Discovering
Spiritual Awareness (series
pt 4)
“Jesus Says ‘Love’
Who?”
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United Church, Aurora, CO 7/19/2015
Based on Matthew
5:43-48
When I was entering into my sophomore year in high school, my parents relocated to what seemed like the edge of the world, Western Kansas. As the new kid in school, it is never easy making friends, especially when you are as introverted and shy as I was in those years. As I went about trying to make friends, it was very apparent that I had attracted the attention of one of the schools bullies. I had never really ever encounter being the focus of a school bully before and was unequipped to deal with this type of encounter. My attempts to avoid him, seemed less than successful as a final show down occurred before class with a demand to meet him after school for a fight. If I declined, he would have proved me to be a coward and thus establishing my lowliness in the “pecking order” of classmates. If I accepted his challenge, I would be going against my personal belief that all situations could be negotiated to a satisfactory end by both disagreeing parties. I had adopted this standard due to a poor choice to become involved in a fight in Fifth grade that landed me in bed for over two months with a blood clot at the base of my brain. Fortunately the teacher of that class had come into the room over hearing the challenge. She had a zero tolerance for “bullying” and with no uncertain terms put the bully in his place and ending future focus on me. But life continually shows us that not all bullies and enemies are so easily dealt with.
In this morning’s scripture, Jesus brings another understanding of what it means to be living in the “Image” that we are made. Last week we looked at the importance of our “self-image” as we are commanded to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” So what do you do when confronted with the school bully? The advise that my older cousin gave me was stand up to the bully, which meant “fight the dude” otherwise he would be bothering me throughout high school. But practical experience had showed me that fighting never ends well. What do you do with bullies like Hitler? Do you just step down and allow them to destroy world peace? Or how about the situation with Iran? How do we handle their threats against Israel as they want to continue their development of nuclear energy?
President
Teddy Roosevelt use to say, “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” Is that the advice that Jesus is telling us
in this morning’s text? To be brutally
honest most of us do not believe in what Jesus is saying in this passage. We most generally brush this teaching off by
rationalizing it as a “nice goal” or “objective” to work toward, but see it as
not practical advice. Think back to how
we as a country reacted to the attack by terrorists on our shores on September
11, 2001; the majority of Evangelical Christians were crying to retaliate which
has lead us into 14 years of war with Iraq and Afghanistan. We see
the results of “an eye for and eye”
between the Israeli and Palestinian governments. We see Russia, escalating its nuclear
armament once again. The National
Defense budget makes up the largest percentage of our national budget. Sensible gun laws are often being challenged
as gun sales continue to be on the rise.
The awareness of “enemies” is not just
worldwide but also on the rise within our neighborhoods. Surely it is impractical to follow what Jesus
is saying in Matthew. What would Jesus
know about violence; after all he was a bleeding liberal, preaching “love” not
“war”, totally out of touch with the reality of life. “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to
you, ‘Do not resist an evildoer.”
What’s wrong with this man, what does he mean don’t retaliate, or not
seek the death penalty for retribution?
Yet Jesus lived what he said.
When he was arrested, he insisted on nonviolence when Peter picked up
his sword. Before the Pharisees he did
not return evil accusation with hate. He
allowed himself to be flogged by Pilate and then went without resistance caring
his own cross to Golgotha. Why? Jesus could have immobilized a physical
rebellion but he chose to live by what he taught. Even on the cross, he prayed for those who
had persecuted him saying, “Father
forgive them for they know not what they do.”
There
are five verses before this morning’s text where Jesus talked about various
acts of aggression toward an individual and how not to resist, but even give
more. The general wisdom of Jesus’ day
was, when someone did you wrong, you sought retribution with the same act
toward the person who wronged you, this is where we understand the “eye for an
eye.” But Jesus realized that this type
of behavior never really cures the ailment.
This
past week, a 94 year old former Nazi SS member, who was an accountant at Auschwitz, was convicted as an “accessory”
to the criminal acts of murder of over 300,000 Jews. He was sentenced to 4years for his
participation at the camp. This now
opens up future trials for others who would be classified as “accessories” to
the deaths. I have a lot of mixed emotions
over this trial, struggling with questions of justice and mercy. I recall what Auschwitz survivor Eva Moses
Kor shared in her presentation at this year’s Governors 34th Annual
Holocaust Remembrance service. Eva said
that she was only a prisoner at Auschwitz for two years, but spent the next 45
years being a victim and prisoner of the Nazi’s because of the hate and fear
that she held onto. Then one day she
realized that she no longer wished to live as a victim and freed herself of her
enemies by releasing that anger, fear, and hate. What she realized by holding onto all those
negatives, she was playing into the hands of those who were her enemies.
I
don’t think Jesus is advocating to subjugate to our enemies and just roll over
and take it, so to speak, when he says, turn the other cheek, or not to resist
ones enemies, or by going the extra mile, or giving up your cloak when you are
being sued for your shirt. What Jesus is
speaking to is a path of change by not playing into the acts of violation but
rather resistance by not resisting the opponent, but rather by resisting
opposition itself. Within Jesus’ words
of, “Love
your enemies and pray for them”, Jesus is giving us a clue as to how to
resist our enemies, without physical resistance which only continues future violence
toward ourselves and our adversaries.
Professor of
Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School, Rev Dr Matthew Boulton sums it up this
way: In the face of the most extreme
opponents (enemies) and acts of opposition (persecution), Jesus advises
defiance – but not defiance directed against the enemies themselves, since this
simply perpetuates and intensifies the adversarial relationship, but rather a
deeper defiance directed against the vicious, endless cycle of enemy making. Pg 385, Feasting on the Word, Yr A, Vol 1
I think of it as
how to react to a Charlie-horse or leg cramps.
I have had to learn to not resist the cramping of the muscle, as that
only intensifies the restricting by the muscle, but rather to move into the
pain of the constricting muscle, which then allows the muscle to start relaxing
and the constricting leaves. It is very
painful and it goes against our nature, but it works.
Jesus say the same thing
about how to react to the unjust actions of our enemies, by not resisting them,
but rather defuse the acts in ways that work toward resisting cycles that
create enemy making. The “Prayer Walks”
that are occurring each Friday this month in the Park Hill neighborhood is one
way a number of Christians are working toward ending violence in that
neighborhood. By walking the streets and
stopping to pray at sites where people have been gunned downed and along the
way passing out fliers that speak about how to positively interact with a
person who is a member of a violent gang, they are resisting the cycle that
create enemy making.
When we recognize
that within each of us is the “Image of God”, we will find it more difficult to
cultivate the soil that creates enemy making.
Our spiritual journey is the work of cultivating this awareness. To love our enemies and to pray for them can
only happen when we see the “Image” in others, so that we might be able to resist
the cycles of enemy building and become neighbor builders. Amen
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