Concerning Retaliation
Sermon on the Mount # 7

a sermon on Matthew 5.38-48
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama


Hypocrisy is a misunderstood concept. Hypocrisy is not preaching one thing then doing another—not necessarily anyway. If I preach against lying, and at some point I tell a lie, I am a sinner, but I am not a hypocrite—not as long as I know that lying is a sin and I ought not do it. Hypocrisy is preaching one thing when you really believe something else. If I preach against lying, but I secretly believe lying is a good thing to do (at least so long as I am the one telling the lie, not being lied to), then I am a hypocrite whether I end up telling a lie or not.

I say all this because I fear hypocrisy in this sermon. In recent weeks, while preaching on the Sermon on the Mount, I have talked about being God’s people, doing the ministry God wants you to do, about God’s faithfulness, about anger and hatred, about adultery and divorce, and about basic honesty. I may struggle at times to live up to the high standards Jesus sets, even fail on occasion—we all do—but I am clear about what the standard is and I passionately believe Jesus is right and that I ought to live my life exactly as he says. In fact, throughout the Sermon on the Mount—actually, throughout all of Jesus’ teachings—I fear failure, but not hypocrisy. This text is the exception. Here I struggle not just to do what Jesus says, but also to understand and believe him.

To be honest, an eye for an eye sounds about right to me. Jesus says, “Do not resist an evildoer.” I read the newspaper and find half a dozen evildoers I’d like to knock some sense into. Jesus says, “If someone tries to take your shirt, give your coat as well.” I’m much more inclined to rub the shirt in poison ivy before parting with it. Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” Fortunately I do not have many enemies, but on the rare occasion when I do encounter one, aggressive self-defense is usually my first priority. When someone attacks our country, my gut instinct is to bomb them back to the stone age. And what is this business about “give to everyone who begs of you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you”? I have been jaded by years of dealing with people who want money. First of all, I believe we do a whole lot more good working through community agencies than we would if we took that same money and handed it out to anyone who asked. Second, I am skeptical. If I know the person and know the need is legitimate, I am eager to help in any way I can. If I don’t know the person or the need, well … let’s just say I’m a tough sale. When I lived in Atlanta, I once thought a good solution would be to drop a quarter in the offering plate for every time someone on the street asked me for money. I found I couldn’t afford it. “Love those who love you” sounds right. It feels right. Jesus says I’m no better than a godless pagan if I live that way and that I should try to be like God, who loves everyone. In other words, your pastor is still a long way from the Kingdom of God. Pray for me. And pray for yourself. Can we do what Jesus commands? Do we even want to?

This passage has a rich history of weaseling interpretation. Before I expose you to Jesus’ commands, I at least ought to give you a chance to defend yourself. So let’s take a quick glance at three of the more popular ways Christians have tried to get around, over, or under what Jesus says in this passage. Christians have always found this difficult. Often they have found it impossible. It seems the more power and wealth a Christian community has, the more trouble they have with this text. Here are three crafty dodges that don’t work for me but have worked for some:

1. What Jesus is doing in this passage is describing the Kingdom of God, not prescribing behavior. Obviously the things he tells us to do are too impractical. Maybe they would work if everyone were holy and just, but not in our world. Therefore, they must be about the Kingdom of God, and won’t it be great! In the meantime, hoard you wealth, hate your enemies, and smite them when you get the chance.

The fatal flaw with this interpretation is this: Even if Jesus were describing the kingdom, he would still expect us to live this way now. We are kingdom people. We don’t live the same old way we did before we met Jesus. We don’t live the way everybody else does. We don’t live the way people do if they don’t have resurrection hope. We know God reigns. We know God’s kingdom is coming, maybe slowly, but it cannot be stopped. Therefore we are supposed to be living as if we are already in the kingdom. That’s the job God wants us to do. When we do it, our lives become a signpost pointing others toward the reality of God’s kingdom. That’s what the Christian life is about. So it is no use pleading, “We have to wait for the kingdom.” God has poured out his Spirit upon us, and that’s enough for us to start living as kingdom people right now.

2. What Jesus is doing in this passage is laying down a special code of holiness, not prescribing behavior for all Christians. Obviously the things he tells us to do are too impractical. Only special people can hope to pull them off. This was the medieval answer. Monks and nuns aspired to Sermon on the Mount righteousness. Normal, everyday Christians aspired to well-at-least-I-haven’t-murdered-anyone righteousness. Scholastic theologians called passages like this one “counsels,” not commands, which Christians were free to obey or not, as they chose.

The fatal flaw with this interpretation, beside the obvious fact that Jesus teaches this to his disciples without making any kind of distinction between the holy and the super-holy, is this: Jesus gives his followers one standard of holiness. I have noted before that we do not have one standard for ministers, another for elders and deacons, and yet another for laypeople. Christianity has one standard. It may be more important for leaders to adhere to it, but the same standard applies to all. So don’t try to foist this off on me alone. Jesus has all of us in mind.

3. What Jesus is doing in this passage is giving instructions to first century Jews living under Roman occupation in Palestine, not laying down commands valid in every time and place. This is a thoroughly modern attempt, and it has a whiff of truth to it. Consider: Jesus said, “If anyone forces you to go a mile, go also the second mile.” That’s something you won’t find in the blotter of the Mobile Police Department: Sunday, November 19, 2006, 2900 block of Airport Blvd., man forced to walk a mile. This was a practice of the Roman army. A Roman soldier could conscript any civilian and force him to carry the soldier’s gear for one mile. Stone markers lined the roads of first century Palestine, so that Jews would know when they had gone a mile and could legally refuse to go a step farther. Jesus taught his followers to show God’s love to their Roman oppressors and not to join in the popular rebel movements that constantly sprang up. When Judea rebelled in open war against Rome in a.d. 66, Christians did not take up arms. Jesus once lamented that Jerusalem did not know the things that make for peace. He predicted the Temple would be destroyed because of it. It was in a.d. 70.

Take all this into consideration, and maybe Jesus did have in mind the circumstances of his day. I am sure he did. But here’s the catch: Just because Jesus had his contemporaries in mind when he dispensed these kingdom teachings, we cannot conclude he did not intend them for us as well. After all, if Jesus wanted his first century disciples to live by certain values, doesn’t it make sense that he wanted his disciples in every time and place to live by those same values? Nobody is forcing you or me to walk a mile, but we can probably identify a moral equivalent if we think about it.

These three weaseling interpretations are, in my opinion, unfortunately the best anyone has come up with so far. This leaves me in a bad spot. On one hand, I cannot find a good excuse to ignore Jesus’ clear teachings in this passage. On the other, I still do not want to do them! Not all of them, anyway—not all of the time. I’ll give, but not to everyone who asks. I’ll pray for my enemies, and maybe even love a few; but don’t count on it. Sometimes I will turn the other cheek; other times I want to take at least an eye for an eye. God help me! I’m a hypocrite, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Let me try to find my way by working backward: Last week we heard Jesus’ command about divorce then we thought about exceptions. This week I’ll cover the exceptions first, then move from that into what Jesus actually meant.

Does Jesus teach here that all violence is wrong? Must Christians be pacifists? Is violence ever justified, such as the kind used by police officers? While some Christians have tried to get around these commands, and most have simply ignored them, a few have tried to practice them literally. The Mennonites, the Amish, and the Hutterian Brethern, for example, are pacifists. They do not simply object to wars they consider unjust or ill advised. They object to all war. Some consider any violence to be sinful. I have to admit I admire their courage and conviction, and yet I find I cannot quite go along with them. And this is precisely where I struggle most with this passage. Jesus says, “Do not resist the evildoer.” But doesn’t that just let evil win by default. I know the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. I know “we are good; our enemies are evil” is too simplistic. And yet, if a police officer uses force to prevent a child from being abducted, isn’t that a greater good? What about Hitler? He’s the poster boy for just war theory. Personally, if I had to choose between letting someone like that rule the world or taking up a rifle and joining the infantry, I’d choose the infantry every time.

When some soldiers asked John the Baptist what they ought to do, he told them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages” [Luke 3.14]. He did not tell them to lay down their arms. Paul reminded the Romans that those who rule are God’s servants and they do not bear the sword in vain [Romans 13.4]. There is, then, a proper use for violence in preserving order and the greater good. Yet it must be exercised responsibly and carefully. Those who conclude from our scripture reading that we must be utterly passive, even in the face of evil, misinterpret it. Jesus is describing the character he expects his disciples to have. He Is not preventing them from using legitimate force in the interest of a just cause.

OK, that’s the exception. Now, what does Jesus mean?

Behind Jesus’ words in this passage are two basic beliefs we have already heard in the Sermon on the Mount. One is the love of God for all people. The other is that God has chosen us to be his special people. Being his special people does not mean God loves us and hates everyone else, or even that God just loves us more. It means God has a job for us, namely, to show everyone else what God is like. If we act like everyone else, they’ll never know.

So we come to this passage with those two truths in mind. What we find, then, is Jesus telling us we ought to be like God, and he sketches out a few details of what that might look like. Retaliation is the way of the world, but all it does is perpetuate a cycle of violence. So don’t do it. Leave that sort of thing to God. After all, God guarantees justice in the universe, sooner or later, the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is repentance, letting Jesus pay for your sin, or the sin done to you, on the cross. The hard way is hell, and I preached about that recently.

If someone strikes you on the right cheek, they probably hit you with the back of their hand. In the world of Jesus’ contemporaries, this was not only injury but a great insult. They were implying you were inferior to them, like a slave or child. Jesus suggests instead of hitting back, offering to let them hit you as an equal. If you are sued, probably in that day for nonpayment of debt, give both your inner and your outer garment. Let the person suing you see what they were really doing, oppressing the poor. As for walking the second mile, imagine the soldier’s shock.

I think we do well to take all three of these cases as examples. They basically point toward the kind of character we ought to have.

When Jesus asks us to love our enemies, he grounds his command in the nature of God. God loves everyone, even his enemies. He loved you when you were his enemy. His sacrificial love changed you from his enemy into his own dear child. Jesus wants us to have hearts like God’s. He gives us a broader vision than some narrow minded “we-good, they-bad” thinking. When he told his followers to love and pray for their persecutors, he knew exactly what he was saying. He warned us of persecution. He knew many would be disowned, impoverished, imprisoned, or killed because of their faith in him. But what good is it to follow him if we are not like him?

In this passage, Jesus reveals to us something of the nature of sin. When one person sins against another, an evil force is unleashed. This evil has the potential to destroy both the victim and the perpetrator. It also has the potential to perpetuate a cycle of evil, as one bad deed is paid back with another. The danger to the perpetrator is that he or she has surrendered to evil. It takes root in the soul. The perpetrator is both guilty and infected with evil. There is only one hope: repentance and forgiveness. The victim is in danger of being eaten up by bitterness and anger. The only hope is to let them go, and this is accomplished by forgiving. Until you forgive, the sin someone does against you continues to have power over you. The pain and hurt go on. The only path to freedom is forgiving.

When one person sins against another, there are only two ways the story can end. The evil unleashed either destroys one or more souls and sucks them into hell, or it is nailed to the cross.

Although what Jesus tells us to do in this passage is hard to do—maybe impossible, that’s the point of the Corrie ten Boom story on the front of your bulletin [see end of sermon below]—and at times it may even feel wrong. Our gut tells us to hit back. Nevertheless we must commit ourselves to it. Why? Because Jesus showed us how to do it … and its power.

Think about it … When Jesus was struck by the soldiers who arrested him, what did he do? When they took his clothes, what did he do? And don’t forget that he too carried some Roman gear. It wasn’t a soldier’s equipment; it was a cross. Jesus was no hypocrite. He practiced and believed what he preached. And this is the thing that makes all the difference: God raised him from the dead.

Without resurrection hope, everything Jesus tells us in this passage to do makes no sense. We would have to be fools to even consider it. But what if, having a character like God’s and doing the kinds of things God does is the wave of the future? If God is going to renew all creation and establish his kingdom, then it makes sense to look forward to that and start living that way now. Forgiveness, generosity, and love may lead you to a cross today; but beyond the cross wait resurrection and glory. In that case, hoarding what we have, striking back against those who wrong us, fighting our enemies, and all the rest just ties us down to the old order of things. It mires us in sin, so that we are not ready for the kingdom. We are not worthy of the kingdom. We are not kingdom people. If the Sermon on the Mount is about anything, it is how to be kingdom people.

If you and I are to obey Jesus’ difficult, difficult teachings in this passage, we need two things: resurrection in front of us and our Father in heaven behind us. Without Christ, we have neither. That’s why the world is the way it is. That is why Jesus’ teachings seem so foolish. When we know resurrection is our future, so that we are not afraid of what might happen today, and we know our Father in heaven is watching over us, and he will take care of us and deal with evildoers, then obedience becomes possible. It still takes a lot of faith. But Jesus expects us to try. After all, we are his special people, and the job he has given us to do is this: to show the rest of the world what God is like … and what his kingdom is like. Thanks be to God, we already know because of Jesus. Amen.

rev_mauldin@yahoo.com
November 19, 2006

*****
Worship Thought from Bulletin Cover:

It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former SS man who stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there – the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand, but I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprung a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness, any more than on our goodness, that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself.

— Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place