Matthew 5:38-48 (The Message)
“Here’s another old saying that deserves a second look: ‘Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.’ Is that going to get us anywhere? Here’s what I propose: ‘Don’t hit back at all.’ If someone strikes you, stand there and take it. If someone drags you into court and sues for the shirt off your back, gift-wrap your best coat and make a present of it. And if someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
“In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
A few weeks ago, by our lectionary timing, Jesus, having just newly started his public ministry in this world, climbed up on a rise and began teaching the crowd of curious folk who had been following him to hear him talk. What the people heard that day we call the “Sermon on the Mount,” and it contains the core and heart of Jesus’ teaching. If you never read anything else in scripture, read chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew’s gospel. If you want to know what Jesus is all about – read these three chapters – really read them – think about what they truly are saying, not just what you’ve heard all your life – really read them. Read them in a couple of different translations. You will hear Jesus speaking.
Any halfway competent minister could preach for months on just these three chapters – they contain some of the richest teachings in the four gospels. We’ve already covered the Beatitudes and the Salt and Light for the World teachings. If we stayed in these three chapters there’s the Lord’s Prayer, the Consider the Lilies of the Field, the Removing the Plank in our own Eye, the Ask, Seek, Knock verses, among others – there is so much that we probably won’t get to this year, because Lent begins in a couple of weeks and we’ll most likely shift directions. But for this week, at least, we are still in Matthew 5, still on that hill listening to Jesus.
This is one of the teachings that requires very careful reading. It is so tempting to give a shallow, cursory reading and move on with our lives, because -- don’t mistake me here -- these teachings are hard – and we mostly don’t like hard. We’d rather just skim the surface.
“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” Check. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” Check. But Jesus is not telling us to just add a couple of new actions to our daily checklist. Here, as in all of these three chapters, Jesus is calling us to a whole new way of seeing the world and our role in that world.
The people of Jesus’ day were no different than we are today. There were the rich and powerful who never seemed to have enough riches or enough power and spent their lives fighting to get more – the same then as now. And there were the middle-class folks, who were doing OK, thank you, and weren’t interested in rocking the boat in any way. And then there were the poor who were so busy just scrabbling to stay alive that they didn’t have time or energy for the nuances of things like ‘justice’ and ‘mercy.’ ..... Just like today. Turn on any TV news, pick up any newspaper, you hear the same story, day after day, year after year.
Society back then had settled into a bureaucracy – both political and religious. The rich accepted it (and fostered it) because they benefitted from it. The middle-class hardly noticed it as long as it left them alone. And the poor, who suffered from it, were too tired and powerless to do anything about it.....And Jesus walks into this existing world (both back then and today) and says, “Hey, people – WAKE UP! Look around you. Have you forgotten the teachings of Moses and the prophets? This is NOT how our Father in heaven wants us to live. Don’t just go through the motions. Stop putting human values in the place of God’s wishes!”
You can imagine the crowd – their heads drawing back in shock and their eyes opening wide. The leaders are being called to account for their shoddy leadership. The middle-class are being reminded that it truly isn’t all just about their own comfort and convenience. And the poor are being offered the hope that someone, somewhere actually cares about them.
Today’s particular part of the Sermon on the Mount is about human retribution and what we like to label “justice.” We use that word, “justice,” and God uses the same word – but most of the time we aren’t talking about the same thing at all. This reading make that pretty clear. Jesus isn’t interested in “paying someone back,” as we are. "What good is that in building God’s kingdom?" he asks. "Liking those who don’t give us any grief is easy. Loving the people who love us is easy." But God loves us all, whether we deserve it or not – and then expects the same of us. “Stop acting like children in the schoolyard,” Jesus tells us. “Start acting like the children of God – people who have within themselves some of God’s own DNA. Stop hating. Stop judging. Stop hurting each other. Remember whose you are and act like it.”
And then there is that difficult, impossible last line, especially as it is given in traditional translations: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Hoo-boy. Be perfect like God ... yeah, that’s easy. Well, don’t panic because this is another case of God and us meaning two different things. While we think perfect means “following all the rules,” God means something altogether different. As Fred Craddock explains it: ‘Perfect' can be translated as 'complete' or 'mature.' It is not referring to moral flawlessness but to love that is not partial or immature. In other words, Grow up – stop acting like spoiled, petulant children. Start loving in the way God loves, in the way that Jesus demonstrates in his life – with a love that looks outward at the well-being of the other, not inward at our own satisfaction.
Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I talked about Jesus calling us to repentance, to metanoia – that turning around and facing a totally different direction? This is another call to metanoia. A call for us to turn away from our common, comfortable, human view of justice and to start looking at the world through God’s meaning of the word. This is a call to live out our God-created identity – living generously (that word keeps coming up all through these chapters) – living generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward us.
Oh, Amen.
Any halfway competent minister could preach for months on just these three chapters – they contain some of the richest teachings in the four gospels. We’ve already covered the Beatitudes and the Salt and Light for the World teachings. If we stayed in these three chapters there’s the Lord’s Prayer, the Consider the Lilies of the Field, the Removing the Plank in our own Eye, the Ask, Seek, Knock verses, among others – there is so much that we probably won’t get to this year, because Lent begins in a couple of weeks and we’ll most likely shift directions. But for this week, at least, we are still in Matthew 5, still on that hill listening to Jesus.
This is one of the teachings that requires very careful reading. It is so tempting to give a shallow, cursory reading and move on with our lives, because -- don’t mistake me here -- these teachings are hard – and we mostly don’t like hard. We’d rather just skim the surface.
“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also,” Check. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” Check. But Jesus is not telling us to just add a couple of new actions to our daily checklist. Here, as in all of these three chapters, Jesus is calling us to a whole new way of seeing the world and our role in that world.
The people of Jesus’ day were no different than we are today. There were the rich and powerful who never seemed to have enough riches or enough power and spent their lives fighting to get more – the same then as now. And there were the middle-class folks, who were doing OK, thank you, and weren’t interested in rocking the boat in any way. And then there were the poor who were so busy just scrabbling to stay alive that they didn’t have time or energy for the nuances of things like ‘justice’ and ‘mercy.’ ..... Just like today. Turn on any TV news, pick up any newspaper, you hear the same story, day after day, year after year.
Society back then had settled into a bureaucracy – both political and religious. The rich accepted it (and fostered it) because they benefitted from it. The middle-class hardly noticed it as long as it left them alone. And the poor, who suffered from it, were too tired and powerless to do anything about it.....And Jesus walks into this existing world (both back then and today) and says, “Hey, people – WAKE UP! Look around you. Have you forgotten the teachings of Moses and the prophets? This is NOT how our Father in heaven wants us to live. Don’t just go through the motions. Stop putting human values in the place of God’s wishes!”
You can imagine the crowd – their heads drawing back in shock and their eyes opening wide. The leaders are being called to account for their shoddy leadership. The middle-class are being reminded that it truly isn’t all just about their own comfort and convenience. And the poor are being offered the hope that someone, somewhere actually cares about them.
Today’s particular part of the Sermon on the Mount is about human retribution and what we like to label “justice.” We use that word, “justice,” and God uses the same word – but most of the time we aren’t talking about the same thing at all. This reading make that pretty clear. Jesus isn’t interested in “paying someone back,” as we are. "What good is that in building God’s kingdom?" he asks. "Liking those who don’t give us any grief is easy. Loving the people who love us is easy." But God loves us all, whether we deserve it or not – and then expects the same of us. “Stop acting like children in the schoolyard,” Jesus tells us. “Start acting like the children of God – people who have within themselves some of God’s own DNA. Stop hating. Stop judging. Stop hurting each other. Remember whose you are and act like it.”
And then there is that difficult, impossible last line, especially as it is given in traditional translations: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Hoo-boy. Be perfect like God ... yeah, that’s easy. Well, don’t panic because this is another case of God and us meaning two different things. While we think perfect means “following all the rules,” God means something altogether different. As Fred Craddock explains it: ‘Perfect' can be translated as 'complete' or 'mature.' It is not referring to moral flawlessness but to love that is not partial or immature. In other words, Grow up – stop acting like spoiled, petulant children. Start loving in the way God loves, in the way that Jesus demonstrates in his life – with a love that looks outward at the well-being of the other, not inward at our own satisfaction.
Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I talked about Jesus calling us to repentance, to metanoia – that turning around and facing a totally different direction? This is another call to metanoia. A call for us to turn away from our common, comfortable, human view of justice and to start looking at the world through God’s meaning of the word. This is a call to live out our God-created identity – living generously (that word keeps coming up all through these chapters) – living generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward us.
Oh, Amen.
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