February 20, 2011
"Anger, Retaliation, Enemies, Forgiveness"
W. Gregory Pope, preaching
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Series: The Sermon on the Mount
The Good and Beautiful Life: Jesus’ Vision for a New World
Matthew 5:21-26, 38-48; 6:14-15
Of all the things we wish Jesus had never said, today’s lesson sits at the top of list for most of us. Deep down we know these words to be the saving of the world. And yet still they sound impossible to our ears trained in competition and the survival of the fittest: Do not retaliate. Turn the other cheek. Go the second mile, Give to those who ask of you. Love your enemies. Pray for those who make your life miserable. Paul told us the way of the gospel was foolishness in the face of the wisdom of this world. He also said that for the saving andhealing of the world, it is the power of God.
ANGER
Matthew 5:21-26
The problem begins with our having been done wrong. The wound it brings to our pride. The anger it stirs deep in our gut.
Jesus said that anger is the seed of murder. But he did not say, “Don’t be angry.” Listen closely to his words: You have heard it said, “You shall not murder.” But I say to you, “If you are angry with your brother or sister, you are in danger of the judgment and hell unresolved anger can bring.
How many times have we been told that Christians should not get angry! Glen Stassen tells about a friend of his who was a participant in a group discussion about anger. He said to the group, “I’m a Christian; I never get angry.” The group broke out in laughter, and he got furiously angry at them. He now laughs at himself when he tells the story.
It is important to recognize what is good about anger. There are times when it is wrong not to be angry. Anger is the correct response to injustice, and we are naturally opposed to injustice because we are created in the image of a just God.
Underneath anger is something beautiful - a stand against injustice; our hearts were meant to be angry against anything that opposes the beauty and work of God.
Jesus got angry. The Bible speaks often of the anger of God. But it’s important to realize that the anger of God and Jesus is rooted in love, especially God’s love for the powerless.
Anger is a useful diagnostic tool. It signals to us that something is wrong. Sometimes our anger reveals that we afraid of losing something dear to us. Anger is a signal that change is called for, that transformation is required, either in us or regarding the injustice we see around us. Our anger can motivate us to work for change.
Jesus also warned against the dangers of anger and the harm it can lead to. Jesus is speaking of a continuous anger that if left untreated will show up in an ulcer, a heart attack, bitterness, contempt of another, sometimes physical abuse, and even murder.
Buechner says: “
Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is what you are wolfing down is your self. The skeleton at the feast is you.1
This warning of Jesus regarding anger is no command; it is a diagnosis. It is like a doctor’s diagnosis of a tumor that will lead to death if it is not removed.2
Instead of commanding us not to be angry, Jesus focuses on what we do with our anger - to deal with it in a healing way that removes it. And to deal with it immediately.
Jesus gives an example: Someone is bringing their sacrifice to the altar. Could he be thinking of Cain and Abel? Stassen suggests that perhaps Cain was already angry with Abel, and that could be why God refuses Cain’s offering. Anyway, Cain gets mad. God warned Cain about his anger. God told him he could master it and do the right thing. Cain does not and kills his brother.
Jesus tells us how. If you know there is a problem between you and someone else, go find your brother, your sister, talk things over with them and make peace. This is the way of Christ - the way of deliverance, to participate in God’s grace, in God’s loving way of reconciliation. It moves us from the powerlessness of being stuck in anger to the empowerment of participating in God’s way of grace and new life.3
Authentic congregational worship depends upon a group of people who seek to be reconciled with each other and with their neighbors. Tom Long puts it this way: Jesus urges us, before you open your mouth to sing “Peace Like a River,” do what you humanly can to make peace with those around you.4
RETALIATION
Matthew 5:38-42
How do you make peace?
For starters, don’t try getting even with them.
There was a law of reciprocity in the law of Moses that was understood by everyone. It’s purpose was to prevent people from doing more damage in retaliation - eye for an eye; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered. Seems fair and just, right?
In Moses’ day, this “eye for an eye” law was revolutionary. Vengeance was escalating. People were returning much worse than they received. We do it in our day too. Wounded pride. This law puts a check on how far vengeance should go - eye for an eye - not worse than you received. The punishment should fit the crime. It’s why when you are pulled over for speeding you are not executed. We are protected from cruel and unusual punishment.
This old law sounds just, but that does not mean it is best. Jesus calls us to a higher plane than fairness. He calls us to reconciliation and to a healing of the world’s brokenness.
So Jesus says turn the other cheek. Something many of us have been taught since Sunday School. It made no sense to us then. It makes little sense to us now.
Eugene Peterson tells the story of a boy named Garrison Johns. Eugene was in the third grade. Garrison was a year older. I’ll give you the rest of the story in Peterson’s words:
About the third day in school, Garrison discovered me, took me on as his project for the year. I had been taught in Sunday School not to fight and so had never learned to use my fists. I had been prepared for the wider world of neighborhood and school by memorizing “Bless those who persecute you” and “Turn the other cheek.” I don’t know how Garrison Johns knew that about me - some sixth sense that bullies have, I suppose - but he picked me for his sport. Most afternoons after school he would catch me and beat me up. He also found out that I was a Christian and taunted me with “Jesus-sissy.” I tried finding alternative ways home by making detours through alleys, but he stalked me and always found me out. I arrived home every afternoon, bruised and humiliated. My mother told me that this had always been the way of Christians in the world and that I had better get used it. I was also supposed to pray for him. The Bible verses that I had memorized (“Bless . . .” and “Turn . . .”) began to get tiresome.
I loved going to school, learning so much, finding new friends, adoring my teacher. The classroom was a wonderful place. But soon after the dismissal bell each day I had to face Garrison Johns and get the daily beating that I was trying my best to assimilate as my “blessing.”
March came. I remember that it was March by the weather. The winter snow was melting but there were still patches of it here and there. The days were getting longer - I was no longer walking home in the late afternoon dark. And then one day something unexpected happened. I was with my neighborhood friends on this day, seven or eight of them, when Garrison caught up with us and started in on me, jabbing and taunting, working himself up to the main event. He had an audience and that provided extra incentive; he always did better with an audience.
That’s when it happened. Something snapped within me. Totally uncalculated. Totally out of character. For just a moment the Bible verses disappeared from my consciousness and I grabbed Garrison. To my surprise, and his, I realized that I was stronger than he. I wrestled him to the ground, sat on his chest and pinned his arms to the ground with my knees. I couldn’t believe it - he was helpless under me. At my mercy. It was too good to be true. I hit him in the face with my fists. It felt good and I hit him again - blood spurted from his nose, a lovely crimson on the snow. By this time all the other children were cheering, egging me on. “Black his eyes! Bust his teeth!” A torrent of vengeful invective poured from them, although nothing compared with what I would, later in my life, read in the Psalms. I said to Garrison, “Say ‘Uncle’” He wouldn’t say it. I hit him again. More blood. More cheering. Now the audience was bringing the best out of me. And then my Christian training reasserted itself. I said, “Say, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.’”
And he said it. Garrison Johns was my first Christian convert.5
Not exactly the kind of conversion Jesus was looking for. But we understand.
Jesus said, Do not resist evil with evil. The word translated “resist” is a military term for violent resistance. Jesus is not telling people to be passive in the face of evil. Jesus himself certainly wasn’t. Clarence Jordan says evil should be translated “by evil means.” In other words: “Do not retaliate revengefully by evil means.”
Using force works in the short run but does not create lasting change, and it usually leads to more violence. It is the “eye for an eye” response. Instead, Jesus calls us to a way of resistance that subverts the harm being done to us. And either we dismiss Jesus as absurd or begin to understand the world differently
James Bryan Smith compares these words of Jesus to a form of “kingdom jujitsu.” Jujitsu is a martial art. The word means “a way of yielding” by using an attacker’s force and energy to work against them.6
Someone strikes you on the cheek. You turn to them the other cheek and they’re left wondering what to do next. The strike on the right cheek was an insulting blow, a back-handed blow. Rise above insults, Jesus is saying. This was not a counsel to endure abuse or oppression. It was a counsel not to become the evil you are trying to defeat.
Jesus provides a strategy for robbing violent and oppressive people of their cruel power. If someone hits you and you retaliate by hitting back, then the one who hit you has won, for they have established violence as the agenda. To refuse to strike the other and turn the other check is to say, “You may like violence but you are not in total control. I choose another way.7
Someone sues you for what is theirs but you are unable to pay. In Jesus’ day, these would have been the poor who had nothing but their clothing. If they could not repay, the lender could sue for their tunic, a garment word over the skin. That would leave the poor person with only his or her outer coat. There is a law in the book of Exodus that forbids a person taking another’s coat, but Jesus says offer it freely. In so doing, the injustice of the rich demanding the very shirt of the back of the poor is revealed.
Or you are forced to do something for another. Jesus says go a step further. Create your own set of loving rules. Ask if you can do something more for them. They are emptied of their power of control and coercion over you.
And give to any who are in need. Why? Because wealth loses its power and the kingdom draws near because those in need have enough. Of course, we should be wise toward those who are not in need but ask for handouts. In Jesus’s day there was the village beggar who needed whatever you could give. In our day, it may mean working for organizations that help house the homeless and provide jobs for those who need work. But compassion, not suspicion, is to be our first response.
“Do not retaliate revengefully by evil means,” Jesus says.
Paul quotes this teaching of Jesus in Romans when he says, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Beloved, never avenge yourselves. If your enemies are hungry feed them; if thirsty, give them something to drink. Do not overcome evil by evil means, but overcome evil with good.”
It’s not about being a naive doormat. It’s about choosing not to play the stupid game of an eye for an eye, you hit me, I’ll hit you. It’s about choosing something at our own initiative, under our own power, something we are not forced to do, that is in itself a form of resistance. Take initiatives like paying attention to your enemy’s needs - giving food or drink when your enemy is hungry or thirsty. It will call our adversary to a new level of consciousness of what they’re doing.8 It may not make them stop. It may even make them more angry. But they will take notice. And their injustice will be revealed.
Each act is one more mustard seed in the breakthrough of the reign of God in this world.
In the segregationist South of the 1950s, blacks felt powerless. Then, in the 1960s, millions carried out boycotts and marches and filled the jails, with amazing self-discipline, with no action of revengeful violence. It turned the segregated world upside-down, making a powerful moral appeal to the whole nation’s sense of justice.
In this new community, reconciliation take priority over the vengeance of getting even.
ENEMY-LOVE
Matthew 5:43-48
And so Jesus calls us to the transforming way of love even toward our enemy.
The law of Moses required we only love our neighbor, which usually meant our kin. Hence all the violence toward the enemy in Israel’s early days.
The law of Moses does not call us to hate our enemy. The law Jesus quotes - “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy” - does not come from the Hebrew scriptures but from the scrolls of the Qumran community, a separatist group which lived down by the Dead Sea in Jesus’ day.
Jesus knew that loving only your neighbor or kin, loving only those who love you leads to an in-group type of selfishness or cliquishness, which leads to racism and nationalism. Anybody can love those who love them. Richard Rohr says it’s just staying inside a kind of magnified self-love. Until we can step outside our comfort zone and love the stranger, the other, the enemy, Jesus says, we really have not loved at all. Until there is love for enemies, there is no real transformation.9
So Jesus said, Love your enemy. Which does not necessarily mean to feel love for your enemy. To love is to will the good of another. It’s about seeing those who are a threat to us in a different light. Praying for your enemies will do that. To pray is to wish God’s best for them.
Who is your enemy? Karl Barth says your enemy is anyone who tempts you to return evil for evil.
We love our enemies because this is what God is like, and we are God’s children. God does not hate the enemy, but acts for their good. God allows the good gifts of life - the sun and rain - to be lavished on everyone. God is complete in love, including even enemies in the community of God’s mercy.
And don’t forget to love the inner enemy, those things we don’t like about ourselves. You have to love and forgive that enemy too.10
The poet W. H. Auden said: “Love your crooked neighbor, with your own crooked heart.”
The same could be said of your enemy.
PERFECTION AND FORGIVENESS
Matthew 5:48 and 6:14-15
Jesus says, Be perfect as God is perfect. Perfection is wholeness, consumed by love, responding to other people, even our enemies, as God does - with compassion and desire for their good. Jesus calls us to such a wide love because of the all-inclusive love of God. God is an ocean of compassion and sends good to everybody wherever they are. God’s mercy falls on all.
And the perfect love and forgiveness of God toward us, we receive and share with others. That is the perfection, the wholeness, the completeness to which we are called.
You see, Jesus is not giving us a new law, he is illustrating what a life looks like that has been set free by God. Imagine a person so set free, they do what is best for their enemy.
How do we become that kind of person when facing our Garrison Johns, our enemies who do us harm?
Only the love of God can change our hearts in a lasting way and replace hatred and violence with love and active compassion. The love and forgiveness of God that flows to you flows through the same pipeline that the love of God flows through you to others. If you refuse to forgive others you have shut off the pipeline and you are unable to receive love from God.
Conclusion
In 1956 Martin Luther King became the leader of boycotts after Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus. One day his phone rang. The voice on the other line said, “Be out of town in three days or we will kill you and bomb your house.
Martin poured a cup of coffee and sat down at his kitchen table. He thought about his wife and two month old baby girl. He was paralyzed by fear
Thomas Aquinas said, “In fear we take the contracted, frozen posture of protection.” In that posture the words of Jesus make no sense
That’s where King was that night. A Baptist preacher raised in the home of Baptist preacher knew the Bible. But the only thing that made sense was to run away and protect himself and his family.
King said sitting at his kitchen table he felt a stirring in his soul and an inner voice said, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth, and lo I will be with you; I will never leave you alone.” At that moment, King said, I know I could stand up without fear. I could stand up to anything.” Just to know that God was with him.
That how we face any difficult task, is it not? To believe that God is with us. If you truly believe that it changes how we see the world. We are tempted to believe this world is a place where justice is hard to come by and that injustice will have the last word. But what if we are wrong? What if this is a God-with-us world and I don’t have to be afraid? I don’t have to hit the person who hit me or hate the person hurt me. Maybe I can actually love them.
Does this mean we should all be pacifist? Some say yes. And yet scripture calls us to resist evil and injustice against the poor and the abused. We must not passively tolerate everything. We are called to search for ways to pursue justice not out of hatred or vengeance, but love even for the oppressing enemy. Martin Luther King wanted to free the racist.
King stayed in town and four days later King’s house was bombed. He stood on the porch of his house and looked out on the angry black crowd ready to riot and he preached a sermon. He said, “I want you to love your enemy and let them know you love them. What we are doing is right and just and God is with us.”
Just like a preacher. His house is on fire and he thinks it’s a sermon illustration. And it worked. The crowd put down their guns and baseball bats and sang “Amazing Grace” and went home peacefully.
Later a white policeman present that night said, “We would all have been dead had it not been for that black preacher.”
How do explain the change in King? No law can do that. Only the presence of God can do that.
You see, it’s not that Jesus is absurd, it’s that we don’t see the world the way Jesus sees it.
We are called to see a world the rest do not see. To see the world as Jesus sees it. A world where justice will win, where goodness is breaking forth, where life is without end.
To be a person so set free from fear we can love our enemies. We don’t have to be contracted by fear. We can stretch out our arms and embrace the world with a heart of love.
If you are here and you have been physically harmed or abused in any way, do not leave here feeling burdened that you have to try harder to love. Just ask yourself: What kind of world do I see? Is this a world filled with evil, or a God-bathed world of life without end?
And I would invite you, like King, to confess to God your fears, acknowledge the vengeance and hate still in your heart. And invite the Spirit of God to come near that you might experience the reality that he is with you always. Pray to be released from your fear. Pray that your heart would expand in courage and grace. And over time you just might become an agent of love and justice in the world.
We are not to be understood in this world because we are the people of Christ. But first we must learn to live in this world with him so we can live like him.
It is a process, a daily spiritual practice. It is not accomplished instantly. It is not accomplished alone, but with the help of God’s Spirit and the support of a community of disciples. Most importantly, it comes as we learn to breathe in and breathe out God’s mercy.
__________________________
1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, Harper and Row, 1973, 2
2. Glen Stassen, Living the Sermon on the Mount, Jossey Bass, 2006, 65-66
3. Ibid., 66-68
4. Thomas Long, Matthew, Westminster John Knox, 1997, 57
5. Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eerdmans, 2005, 135-136
6. James Bryan Smith, The Good and Beautiful Life, Intervarsity Press, 2009, 122-125
7. Long, 63
8. Stassen, 93
9. Richard Rohr, Jesus’ Plan for a New World, St. Anthony Messenger, 1996, 157
10. Ibid., 157