February 19, 2017
Matthew 5:38-48
38“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” 39 But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. 41 If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. 43 You have heard that it was said, ‘you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Friends, of all the teachings of our Lord, these words are surely some of the hardest to live out in our lives. We think that there may be some problem with the translation of the text –but there isn’t — with one exception that I’ll get to. We may think that our Lord is being naïve — but He who went to the cross is never naïve. We think that our Lord may just be idealistic — but we find no other instances in which this is the case. We simply must hear what our Lord is saying to us about love and hate and revenge.
He is reinterpreting the law that is handed down to Israel. He is claiming that He is the one who has the authority to interpret and reinterpret ancient codes of conduct. He is placing himself, therefore, above Moses and a thousand years of Israel’s history. And so, if that’s going to happen, it gets our attention!
The history of revenge or retaliation comes to us in at least four stages:
–There is unlimited retaliation. This means that if something is done to us, then we are free to act without any restraint. We have to show our enemies that we’re powerful, that we’re dangerous and that we can act without mercy. And if we don’t do this, others may get the idea that they too could take advantage of us.
–Then there’s limited retaliation. This is a bit of a progression in human history. This is where an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth comes from. We find it showing up at least three times in the Old Testament:, in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but we find it first in the Code of Hammurabi, which was twenty centuries before the time of our Lord, and that’s where you find ‘eye for eye and tooth for tooth. It is this limited retaliation in which our revenge is limited to the amount of damage that was done. If you steal my horse then I will steal one of your horses: if you harm one of my family members, I’ll just go after one of your family members…so very limited. Within the Old Testament we find that often this was changed–not an eye for an eye, but if there was injury done then there was payment that could be attached as the way of getting even.
–Then there is limited love. This is a further progression in history and it means that I will love my own family, my own group, my own nation, but not necessarily other families, other groups or other nations. I have no allegiance to strangers; I feel no kinship with others in the human family. I have learned to love–this is really wonderful–but it’s limited.
–And finally, there is unlimited love, love that goes beyond family, group and nation. It is love that extends even to strangers and to enemies. It is the way of great cost because it is impractical; it is illogical, and often unimaginable. So, our Lord removes revenge from our list of possible actions and reactions. And this gets our attention, surely, because it seems to go against our nature.
And then He gives three examples of situations we might face, or at least that a first century Jew might face. “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”
- T. Wright, contemporary scholar and author has commented,
To be struck on the right cheek in that world, almost certainly meant being hit with the back of the right hand.
That’s not just violence but an insult; it implies that you’re an inferior, perhaps a slave, a child or (in that world, and sometimes even today) a woman. What’s the answer? Hitting back only keeps the evil in circulation. Offering the other cheek implies: hit me again, now, if you like, but now as an equal, not an inferior.
Or suppose you are in a law court where a powerful enemy is suing you( perhaps for non-payment of some huge debt) and wants the shirt off your back. You can’t win; but you can show him what he’s really doing. Give him your cloak as well; and, in a world where most people only wore those two garments, shame him with your impoverished nakedness. This is what the rich, powerful and careless are doing. They are reducing the poor to a state of shame. Then he says, The third example clearly reflects the Roman military occupation. Roman soldiers had the right to force civilians to carry their equipment for one mile. But the law was quite strict; it forbade them to make someone go more than that one mile. Turn the tables on them, advises Jesus. Don’t fret and fume and plot revenge. Copy your generous God. Go a second mile, and astonish the soldier (and perhaps alarm him. What if his commanding officer found out?) with the news that there is a different way to be human, a way which doesn’t plot revenge, which doesn’t join the armed resistance movement… but which wins God’s kind of victory over violence and injustice.
We recall that having to carry something is what happened to our Lord as he stumbles and can’t carry his cross on the way to Calvary. A Roman soldier conscripts Simon the Cyrene to carry the cross, and he had to do it.
Well friends, these are things we have to reflect on and think deeply about because nobody likes being hit, sued or forced to do something. How can we possibly react to violence and force with unlimited love? It means that we have to learn it. We have to learn how our Lord handled his enemies. We have to meditate on the fact that, “hate has the same effect on us whether its object is friend or enemy.” That revenge is harming us more than it hurts our enemies. That we are seldom in control or what happens to us, but always in control of how we respond to what happens to us. That is the victory that lies hidden in the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord.
Now to that matter of translation. Our text says, “Be perfect therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” Perfection is not possible for any of us, not for anybody I’ve met; now, you can talk to me at coffee hour if you’re an exception. And if we strive for it we will make ourselves miserable, and make everyone around us miserable.
The word that is used is ‘teleos,’ and it means finished or completed. It is the very word that is used by our Lord on the cross, “It is finished.” He does not mean, with his dying breath, “it is perfect,” which would be ridiculous. So in our context, the better translation would be the word ‘mature.’ “Be mature, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is mature.” How is God mature? Well, he “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends the rain fall on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
So, God acts in patience; God gives gifts to all people; God reaches out to those who deserve it and to those who don’t deserve it; God reaches out to the worthy and the unworthy who receive sunlight and rain–that is, the conditions for fruitfulness and growth.
So God is mature in the grace that is extended to all people and we are children of that God. We also are to grow up into that kind of maturity. As Paul puts it in I Corinthians: 13, “When I became an adult, I put an end to all childish ways.” It’s the same understanding.
And then a final point needs to be addressed this morning. Our Lord says, “You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Friends, there is no quote in the Old Testament that says, “hate your enemies.” There is a quote in the bible that says you should, “love your neighbor,”
that’s Leviticus, Chapter 19:18. It does not go on to say, hate your enemies. Now we realize as we read the Old Testament that there are a lot of enemies and there is a lot of hate and there’s a lot of unlimited retaliation going on. But there is this line that is near the end of Psalm 139. Psalm 139 is a perfectly beautiful Psalm, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me…” but then at the end of it, it says, “Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? I hate them with perfect hatred;, I count them my enemies.” Well it may be that our Lord is referring to that passage.
Pinchas E. Lapide, is an Orthodox Jewish scholar, living and teaching in Germany. His translation of his book, The Sermon on the Mount came out in English in the 1980s, so I don’t know if he is still with us. He’s commenting on this section and he’s a little puzzled and he points out that the Old Testament does not advise hatred of the enemy. Overwhelmingly it councils against it. And then he tells this story:
Leo Baeck, was the most recent luminary of the German rabbinate. Three times he was offered the chance to save himself and his family by immigrating during the Hitler years. Three times he rejected the offer, which seemed to him to be fleeing from his assigned task. He wished to remain with his people as teacher, as he put it, “as long as a single Jew remained in Germany,” as a history of a camp later put it. He was made a draft horse by the S.S., daily transporting carts with buckets from the toilets.
And yet, in the wooden barracks, in the storerooms, and under the open sky, he held evening lectures on Plato and Kant, on Isaiah and Job and Jesus–a year long Sermon on the Mount, out of the depths of the abyss of abandonment, calming witnessing to the good news of both Testaments. “Our Father in Heaven is not dead– even if humans in God’s image become inhuman,” he said. When the Russians liberated the concentration camp at Theresienstadt, where he was to the end the spiritual center, Rabbi Baeck-by chance or providence-was among the 9,000 out of 140,000 prisoners who had survived the suffering…
In the year 1945 Rabbi Baeck exercised all his personal influence to defend German officers and guards from revenge. As soon as he had recovered spiritually and physically, he was among the first to speak in favor of reconciliation between Germans and Jews. His prayer, from the first postwar years, needs no commentary:
“‘Let there by peace for those of ill-will, and an end to all vengeance and all talk of penalty and punishment… The atrocities mock all standards; they stand beyond all borders of human comprehension, and the martyrs are many… Therefore, O God, do not weigh their outrages with the scales of righteousness and hand them over to executioners demanding a terrible reckoning from them. Deal with them differently. Credit to the murderers and informants, betrayers and all evil persons, the courage and the fortitude of the others, their personal modesty, their noble dignity, their silent efforts despite everything, the hope that does not surrender and the brave smile that dries up tears, and all the sacrifice, all the warm love… all the harrowed, tortured hearts that still remained strong and ever- trusting in the face of death and in death, yes, even the hours of profoundest weakness. All that, O my God, should count before you as ransom for the forgiveness of debt, should count for a rebirth of righteousness– all the good should count not the evil. And in the memory of our enemies we should no longer be their victims, no longer their nightmare and terror, but rather a help that releases them from their frenzy… That is all that is asked of them-and that we, when all this is over, may live again as humans among humans, and that there will be peace again on this poor earth, upon persons of good will, and that peace may also come upon the others.”
Well friends, do you know of a better definition of, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”? I mean, other than our Lord praying from the cross, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”?
So let us reflect who Christ is, in us and for us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
