have come from the book of Matthew. They’re taken from the section known as the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. The Sermon on the Mount contains some of the most famous passages in the New Testament like the Beatitudes which Dr John LeMond preached on, and the sayings on salt and light which Rev Phyllis spoke on a couple of weeks ago.

And today, we come to the end of Matthew Chapter 5 with Jesus’ teachings on retaliation and loving our enemies. I wouldn’t say that these are the most difficult verses to interpret in the Sermon on the Mount, but they may be are among the most controversial.

Take for instance,

³⁹But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; ⁴⁰and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; ⁴¹and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 

And then the real kicker – ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

When you hear these verses, what goes through your mind?

For some people, it might be ‘Are you crazy?’

For others, they might be thinking, ‘This must have some other meaning I don’t know about.’

And for yet others, ‘Well, nice in theory, but impossible in reality.’

If any of these are your thoughts, take comfort knowing that many others have struggled to make sense of these verses too. In fact, the Church throughout the ages has wrestled to understand what Jesus is teaching here and how we can live it out. 

Let’s go through these thoughts one at a time as a way of getting into this passage.

1. Are you crazy?

Something about this passage does drive us crazy. What do mean, “Don’t resist an evildoer”? Just let them do evil? If someone hits you in the face, just stand there and let them hit you again and again? And if someone takes you to court, give them everything they want and throw in some more while you’re at it? And if someone forces you to do something against your will, just keep going and double the time?

If this is what it means to be ‘perfect’ like our Heavenly Father, then let’s dispense with perfection! Maybe being ‘above average’ is good enough.

Truly, these teachings make no sense and they seem to go against common sense and human nature. It is one thing to be to victim – a victim of violence, greed, coercion – it’s altogether something else to remain a victim – to allow yourself to be abused and exploited. Of course there may be situations where a victim has no choice… either submit or die…but surely Jesus isn’t promoting passive surrender to anyone who seeks to do us harm. What kind of world would it be if no one protected the vulnerable, if no one fought for justice?

Precisely. Which brings us to thought No. 2

There must be some other meaning we don’t know about.

It’s tempting to believe if we understood the historic background of a Bible passage, everything would fall into place. In this case, it does help to know the context, though it doesn’t completely eliminate the crazy factor. But, let’s explore…

These verses from Matthew 5 use a literary device known as antithesis. Antithesis is putting two opposite statements together to show the contrast. For example, Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said…But I say to you…’

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, ‘Do not resist an evildoer.’ This eye and tooth formula was part of a legal system widely practiced in Jesus’ time. It meant if you caused someone to lose an eye or a tooth, then to compensate for the injury, you would lose an eye or a tooth. It seems harsh to us, but actually the law was meant to protect against excessive punishment, to protect against retribution spiraling out of control.

So if someone lost an eye due to your fault, his family couldn’t demand to chop off your head for compensation. The injury and the compensation had to match in order to be fair. You didn’t literally have to pay back with your eye or tooth, but the idea was to legislate a reasonable settlement to keep peace in the community.

In the face of this ‘reasonable’ approach to justice, Jesus teaches something completely different: non-retaliation. That means if someone treats you wrongly, don’t go seeking human justice. Don’t look for revenge. Don’t return evil for evil. Someone has to stop the cycle of hatred and violence and bloodshed, and that someone needs to be you. OK, you say, I won’t fight fire with fire, but does that mean I should sit back and let the house burn down? Surely God expects more from us than that. And indeed, God does.  

After all, Jesus didn’t say, “Don’t resist evil.” He said, “Don’t resist evildoers” – don’t demand the right to do unto others as they have just done unto you. Instead we are called to ‘love our enemies’ – not to join them, not to enable them, but to act in ways that demonstrate a higher standard of behavior, actually the highest standard of behavior – the old WWJD – What would Jesus do?

If anything, Jesus was a realist. When he talks about turning the other cheek, giving your cloak, going the second mile, he’s using real situations that his followers faced. Remember Jesus was preaching and Matthew was writing to people living in occupied territory. They were under the thumb of the Roman Empire, and they were often victims of violence, greed and coercion. In that context, scholars point out that Jesus is not teaching passive acceptance, but rather active non-violent confrontation.  

Take for example, turning the other cheek. In those times, one of the most humiliating gestures was someone slapping you on the right cheek with the back of their hand. That’s what a superior did to an inferior, what masters did to slaves. Equals fight with their fists. So Jesus says, if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn your face and give your left cheek as well. Your offender can’t slap you on that side because he’d have to use his left hand, and people back then didn’t use their left hand for touching people or food. That hand was used for ‘something else’. So by turning the other cheek, you challenge your adversary to either stop beating you or fight you as an equal.

The same with giving your cloak as well as your coat. When the poor were sued in court for non-payment of debt, they could be forced to give over their outer garment or coat.  

But the law required that you had to give back the coat at nighttime because that was their blanket for sleeping. Jesus takes this to a comic extreme, saying if the greedy sue you for the coat off your back, give them all your clothes – even your underwear – because you standing in court in your birthday suit will shame your accuser even more than you.

And what about that second mile? Under Roman occupation, soldiers could force a non-Roman citizen to carry his heavy equipment for one mile. A soldier’s gear could weigh as much as 30 kilos or 70 pounds. But the law said you couldn’t be forced to carry it more than one mile, which is precisely why Jesus may have said keep going! Don’t take off that pack! You decide how far you will carry it, not your occupier. Go beyond the requirements of this oppressive law, and see if that doesn’t make an impression on your soldier boss.

Now maybe you are feeling a bit better; thinking this is starting to make sense. But beware, because there’s more, even more than not retaliating with violence (though that would be a good start). Even more than active, non-violent confrontation (though that would be a good follow up).

In part 2, Jesus says, “You have heard it said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” In other words, you need to look after the welfare of your oppressors even if they don’t look after yours. You need to desire their salvation as much as you desire your own. You need to love your enemies and pray for your persecutors, because TWJD, that’s what Jesus did. And that’s how you show you are His followers. That’s how you become children of our Father in heaven. (I told you that crazy factor wasn’t going away.)

Well, then it’s probably time for response No. 3: Nice in theory, but impossible in reality.

As one friend put it, ‘I may be a Christian, but I’m not a saint.’

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Even if we think we understand what Jesus is teaching, we find it very hard to put into practice.

How can you love someone who has hurt you badly, or even worse, hurt someone you love? How can you forgive and forget, when forgetting would be a worse crime than the original sin? How does all this possibly lead to repentance and reconciliation?

These questions brought to mind a story I read long ago. I couldn’t remember the exact details so I tried to find it on the internet. And lo and behold, the story came up from the 1980s. Maybe you’re familiar with it.

There was a 17 year old boy named Kevin at a New Year’s Eve party near Washington, DC. His friends noticed how much alcohol he’d been drinking, and urged him not to drive home. But he bragged, “Nothing will ever happen to me.” That night as Kevin drove home, something did happen. He lost control of his car and smashed into another car driven by a young woman named Susan. She was 18 years old. Susan died at the scene. Kevin came out of it with a few scratches.

Kevin was taken to criminal court. He pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and drunk driving. Because of his age and it was first offense, he was given three years’ probation and a year of community service where he’d have to give talks on the dangers of drinking and driving. But he didn’t have to go to prison. Susan’s parents then filed a civil suit asking for 1.5 million USD. There was no way that Kevin’s family could pay that, so Susan’s parents agreed to take a lesser amount, the value of his parents’ insurance policy, but under one condition.

Kevin would be required to send a check every week to Susan’s parents. The check would be made out in the name of their daughter for just $1. And he’d have to send that check every Friday for 18 years, because Susan was 18 at the time of her death and she died on a Friday. In all it would amount to $936. So obviously, the point wasn’t money.

Kevin and his family accepted this arrangement to settle the suit. But as you might expect, writing that check every week got harder and harder. A few years later, the checks stopped coming regularly. Susan’s parents took him to court. Kevin was in tears. He told the judge that he was tortured with guilt every time he wrote her name on that check, week after week, month after month, year after year. He begged to be released from the obligation, but Susan’s parents said no, and the judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail for contempt of court.

The next time he stopped sending the checks, Susan’s family sued him again. This time he brought a box of hundreds of pre-written checks going all the way to 2001, a year longer than required. Her family refused to accept them.

When reporters interviewed Susan’s family, the parents insisted they were not being vindictive. “But,” her father said, “Every time we don’t get a check, there’s only one thing that comes to our mind: He doesn’t remember.” Her mother said they wanted Kevin to get on with his life, but he had to be accountable for what he did if he really wanted to get over the guilt. In other words, we’re doing this for his good as well as our own.

What do you think? I don’t know if the families involved in this story are Christian or not. But it made me consider what would I do if I were in their shoes. What if it were my 18 year old daughter who was killed by a drunk driver? What if it were my 17 year old son drunk behind the wheel of that car? What if it were me standing in that courtroom in front of the judge?

I tell this story instead of others because it doesn’t have the happy ending we all like to read about. Yes, there are incredible stories out there of forgiveness and healing, like those we heard at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa or stories where a victim’s family takes a murderer into their home after he’s released from jail. Those stories do happen, but I would guess for many of us, we’re closer to sinner than saint. We still have a ways to go before we reach perfection.

And maybe that’s the message for today. We have a ways to go before we are ‘perfect,’ but we’re not expected to get there by ourselves. God gave us a community called the Church, a community whose only difference from the world is that we know we are sinners and we look to Christ for forgiveness. That’s our only advantage, but it’s enough. Maybe not enough to change the whole world, but enough to change ourselves, enough to be the kind of people God destined us to be, enough to live and move and have our being as the body of Christ.

Still, we need to be clear what is being promised here. As Stanley Hauerwas says, “The Sermon [on the Mount] does not promise that if we just love our enemies, they will no longer be our enemies. The Sermon does not promise that if we turn our right cheek, we will not be hit. The Sermon does not promise that if we simply act in accordance with its dictates, the world will be free from war. But the Christian does not renounce war because he or she can expect intelligent citizens to rally around. They usually will not. The believer takes that stand because the defenseless death of the Messiah has been revealed for all time as the victory of faith that overcomes the world.”

The defenseless death of the Messiah has been revealed for all time as the victory of faith that overcomes the world. That is the promise: That Jesus’ victory on the Cross gives you and me and the Church a fighting chance, a fighting chance that one day, Lord willing, we will become perfect in the eyes of a holy God.