Today’s passage brings us to the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. The focus today is on reconciliation, instead of retribution. Jesus is trying to teach us what it means to be truly holy.
Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus announce that he had not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. Last week, we heard him describe how living in the spirit of the Law requires more of us than simply following the letter of the Law. Jesus talked of obeying the laws by practicing a more rigorous observance of God’s intent behind each of the rules.
For example: “You shall not kill.” Of course, God doesn’t want us to kill each other. Jesus is saying God doesn’t even want us to be angry with each other!
For example: “You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain.” God doesn’t want us to make idle promises using his Holy Name to give them greater importance than they deserve. Let your word stand on its own: say Yes, or No, and mean it.
The problem with this section of the Sermon on the Mount is that it is easily dismissed as that it could only apply to Jesus’ time and not ours: That Jesus’ world was simpler than ours; that Jesus’ situation did not have the complexities of our own global realities.
But, remember that Jesus lived and did his ministry in Palestine, a Roman province that was in the midst of an oppressive and brutal occupation. The Gospels were written in a post-temple, post-Jerusalem, post-destruction reality. And we realize that at the heart of Jesus’ message in Matthew is a message essential for what it means to be church today. Love your enemy? Really, Jesus? Do you mean that or is that some sort of euphemistic exclamation meant to remind us to be nice to people?
No, love your enemies means just that, and it is an important message going into Lent, when those you hoped would walk alongside you end up abandoning you. Our enemies are not always those we deem our opposites, our detractors, our challengers or resisters. Our enemies are all too often those whom we do indeed love.
Imagine what it was like to be Jewish in occupied Palestine! If you’ve been watching ‘The Chosen’, you probably have a better image. Imagine the humiliation that boiled up. Imagine the anger that escalated as one was burdened down physically by an emperor who was encumbering the whole country financially, socially, and religiously.
How does one resist? Jesus says don’t!
Don’t respond to the oppressor with the same tactics the oppressor uses against you. Don’t resist them with the kinds of actions they use against you. Jesus says we are called not to lay ourselves down and take whatever is coming to us, but we are called to rise above the violence and oppression and fight violence with peace, counter evil with love. Do not resist the way others resist, with hits and slaps and shots fired back. Resist with courageous strength in the face of power. Resist even with love.
Jesus’ preaching is not an advocacy for non-resistance all together. It’s an advocacy for the right kind of resistance, the kind of resistance that is life giving, even if it is not lifesaving. This kind of resistance has been powerful and effective around the world even as it has put its practitioners in danger. This kind of resistance is the kind of Martin Luther King Jr and the Civil Rights Movement. It is the kind of resistance St. John Paul II used in Eastern Europe in the 1980’s. It is the kind of resistance that helped topple apartheid in South Africa.
For people of faith today it can be peaceful protest against abortion and euthanasia. Opposing eased abortion and euthanasia laws is one of the articulated goals of the CWL and the K of C. In our community it’s the example of the people who stand on the north side of Dundas near the Hospital on Saturdays with signs protesting abortion, peacefully.
And albeit on a totally different scale, it is the resistance we can use, that we are called to use in conflicts each and every day. It would be easy to simply read these words from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and tuck them away, promising to pull them out someday when they apply, when we find ourselves oppressed by an evil regime. It would be easy to discount them as antiquated and unrealistic, inapplicable to our daily living in a relatively peaceful community.
It must be clarified though that choosing to love and forgive does not endorse or justify sin. For example, enabling a drug or alcohol addict, turning a blind eye to criminal activity, or remaining in a physically abusive or adulterous relationship is not wise. In those instances, separation is a necessary means to allow intervention, counseling, healing and treatment – not taking personal vengeance to repay the abuser for sins committed.
Finally, it has been noted that the life of Jesus is the ultimate commentary on the Sermon on the Mount. In that vein, it is interesting to note that Jesus did not allow Himself to be killed before His time had come. Turning the other cheek when slapped is not necessarily passive acceptance of lethal action. Jesus is not forbidding protection of oneself. He is forbidding a spirit of retaliation, evil for evil.
This is not an easy teaching in the slightest, especially for the innocent caught in a vicious cycle of abuse and personal danger, but the call to resist retaliation is a powerful instrument of grace that God allows us to grant one another when we choose love over hate.
-Deacon Terry Murphy