“Waging
Love”
Matthew
5:38-48
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
February
20, 2011
Our reading from Matthew today is
another in a series of hard gospel texts we have had to face recently in our
quest to live faithfully into our calling as disciples and followers of Christ.
Belonging to a church is much more than a social nicety.
It is a grafting into the body of Christ and thus a summons to be, in
Eugene Peterson’s illuminating words, “salt-seasoning
that brings out the God-flavors of this earth” and “light,
bringing out the God-colors in the world.”
In today’s portion of Jesus’ Sermon
on the Mount, we are being taught that to live faithfully in the world as a
Christian we are to refrain from violent retaliation, overcome evil with good,
love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us and, if all of that is not
enough, we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.*
It has occurred to me as I read and
pray my way again through the Sermon on the Mount that it is all about waging
love.
Waging love.
There it is, the gospel in two words.
Waging love.
There is it, our baptismal commission
in two words.
Waging love.
There it is, the criterion by which all
our words and deeds are judged.
In our passage today, Jesus is teaching
us how to wage love with those who would try to get the best of us or humiliate
us or take advantage us. Now this
next part is important because in our pew Bible translation, there is a
significant omission. In fact, it
might be the biggest translation error in the New Revised Standard Version.
When our pew Bible translation has Jesus saying, “Do
not resist an evildoer,” there is a little more there than meets the eye.
The Greek word – antistenai – means,
literally, to stand against. Anti
– against, stenai – to stand. But,
in the Hebrew Bible, when the word antistenai
is used (and, yes, the Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew but
there is a Greek version of it called “the Septuagint), when the word antistenai
appears, it almost always is used as a technical term for warfare.
To “stand against” in the Old Testament points to the marching of two
armies up against each other until they actually collide with each other, and
then the battle rages.
So, when Jesus says not to resist an
evildoer, out of his Hebrew roots what he means is that we are not to “stand
against” or resist another with violence.
He is not telling us to be doormats.
He is not telling us to be passive. He
is insisting that we not resist evil on its own terms, that we not try to
out-evil evil. Do not let the one
who aggrieves you drag you down to his or her level.
Resist, but do not resist with violence.
Rather, resist with a higher righteousness.
Jesus then gives a few examples.**
Now we live in a different day and culture than Jesus, so these examples
may seem a little strange or antiquated to us.
But they are translatable into our lives for many of us suffer
indignities along the way at the hands of others or maybe even, God forbid,
perpetrate some on others.
So, Jesus says, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”
If I were to strike you in the face with my right fist (which, by the
way, I would not do, but go along with it for the sake of the story, okay?), on
what cheek would my blow land? Your
left cheek. But Jesus was talking
about me hitting you on your right cheek. I
could hit you on your right cheek if I used a left hook, but in Semitic society
the left hand was used only for unclean tasks.
Jews did not even gesture or wave with the left hand.
So the only way I could hit you on the right cheek is with the back of my
hand.
But a slap with the back of a hand is
not a blow intending to injure you. It
is a symbolic blow. It is a jolt
intended to “put you in your place” or to humiliate you or to show you who
is boss. In the culture of which
Jesus was a part, it is something a master might do to a slave or a husband to a
wife or a parent to a child or a Roman to a Jew.
So, in pointing to resistance without violence, Jesus says that when I
try to put you down by hitting you on your right cheek, turn your other cheek to
me. In turning in that direction –
think about this –I no longer can backhand you because your nose is in the
way. Plus, you cannot backhand
someone twice. Well, you can, but it
is like telling a joke a second time. If
it doesn’t work its effect the first time, the joke has failed.
By turning your cheek, you are saying to me, “I am not going to be
humiliated by you any more. I am a
human being. I am a child of God.
You cannot take away my dignity. I
only can give it away and I choose not to do so.”
So you have stood against your tormentor without stooping to his level.
No violence. You have met me
not with a response in kind but with a higher righteousness.
There are similar turns in the other
two examples that Jesus cites. “If
anyone takes you to court and sues you for your outer garment, give your
undergarment, too.” The
situation he describes is collateral for a loan.
If a person was trying to get a loan, typically he would use animals or a
piece of land as collateral but a poor person was permitted to use his outer
garment. It was the long robe they
slept in at night and used as an outer garment for warmth and protection by day.
The creditor had to return the outer garment every night but could come
to get it every morning no matter the weather and thus harass the debtor until
the loan was repaid.
There were a lot of debtors in Jesus’
audience or he would not have used the example.
He is talking to people who know they are going to be dragged into court
and they know the law favors the wealthy. So,
Jesus in effect says to them, “You know you are not likely to win the case.
So, when your creditor, harassing you, sues you for your outer garment,
give him your undergarment, your cloak, as well.
There was no underwear in those days as we have in ours which meant that
taking off the cloak would have rendered the person naked.
In that culture, the shame of nakedness did not fall on the one who was
naked but on the one seeing the nakedness. I
can see in my mind’s eye the creditor looking on with horror as the debtor was
taking off his cloak, shouting, “No! No!
No! No!
No! Don’t do that.
Keep your cloak on!” So the
tables are turned non-violently. The
creditor is thrown off-balance by the debtor whom the creditor had been
pestering. When word spread of what
had happened, it could pretty well be assured that other creditors would think
twice before trying to put their oppressing foot on a debtor’s neck.
“If
one of the occupation troops, one of the Roman soldiers, forces you to carry his
pack one mile, carry it two.” The
military packs the soldiers carried in those days weighed about seventy pounds
and military law permitted soldiers to conscript civilians to carry their packs
for them for a mile. There were mile
markers on every Roman road and so, at the end of the mile, the civilian was
entitled to drop the pack. In fact,
it was an infraction against the military code for a civilian to carry a pack
more than a mile. The soldier
himself would get in trouble if that happened.
So, Jesus said, “Okay, if a soldier is going to presume on you to carry
his pack, if he is going to pull his rank on you, if he is going to take
advantage of you in that way, if he is going to lord it over you, when you come
to the mile marker, just keep going. Do
not put down the pack.” Can you
imagine the soldier at the mile marker, knowing he could get court-martialed if
the brass found that you had carried his pack more than the allowable mile, can
you imagine the soldier beseeching, cajoling, begging, squealing, pleading with
you to “please put down the pack, please”?
No violence but, oh, how the worm had turned!
These are examples of waging love, for
not only did the ones who resisted non-violently show love for themselves,
retaining their dignity, but it also allowed the ones who were guilty of the
original maltreatment to come face to face with themselves and begin to effect
changes in their lives, behaviors, and relationships.
Perhaps we need to examine our lives from that perspective, too.
We cannot get to where we want to be in
the world or in our lives or, more accurately, to where God wants us to be, by
employing means inconsistent with the desired ends.
So we are called to be creative – to wage love – in responding to the
hurts and slings and slights that we suffer in our lives.
And, on a broader scale, think in our lifetimes how many freedom
movements of peoples and nations have occurred non-violently.
Consider how the leaders of the civil rights movement, for instance, met
violence with non-violence and thus ushered in a bright new day in our society.
Over eighty years ago, a man by the
name of E. Stanley Jones, an esteemed Christian missionary to
Allowing
a man to smite you on one cheek, and letting him have the coat, and submitting
to him when he compels you to go one mile does little or no good.
The fact is that it does harm to the man who does it and to the man who
submits to it. It is the other
cheek, the cloak also, and the second mile that do the trick.
It is this “plus” that turns the scale.
The one cheek, the coat, and the one mile – this is passive resistance;
but turning the other cheek, giving the cloak also, and going the second mile
– this is an active resistance on the plane of unquenchable good will.
Passive resistance may reveal nothing but weakness; this active
resistance of love reveals nothing but strength.
When
the battle closed in between Jesus and the Jewish and Roman authorities, Jesus
was not passive. He was entirely
active and assumed moral command in every situation.
When they came to arrest him in the garden, and Peter with his sword
struck off the ear of the servant of the high priest, using the same weapons as
his enemies, Jesus rebuked Peter and pronounced the doom of those who came to
arrest him with swords by saying, “They that take the sword shall perish with
the sword.” They came to arrest
him and get sentence against him, and the first thing they confronted was the
fact that they heard the sentence of doom passed upon themselves.
He then assumes further moral command by stooping down, picking up the
severed ear of his enemy, and restoring it.
In the moment of passing under their power he arises in sublimity,
assumes moral command and stands, not as a helpless prisoner, but as a giver of
bounty.
Then
he is before Pilate, crowned with thorns, a stick in his hand, and a mock robe
of royalty about his shoulders – an object of abject pity.
But is he? There shines
through this abjectness a regal dignity. Pilate
knew that the Prisoner was judging the judge, and “he was more afraid.”
Herod had seen men gain the ascendency in his court by words, but he saw
something utterly new when Jesus gained the moral command of the situation in
the court by silence – a silence that hurt.
When Jesus hung on the cross, he was in moral command.
Instead of asking for mercy at the hands of the mob, he commends them to
mercy at the hands of God. They put
royal soldiers on guard at the tomb, and a royal seal on the tomb, but what can
royal soldiers and royal seals do before a regal spirit?
The final result of the issue between the two was this: “The soldiers
were as dead men,” but Jesus could say, “I am the resurrection and the
life.” Is this power?
It is the only power!
“Why
didn’t Jesus strike back when he was struck on the cheek at the judgment hall?
Didn’t he have a just right to do so?” a Hindu asked me at question
time.
“Yes,”
I replied, “I suppose he did have a just right to strike back; but if he had
done so, I would not be talking about him tonight.
He would be too much like me. But
he turned the other cheek, and where did the blow fall – on the other cheek?
No, no – on your heart and mine.”
That
is power – supreme power, the only real power.
Had he struck one blow in return, it would have been the death blow to
his own gospel. For Christ conquers
not by the quantity of his muscle, but by the quality of his spirit.
Had he struck back, the blow with which he struck others would have
struck him and at the same moment would have smitten to the earth every hope
that we had placed in him. But,
thank God, he refused their weapons and used his own.
And we are at his feet.”
So, church, we who live and move and
have our being in the name of Christ, we are at his feet as he preaches his
Sermon once again in our day and are we learning from him.
We are learning that we are called to wage love in the world not by the
quantity of our muscle but by the quality of our God-inspired and God-graced
spirit.
Amen.
*At the time of the benediction, I
suggested that the meaning of the word “perfect” is not the one we usually
give to it. To my reading, though
God may rejoice in the perfection of love, God has no love of perfection.
After all, he called Moses a murderer to lead God’s people.
Jesus descended from the House of David, an adulterer, conspirator, and
murderer. Paul, who previously had
persecuted the church, was used by God for the church in big ways.
The Greek word that is translated “perfect” in the NRSV actually
suggests something closer to maturity and fullness.
So: “Grow up.
You’re kingdom people. Live
like it. Live graciously and
generously toward others – waging love – the way God lives toward you.”
**I am indebted to Professor Walter Wink for some of the exegetical insights into the three examples given by Jesus in this text.
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