An Open Table where Love knows no borders

Salvation and Retaliation

A sermon on Matthew 5: 38-48 by Nathan Nettleton

I am generally a fan of the common lectionary, the three year cycle of Bible readings that a large percentage of the world’s churches follow Sunday by Sunday. But occasionally there are bits of it that annoy me and make me wonder what sort of agenda drove the decisions. Now, because I have been involved in the international body that is the custodian of the lectionary, I do have a fair idea how the decisions get made and so, in most cases, I am fairly happy to conclude that it probably wasn’t agenda driven at all, but just an oversight or a stuff-up. Today is one of the days that annoys me. It annoys me because I discover that I haven’t preached on it before, and that the reason I haven’t preached on it before is that it doesn’t come up very often. There are a few weeks in the lectionary that only ever come up if the moon and calendar line up in such a way that we get a very late Easter and an extra Sunday between Epiphany and Lent, and that’s what has happened this year. And what annoys me about that is that perhaps the most important passage from Jesus’ sermon on the mount is assigned to a Sunday that only comes up about once every twelve to fifteen years. And given that the passage is about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek, and that the common lectionary was produced in the United States of America which is one of the most militarily activist states on the planet, it is hard to resist the conspiracy theories. But in fact, this part of the common lectionary simply follows the Roman lectionary and so it did not originate in the United States, and even if it had, my knowledge of the people involved would make me wary of pointing the finger.

So, enough about the lectionary. What about this teaching of Jesus itself? Let me begin with a big statement, or a big hypothesis: this passage that we heard read tonight contains the simplest and clearest summary in the whole Bible of what it is that Jesus wants to change about the world and us people who make it up. Yes, you could rightly argue that Jesus two great commandments — Love the Lord your God and love your neighbour as yourself — are what Jesus puts forward as his summary, but I would argue that this is the passage that makes sure we don’t misunderstand the love-God-and-neighbour teaching. This is the passage that makes crystal clear just how radical that teaching is and how utterly different it is from common garden variety human civility. This is the passage that will confront each and every listener with the choice — do you want to commit yourself to following the way of Jesus, or is it utterly abhorrent to you? And when his point is made clear, there is usually no in between. It is just a pity that the lectionary doesn’t encourage us to make it clear more often.

In this passage Jesus challenges two big and very common misconceptions about his message and about what God hopes for and requires of us. The first misconception is that the meaning of “love your neighbour” hangs on the definition of a neighbour and that love is therefore somehow hierarchical so that we are expected to be most loving to those who are close to us and deserve it, and at some point down the scale a person no longer deserves it at all and so is not a neighbour and is therefore not to be loved. And because of this assumption, you can ask pretty much any typical Australian and they will assure you that they follow the teaching of Jesus at this point and love their neighbours. I have met almost nobody ever who doesn’t believe that of themselves.

The second misconception is related to the first, and that is that proportional retaliation is a good and appropriate response to being treated badly by others, and that in fact, it is what God would expect and require of us. We are to expose and oppose evil by making sure that the perpetrators get as good as they give. And so it is normal and justified and even cooperating with the intentions of God to seek to bring about humiliation and loss for those who have sought to inflict humiliation and loss on us or those we love. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And this, of course, is not only assumed at the individual level. It is written into the foreign policy of almost every nation on earth. If you attack us, we will attack you and make sure you are sorry. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. A ship for a ship. A city for a city. And perhaps a bit more to make sure you don’t think of trying it again.

Jesus makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, that these two widespread beliefs are misconceptions and that he opposes them absolutely and calls all who would follow him to renounce them. He first quotes the old law that put a limit on retaliation — no more than an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — and then says, “But I say to you, do not retaliate at all.” And if that is not clear enough for you, go further. Instead of hitting back, invite them to hit you again. What we are talking about here is an absolute renunciation of the almost universal human impulse to retaliate to any attack, offence or mistreatment.

And secondly Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’” The law didn’t actually say ‘hate your enemy’, but it was universally assumed then and it is universally assumed now that that was the obvious and correct flip side of the command to love your neighbour; so universally assumed that Jesus could just say that it was part of the accepted law. But now Jesus says, “No. I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, for that is what your Father in heaven is like.” Note that he doesn’t quote “vengeance is mine says the Lord” and argue that God is allowed to retaliate and take vengeance on the evil doer, but you’re not. He says “God doesn’t, and so neither should you.” This was, and is, absolutely revolutionary. So revolutionary that few and far between are the people who are willing to attempt to live by it, and even fewer and farther between are the nations that are willing to consider its implications for their foreign policy.

In my opinion, this would perhaps be the one legitimate measure of any nation’s claim to be a Christian nation. If a country’s foreign policy includes retaliation against attacks and doing harm to their enemies and persecutors, then they are not a Christ-like or Christian nation, no matter how many Christian people their population may include.

Now, it is of course true that even most Christian people have a great deal of trouble accepting the principle of these words, let alone actually trying to live by them. It is commonplace to try to find ways of qualifying or watering down what Jesus said. There are two ways this is usually done. The first is to try to make them equivalent to Jesus’ line about tearing out your eyes if they look lustfully at anyone. Thus it is said that these words are a bit of overblown hyperbole, said for effect but not intended to be taken literally or seriously. It is usually further argued that to follow Jesus’ words literally would allow evil to flourish unchecked and thus contribute to its progress, and that we would be allowing ourselves to be treated as doormats and helpless victims and that that is good for no one and only condones evil.

The second is a subtle distortion of a correct response to the first, so let me come at it in a round about way. One correct response to the first is to point out that there is nothing passive about the examples of non-retaliation that Jesus gives. They are in fact creative confrontations that expose and challenge evil. You see, the thing with retaliation is that it seems to legitimate all violence. Virtually nobody thinks their violence or hostility is unprovoked and unjustified. Pretty much every act of violence or aggression is understood by its perpetrator as a justified response to an offence or injury received. But nine times out of ten, the recipients don’t see it that way, and so they feel entirely justified in retaliating, and so it goes on. Jesus understood this, and it is precisely this destructive enslavement to cycles of hatred and violence that he came to set us free from. So the turning the other cheek and going the extra mile are, when seen in their context, creative challenges to the cycle of violence. If someone hits you on one cheek and you hit them back, everyone simply divides up and takes sides over who was right and who was wrong and we never get anywhere. But if you keep your fists down, and in front of everyone suggest that if your attacker is so sure they are in the right, they should hit you again and you still won’t retaliate, that is a pretty powerful breech of the usual cycle and a challenge to the claims to legitimate violence of the attacker. Similarly, in the illustration of being sued for your coat in court, Jesus suggests taking off the rest of your clothes then and there and handing them over too. A person standing naked in the court room willingly handing over their clothes is a pretty strong and confronting challenge to the legitimacy of the initial claim for the coat. All of that is true and I think it shows that Jesus is no advocate of turning a blind eye to evil. His radical commitment to non-retaliation and non-violence do not mean passive acceptance of evil and wrongdoing.

But… — and this is an important but — it is very easy and very tempting to jump for that interpretation and distort it ever so slightly so that it becomes a new and clever and sneaky way of retaliating. You attacked me, and I will publicly humiliate you as thoroughly and as craftily as I possibly can. And so, under the guise of a radical commitment to a literal obedience to Jesus’ words, we actually weasel our way out of his even more radical call to absolute non-retaliation, to not reciprocate one hostile act with another, even a physically non-violent one, but to love our enemy and treat them with evident love and to pray for the best for them.

Jesus was absolutely serious about this stuff. You cannot begin to understand the meaning of the cross apart from these words. In his suffering and death we see precisely what Jesus meant these words to look like in practice in the face of real hostility, injustice, and violence. The resurrection is the biggest turning of the cheek you could ever wish to see. Jesus absorbs the full force of the world’s hostility and violence, and continues to pray for the forgiveness of his persecutors even as they nail his flesh to the cross, and then rises from the dead still without a hint of vengefulness but offering absolute forgiveness and acceptance and healing and new life. Talk about going the extra mile! The extra light-year more like it!

I spend a lot of my pastoral conversation time listening to people tell me how badly they have been treated by this person or that person and how they are therefore quite justified in taking the hostile and aggressive course of action they have taken in return. And quite often, I think they are right. They were treated badly, and their response is “justified”. But “justified” doesn’t make it right, and it certainly doesn’t make it Christ-like. I am not employed as a magistrate to judge whether you are justified or not. I am employed as a pastor to lead you in the footsteps of Jesus. I am employed to say, as Jesus said, “If you only love those who love you and treat you nicely, there is nothing especially Christ-like about that. Every Tom, Dick and Harry can do that.”

“Justified” retaliation and sanctified violence have created the whirlpool of hatred and fear and destruction that we now need to be saved from. And Jesus comes, offering his own suffering body as the starting point of the not-going-with-the-flow that will turn the tide and bring about the salvation of the world. And all he asks of us, as his followers, is that we imitate him and join his in that not-going-with-the-flow. Of course, when you stop going with the flow, you feel its force in your face all the more strongly, just as Jesus did strung up on the cross. But if you want to be saved, there is no other way. You have to be saved out of the old kingdom of “normal”, and into the new kingdom of God. There is no other way. Jesus is willing and eager to forgive all your past complicity in the cycles of hostility and hurt, but his call to change sides and live a new life is perfectly and bracingly clear: “Do not any longer engage in retaliation, no mater how justified it may be, but love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”

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