Leviticus 19: 1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119:33-40
1Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
For the last three weeks, the lectionary, the list of readings I use for sermons, has set us on a journey through The Sermon on the Mount. We started with the Beatitudes which describe the characteristics of Christ’s disciples. These statements described disciples who long to love God and seek justice, just as the prophet Micah beckoned. They describe not how to be disciples but who the disciples are; who the disciples are while Jesus still walks the earth.
The next week we were reminded that we are the salt of the earth. We bring spice to life. When used in accord with the Lord’s desires we bring holiness to the world. We serve as a preservative keeping fresh God’s word in life.
It also says we are the light of the world, shining the light where it is meant to be seen. The darkness never overcomes the light, the light overcomes the dark. The light too must shine, or it is without use. In ancient times, it was dangerous to shine the light of Christ, but they were still called to let light shine.
This is where we are reminded that salt and light can only be salt and light. They have very specific uses; all of them for the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven
Last week the Sermon on the Mount took us through some very heady territory, judgment. We discovered that there are things that will cause us to be judged, some by the church council and others by God’s own self. Yet in all of this judgment, Jesus teaches us that now we are being held to a higher standard. This difference is made clear as Jesus begins a saying with “You have heard it was said…” then turning the saying to something higher beginning with the proclamation “But I tell you…”
So we are still under the Torah, but we live under the Living Torah, the Law of Jesus Christ. This is because Jesus teaches faithfulness to the law, not just simple following. Lemmings follow, but when they do they often run off of the edge of a cliff seemingly without a second thought. Jesus wants more for his people. Jesus wants more from his people. Jesus wants disciples, not lemmings.
This brings us to our reading today, our final reading from the Sermon on the Mount, the notorious “turn the other cheek” passage. This presents us with an issue that is as difficult for us to manage as it was for the hearers to manage then. One of my commentaries noted that if we followed these instructions to the word we would quickly be naked and broke leading to prison and disgrace.[1] While Jesus’ disciples found themselves imprisoned and disgraced by the cross, this imprisonment is not what Jesus had in mind. So we have two competing thoughts.
The first is that Jesus said what he meant and meant what he said. When Jesus said “turn the other cheek” he meant that if we were to be struck by the powerful then we should offer them more. On the other hand, as I said last week, Jesus does not mean for anyone to be abused. So how do we balance this? Where does Jesus point us today? How can we be faithful to not just the words but to the higher standard the words point toward?
There is one more thing we need to consider that I haven’t said over the past three weeks. We hear the Sermon on the Mount from our own ears, from our own lives and life experience. Would you be surprised if I told you that Jesus was not talking to people like us?
Jesus lived in a backwater of the Roman Empire . The power rested in Rome Rome
Conscription was a way of life. You could be drafted into service by a Roman soldier for a thousand paces, a mile, if the soldier wanted. In fact, the word the New International Version translated as “forces” can be translated “conscripts.” There is a definite military overtone to the word in Greek that just isn’t there in English.
The only reason Judaism was allowed to exist in the day was that the faith didn’t cause any problems for the state. If Rome Rome
So here’s the point: The life experience of the first century Christian is not much like ours. From a cultural point of view, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is not speaking to the same crowd I am speaking to today. On the whole, we American Christians are an affluent people, not so the conquered people of Israel some two millennia ago.
Now I know that none of us bathe in champagne. Averages do that to us; it takes extremes and makes them seem like one specific someone somewhere in the middle. Averages take away individuality and as the song goes, “numbers don’t lie, but numbers don’t bleed.”[2] The numbers say one thing, but our individual lives often say something else. Yet from a global perspective, even those of us who are living in American poverty are doing better than most of the world.
Let’s make this clear though, the one thing that we are not is the oppressed minority. We cannot be forced to carry a soldier’s tools for even one step. We have the power to speak and vote, powers that others in this life would die for; and recently a lot of people in Near East Asia and North Africa are fighting and dying for these very rights. There are nations where we would be arrested simply for possessing the Word of God, much less studying it and praising its creator.
Jesus was talking to the oppressed minority, not to the power elite. Pagans were in charge. The faith of Matthew’s community was suspect in the citadels of both the city and the church. Expressing their faith could be dangerous, yet Jesus called them to continue sharing so that their light could be seen.
In a significant way, Jesus was not talking to us. He was talking to a church that was being born, not a faith that is 2,000 years old. It could well be the difference between what you would say to a toddler and to a full grown adult. In the opinion of much of the world, and whether right or wrong it is their opinion, we are more like Rome
Regardless of the opinion of these mythical others, regardless of the differences between us and the ancient church, these words are meant for us, and Jesus means for us to live by the higher standard they put into words. In these expressions, one of the things that Jesus says is that there are standards for individuals and there are standards for the church.
Something that gets lost in the translation is you can tell the difference between “you” and “you all” in the original text. This gets lost in English. Our English versions reflect verses 38 through 48 are all directed at some unspecific you. What English doesn’t tell us is that verses 38-42 are singular; these verses are directed toward individual believers. Verses 43-48 are plural; they are directed toward the entire community. The first paragraph of our reading is directed at each of us, the second is directed at all of us.
What makes this important, what gets lost in the translation, is that there are some commands that are for us individually. How we treat others in relationship is important. How we treat others with power, especially others with the power to make our lives far, far worse is important to each of us. We are to treat others with love, caring, respect and dignity; especially those who do not treat us the same.
As a community, as a nation, as a people, we are called not to return hate with hate. We are not to persecute those who would persecute us. We are not to persecute those who have persecuted us. This is especially true when the tables turn and the persecuted become the persecutors.
The reason we do this, the reason Christians are called to do this is that we are called to a higher standard. The Psalmist prays that the Lord will give us understanding so that we will keep and obey the law with all our heart. We seek our understanding in the law through Jesus Christ, through the foundation laid by Jesus Christ. This foundation is based in an understanding that is deeper than the words of the law itself, it is in Christ’s embodiment of the law.
The basis of that deeper understanding is here, what we do we don’t do for ourselves. What we do we don’t do to build individual temples. We don’t do for us; we do for the glory of God. That’s the deeper understanding; we do what we do for the glory of God. Our understanding of God and God’s law and Christ’s embodiment of the law are all for one end, the glory of God.
In a way, by turning the other cheek we show others that what they can do to us does not hurt us like they would desire. It also teaches us that as we turn from taking excessive punishment as a form of justice, we turn toward grace. We don’t turn from punishment, we aren’t soft on crime, but we turn from the eye for an eye of the Torah to the command of Jesus.
By carrying a soldier’s pack two miles instead of one, we have actually taken power from the one who would conscript us. In choosing to carry the wares an extra mile we have effectually chosen the first mile too. This actually takes power from the oppressor. This is counterintuitive, it goes against logic, but this entire passage moves like that.
There is an old Gary Larson “The Far Side” cartoon that shows this. It’s a scene from the bowels of hell with two overseer devils looking over their dominion. There are several men doing their work in anguish and, out of place, there is one minion whistling a happy tune moving his wheelbarrow through the depths of the underworld with a smile on his face and a glint in his eyes. The caption is one devil saying to the other, “We’re just not getting through to that guy.”
Jesus wants us to be that guy, working joyfully for the glory of God as we are being wrung through the grinder of daily life. By God’s grace and peace, Jesus wants us to be “that guy” who life can’t spit out at the end of the day.
When I took Driver's Education, the teachers were teaching defensive driving. Their take on the whole issue of right of way was dealt with asking “who is supposed to yield the right of way?” That wasn't the way we thought of it when we were fifteen, we always heard about who had the right of way and suddenly we were supposed to turn that thinking 180 degrees and think about yielding the right of way.
I came to think of it this way, I can be as right as I want. I can be the one who should be allowed to go, but if someone fails to yield the right of way when they should, I can be as right as I want but that is of little consolation on the way to the hospital.
You have heard it said “I have a right...” Jesus doesn’t tell us we have a right. Jesus tells us we have a responsibility. Jesus calls us to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect, but not perfection based in flawlessness. Surely that’s tempting to lean toward since God is flawless, but that’s impossible for us and nobody knows that better than Jesus.
Instead, perfection has to do with relationships. It has to do with righteousness between one and another. It has to do with honesty and sincerity. It has to do with authentically genuine relationships that reflect the new Torah lived in Christ the Lord. Perfection deals in complete relationships that move us toward reconciliation instead of retribution, justice instead of vengeance. It has to do with caring even for those who wish us harm so that as Matthew tells us we may be sons and daughters of our heavenly father.
Is this difficult? Sure it is; this isn’t business as usual, not then and not now. This is a new way of seeing the law. This is a new way of dealing with others. How difficult is it? We need Jesus; we can only do this with the help of Jesus. As scripture reminds us, anyone can love their friends; it takes God to show us how to love our enemies.
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