Matthew 5:38-48
Here’s where this season began—with a birth, a star, and a
baptism. It began with Jesus calling disciples to follow, one by one. And then
the followers listening to Jesus grew and became crowds. Now, for a whole month
of weeks, we’ve been sitting with Jesus on a mountain, listening, as Jesus
teaches us about identity. Identity that begins this way—you are blessed, you
who least think you are. Yes, that’s right. You who are poor. You who mourn.
You who are wrongfully accused. Yes, that’s right. You.
Next Jesus says, “You are salt. You can’t be anything else.
You are light. Shine brightly. Don’t fear, even when everything around you
looks fearful… love boldly.”
And then, Jesus’ teaching goes even deeper. Don’t just obey
the law. “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, honor God’s name.” Go further,
get deeper… there is not one of us who hasn’t somehow adapted to the empire
culture we live in, and it’s time to be transformed to the core… realizing that
not one person is beyond the reaches of God’s love and grace.
That’s where we’ve been… and now, this week, we hear the “closer”
to this deep and life-changing message about the way of Jesus. If you would be perfect (teleos: complete, whole, finished), if you want to begin to glimpse
God’s love that has no end, here’s the route:
Turn the other cheek. Give those who demand something from
you more than they ask for. Go two miles. Don’t just be a benefactor to one or
two people, give to everyone in need. Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you.
My first instinct is to take these words of Jesus too literally,
misunderstanding them. For a long time in churches, these words were preached
in a way that encouraged passivity. I feel horrified when I imagine too many
abused women going home with these words in their heads to face more abuse. For
too long, these words were preached to vulnerable people pushed to give in ways
that don’t seem right long-term… and we don’t want to preach these words
anymore in ways that make us incapable of practicing powerful love because we’re
so demoralized.
What we forgot is that Jesus stood with the vulnerable, over
and over again… and so we have to find a different way to understand these
words. Yes, they are asking for a total change in the way we do things… but
how?
Walter Wink, who has written extensively about non-violent
resistance, has something to say in response to this. He looks carefully at the
culture that surrounded these examples and dives in, unpacking each scene. Each
one of these commands of Jesus is actually not a refusal to set boundaries but
the opposite. In quick summary, each of these actions would have drawn
attention to the fact that what the aggressor was doing was unjust. Turning a
cheek, giving more than was customary, going beyond a mile… all of these would
have been a powerful act in the honor-shame culture of Jesus’ day (and in some
cases, cultures like that today). It’s just the opposite of giving in to
oppression; it’s a powerful stance of resistance.
It reminds me of what I’ve heard about the women’s movement
in Liberia, a time when the women came together in their desperation to find an
end to violence and used sustained non-violent action to call the men running
the government to account, to end the second civil war, and bring about the
election of the first woman president in Liberia. Day after day, Liberian women
actively loved their enemies enough to believe that they could change. Leymah
Gbowee, describes it this way, “Charles Taylor had said no one would embarrass
him, so we would do just that–in an action so dramatic and public it would make
the demands of Liberia’s women impossible to ignore.” Day after day, they sat
out along the road in the blazing sun or the pouring rain… until finally, their
demands were heard and met.
In 1961, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. met with the
national gathering of Luther League (the National Youth Gathering of its day),
and this is what he told those Lutheran youth, “Now is the time to practice
“agape” (God-like love in the face of rejection) and to become “proudly
maladjusted” toward a society that permits injustice.
Maybe there is no time when this invitation is not needed—to
practice God-like love in the face of rejection and to become more aware of and
uncomfortable with injustice. And as we become aware, then the next challenge
is to talk with others about it.
Late in his short life, King wrote these challenging words,
“And some of us who have already begun to break the silence… have found that
the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must
speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we
must speak.”
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to see the show Nina Simone: Four Women. It’s the story
how in 1963, Nina Simone went from being an artist to being an artist-activist.
After the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
and the murder of Medgar Evers, she began to write music with lyrics. Her
people were dying, fighting in the streets for their rights, and her old music
didn’t reflect that struggle. In the play, we listen deeply to her struggle to
put her anger, suffering, and need for change now into words, in dialog with three other Black women.
It was powerful to listen deeply to four Black women for two
hours. One brilliant way the playwright drew attention to this was through a 5th
character, a male pianist who accompanied much of the singing. He never spoke a
word. Several times, the characters asked, “Does he speak?” And each time, the
answer was “no.” And it only occurred to me afterward how powerful this was… to
listen, uninterrupted, to some of the least listened to voices, those who often
bear the most discomfort in the room, all kinds of rooms (both in 1963 and
now).
As people who listen and speak and teach, as people called
to follow in the way of Jesus, it seems especially important to say the words,
“You’re already in.” There’s no one past the reaches of God’s love and grace. There’s
no one who is not needed in this work. If we believe we’re held in God, can we
speak honestly about our uncertainties about how to live faithfully in this
time? And then, can we acknowledge how our choices and actions lead to life and
death? People who are not even in the room get hurt by our action and inaction.
People who are not even in the room are healed and blessed by the
transformation that God is bringing about in this place.
Here is what one of my colleagues noticed this week. “The
radical things about Jesus is not
saying that he’s God, but saying that you
are children of God. Over and over, Jesus is handing this work to you.”
Loving enemies? It’s another practice in a long list of
invitations from Jesus that seems as first glance, impossible… but maybe it is
possible to try, to fail, to try again… to practice.
The beginning of God’s story is a good creation, and the end
of God’s story will be good. We can rely on those visions, that long arc. But
in between, we struggle. Because we’re in the middle of the story, the struggle
part of the story, the work’s not going to be easy—to love not only our diverse
and beautiful neighbors but… enemies? God help us!—but we can try to be bold in
practicing, to find ways to love (and yet still challenge) those whose actions
we deplore.
We’ve been with Jesus for weeks in the Sermon on the Mount,
and next week, we’ll end the season of Epiphany on another high mountain.
There, we’ll glimpse Jesus in glory. In anticipation I’ll share this blessing
from Jan Richardson:
When Glory
That when glory comes, we will open our eyes to see it.
That when glory shows up, we will let ourselves be overcome not by fear but by the love it bears.
That when glory shines, we will bring it back with us all the way, all the way, all the way down.
That when glory comes, we will open our eyes to see it.
That when glory shows up, we will let ourselves be overcome not by fear but by the love it bears.
That when glory shines, we will bring it back with us all the way, all the way, all the way down.
