Love Your Enemies

Matthew 5:38-48

2-23-14

Rev. June Wilkins

Again, we’re hearing Jesus 

Sermon on the Mount

This is the last installment for us on Sundays,

There’s a two more chapters of it beyond this

if you care to take a look at it.

The expectations of the blessed ones are high

We are supposed to be a light to the world and

in Jesus sermon, last week we heard

how God has hopes for our relationships

with our friends and relatives

and wants us to work on problems in

those relationships.

And this week,

Jesus says one of the most radical things ever

Jesus says, “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.”

Reconciling with a friend or relative is one thing,

but this is a whole new level.

“Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you”

I think we would find it pretty shocking

if we hadn’t heard it a million times already.

And if we actually did it, it would truly set Christians

apart from the rest of the world

I think Christians agree to this in theory,

but when we start thinking about real situations we struggle.

So if someone does something to me, I don’t fight back?

If someone yells at me, or hits me, or hits my family,

I’m just supposed to turn the other cheek?

If someone bombs us, we have every right

even a responsibility to bomb them too, right?

If someone says something bad about me,

I’m going to say something bad about them.

It’s the cycle of violence that has plagued this

world since the beginning of time

Jesus starts off today by saying:

“You have heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

This was actually from the old Testament

The original Exodus law (21:24-25) reads

"eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,

foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."  

The original purpose of this law was to not to say that you had to take revenge if someone did something to you

but it was to curb excessive retaliation.

If someone in your family loses an eye,

that does not mean you can cut off the head of the perpetrator.

It’s about using justified violence, violence that fits the offense.

The next part is usually translated

“do not resist an evil-doer” or “do not resist evil”.

Well, Jesus resisted evil all the time, so what does he mean?

The word translated as resist in Greek is antistenai

and it was usually used to refer to armed fighting.

So a better translation would be : “Do not violently resist evil."

Do not violently resist violence.

Figure out another way to resist

Jesus isn’t changing the law here,

Jesus is taking it up a notch.

Jesus takes this rule that was meant to stop escalation

of violence and pushes it further.

Jesus is saying that blessed people

don’t even use justified violence.

The usual response to this is that if we

Don’t return violence for violence

if we loved or respected our enemies,

everyone would just take advantage of us,

steam-roller over us, that we will be door-mats.

We like to think that there’s only two ways to respond

to evil or violence or wrong-doing  --

Retaliate or ignore it.

But Jesus outlines a third:

Resisting without violence.

Jesus says,

If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other one also.

And if someone takes your coat, then give them your shirt too.

These are not actions of passiveness,

These are acts of defiance.

Turning the other cheek is an act of defiance, not weakness.

Jesus didn’t say cower until they hit you again.

Jesus said turn the other cheek, offer it to them.

It is showing the other person that you

have not been reduced by their actions.

And if they wanted to humiliate you by taking your coat

then you show them that the

coat didn’t matter and give the shirt too.

Let them see you walking around in your underwear.

Jesus advocates standing up and showing

the enemy their wrongdoing by offering more.

Jesus advocates not reacting in fear,

but acting with the confidence and power of God.

Jesus advocates not getting

caught up in this endless cycle of escalating violence,

but exposing it for the activity that it is.

Martin Luther King Jr. took the power of this

seriously, they were the guiding principle of the civil

rights movement he led,

he did it himself, he lived it, and it worked.

When people saw protestors on TV getting hit with

the spray of hoses and attacked by police dogs,

and not retaliating, it didn’t show the

weakness of the protestors, it showed the

weakness of their enemies.

It was powerful, more powerful than seeing a another fight.

It showed that loving our enemies

is more powerful than hating them.

When Martin Luther King preached

on this part of Jesus sermon at his church,

and talked about the power of loving our enemies,

He told this story about Abraham Lincoln.

When Lincoln was running for president,

there was a man named Edwin Stanton

who ran all around the country talking about Lincoln.

He said a lot of bad things about Lincoln,

He was an abolitionist and he thought Lincoln was too weak.

He said a lot of unkind things.

Sometimes he would even talk about Lincoln’s looks

saying, "You don’t want a tall, lanky,

ignorant man like this as the president of the United States."

He wrote and spoke and went on and on.

Finally, Lincoln was elected and when he had to choose

his cabinet, he needed to choose a Secretary of War,

which is now secretary of defense, a very important

position that John Kerry holds now.

He looked all over and Lincoln chose Stanton.

And when Lincoln told his advisors and

they said to him: "Mr. Lincoln, are you a fool?

Do you know what Mr. Stanton has been saying about you?

Do you know what he has done, tried to do to you?

Do you know that he has tried to defeat you on every hand?

Did you read all of those derogatory

statements that he made about you?"

Abraham Lincoln said:

"Oh yes, I know about it; I read about it; I’ve heard him myself.

But after looking over the country,

I find that he is the best man for the job."

Mr. Stanton became Secretary of War,
and a few years later, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
Stanton was called to his death bed and as he died,

Stanton said the famous words, "Now he belongs to the ages."

And he also said,

"There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen.”

Martin Luther King said,

"If Abraham Lincoln had hated Stanton,

if Abraham Lincoln had answered everything Stanton said,

Abraham Lincoln would have not

transformed and redeemed Stanton.

Stanton would have gone to his grave hating Lincoln,

and Lincoln would have gone to his grave hating Stanton.

But through the power of love,

Abraham Lincoln was able to redeem Stanton."

I would also add that Lincoln was redeemed

by his own choice to love instead of hate.

 

Our enemies are redeemed by love.

We are redeemed by our love.

The world is redeemed by love.

How can we make those decisions to love instead of hate?

To pray for those who do us wrong?

In the grocery store, while we’re driving?

Can we pray for politicians we don’t agree with?

Can we pray for those who have treated us badly?

Those who have betrayed us?

Those who when we think of them and what they did

it makes our blood boil.

Can we pray for those people?

Can we pray even for people who resort to violence?

Murderers? Terrorists?

Who makes you the maddest? Pray for them now.
Not that they change, but that they would find peace

and joy and that no harm would come to them..

 

Love has an awesome power.
It is the power of God working in our world.

And Jesus has given it to us to use.

We are the blessed people,

we are the light of the world.

God means to use us to

redeem the world.

Good News: God Cares

February 16, 2014

Matthew 5:21-37

Epiphany 6

I'm supposed to say it's the gospel of the Lord,

but it doesn't seem very gospel like!

We continue with Jesus sermon on the mount

We have more difficult instruction here that would make

any good Lutheran a little uncomfortable.

Actually with all the eye plucking and hand cutting,

it should make any good person uncomfortable,

which I think is what it’s supposed to do.

Sermon on the Mount
Brick Testament

We must remember that in Matthew’s gospel,

and sometimes Mark’s, Jesus uses hyperbole to get his point across

exaggeration to make people take notice and listen.

This is the place that it might be most evident

because it never says that any disciple

was ever later encouraged to really cut off a hand or take out an eye.

And for any people who still insist on reading the bible

absolutely literally, ask them about this part of Jesus sermon.

So if we can get beyond the hyperbole today,

we can actually get to the message that Jesus was giving

And the message is actually pretty good news believe it or not.

Because if we can get deep inside,

what Jesus saying is that God cares about our relationships.

By Jesus time, God did not have a very good reputation

With the temple’s demands of money and goods,

the prevailing image of God was of a creator

who wanted more and more offerings

For anyone who didn’t follow the law, even more offerings.

God was a dispenser of blessings for those people

who gave more. And punishments for those who didn’t.

Although the Old Testament does not lead to this understanding,

most people didn’t read or didn’t have time to study

and trusted the religious leaders to interpret things for them.

God Sometime seemed like those Greek gods like Zeus who lived

 a royal life on mount Olympus
and just saw people as something to be used
for their own gains and entertainment.

Or God sometimes seemed only like a brutal judge.

Only there to give out punishments.

But Jesus is using his hyperbole here to say that God is not like that.

God is more complicated than that

and more compassionate than that. God is involved.

Jesus raises the stakes of the law higher each time,

not to show that God is more demanding, or judgmental

But to bring everyone in -- even those think themselves

better than the rest because they follow the 10 commandments

and give all the required offerings.

And also to change people’s understanding

of what God really cares about

And Jesus is saying God cares about us.

Not about offerings and filling the minimal requirements of some law.

But God cares about our little squabbles with our neighbor.
About our strained Thanksgiving dinners with our Aunts and Uncles.
About our marriages and our divorces

about the way we interact with one another.

The part in here about divorce is not to shame people

who have been divorced like some people use it for today,

but to raise the stakes for people then.

Men were dismissing their wives and
leaving them and their offspring destitude for arbitrary and petty reasons

and not losing any sleep over it.

They would just say, well I got a paper, the law says it’s okay.

But Jesus says that it’s not just okay with God.

Marriage is a serious thing to God,

dismissing a person with out support or care is not okay.

God cares about people.

And Jesus tells the people -

contrary to what the ones who were

running the temple were telling the people -

That your offerings of money and goods are not God’s primary concern.

He says, if you are giving your

offerings and not tending to your relationships -

forget about your offering and tend to you relationships first.

Your relationship with one another is more important than

your tending to the church,

or getting worship done in the right an proper way.

I’ll go one step further to say that Jesus meant that

Reconciliation and forgiveness with the people in our life

is our best offering to God.

So don’t just refrain from murder,

                don’t hold on to your anger.

Don’t just not commit adultery,

                don’t hold on to your lust for another person.

Don’t’ just follow the law on divorce,

                care for the ones you promised to care for.

Don’t just swear the right oath,

                let your words be honest and trustworthy.

Jesus is saying how we treat one another

is God’s most prized offering, not money or goods.

No wonder the Chief Priests

and the keepers of the temple wanted to kill Jesus.

It’s always amazing to see

from these 2000 year old texts,

even though some things are so different,

the main things have stayed the same.

 

We still struggle with friends and families and co-workers.

We still have trouble with our relationships

and then come to church and feel that those two worlds

have nothing to do with one another.

People still take relationships for granted,

Some people still thing that God is a cruel judge

with no compassion or care for us.

But Jesus is telling us different.

The God of everything,

the creator of mountains and forests and vast oceans

the one that whole governments and economies rise and fall before,

cares about our relationship with our brothers and our sisters.

About our fights and divorces, about our arguments and discussions.

And when we let God into our hearts and into our relationships,

Good things happen. When we ask God to help us forgive,

help us to reach out to people we’ve shut out.

God helps us.

It would actually be a lot easier to just

have a God who just wanted

a regular offering left on an altar.

But still and all, this is very good news for us.

God cares.

You Are the Light of the World

February 9^th, 2014

Matthew 5:13-20

This is the beginning of the second part of the

Sermon on the Mount. The “not as popular” part.

Right before this, Jesus has delivered his often quoted

Beatitudes or blessings.

Sermon on the Mount
Michael Brien

Blessed are the poor

Blessed are the meek,

blessed are those who hurt,

those who hunger for justice,

blessed are you and people just like you.

That part is easy going down so we hear it a lot.

Especially because the people he’s talking to are poor,

they are meek, they are hurt, they do hunger for justice.

They are told they are blessed.

But then the second part, if you are blessed, what are you supposed to do with that blessing?

Not as easy.

Now Lutherans don’t sit too well with requirements.
Maybe it’s our heritage of stubbornness –

we just don’t like to be told what to do.

But we can probably legitimately

 trace it back to our main uniting theology

that it’s grace and not works that save us.

In other words, whether we go to heaven or not

is not determined by what we do.
So when Jesus comes up with all of these requirements

it make us Lutherans a little uncomfortable.

But notice that Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.”

Not – “if do these things and you will be the light of the world.”

It’s light by faith all around here.

But then Jesus goes into what you should do if you are light.

 

Jesus told the people gathered around him,

You are blessed. You are the light of the world.
And because of your blessings, you are the ones who will lead.

You are the ones who will make a difference in the world.

The ones who will help people see the Kingdom.

The Pharisees and the scribes aren’t going to do it,

you have to do it, you have to be better than the Pharisees.

You are God’s hope. You are the light of the world.

And the people who were listening, we don’t know too much about them, but we do know that they understood darkness.

We do know that they understood how the system, the government, the religion the whole world was crushing them
with poverty, with death, with violence, with a lack of opportunity.

The darkness of injustice was their daily experience.

They longed for someone else to come in and make it go away.

But Jesus said you are the light of the world.

No one else. You are.

God said through the prophet Isaiah in the

Old Testament reading today,

“Why do you fast but you do not see?
This the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke.

Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, cover them,

and not hide yourself from your own kin.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn”

More requests. And God is saying it there too,

There is darkness, but

You are the light of the world.

And some things might have changed since Biblical times. We live in America, the land of opportunity.

Many of us can afford to buy our way into good neighborhoods and schools and remove ourselves from certain realities.

But the truth is, there is still darkness all around us too.

I had another sermon mostly written this week,

but I went to a justice ministry conference and I had to tell you what I heard. There were churches from Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma there and what struck me was that the stories in each of the cities

was so much the same,

I heard so many stories about Children – predominantly black males - being incarcerated and put in the criminal justice system with other violent offenders, giving them criminal histories that followed them forever destroying their future prospects for jobs,

military service, college.  And they were incarcerated

for non-violent crimes.

One pastor told the story of a young man who was arrested for domestic violence for throwing cheese fries at his brother.

Another boy, with his friends, had broken a neighbors window.

Now who didn’t do something like that when they were young?

Instead of getting a citation and having to pay for the window,
he was charged with “throwing a missile into a dwelling.”

I heard a story from Jacksonville Florida

of a public school system using a failing curriculum that was continually leaving children without reading skills and letting children fall further and further behind because the system’s superintendent was being paid off by the publishers of the curriculum.

He eventually joined the publisher full-time

after he resigned from the school system.

There were stories of people with mental illness

repeatedly going to prison instead of getting help.

Their families desperate

because there were no services available except prison.

I heard about immigrants in Columbus and other cities facing confusing and contradictory rules regarding ID and drivers licenses

being detained and penalized because of them.

 

I heard about predatory payday lending

places that in some states can charge up to 1900 percent on loans

they garnish wages and keep working people in desperate poverty.

These are things that we don’t hear about

in most of our circles.

But these things are adding up to darkness for people around us.

And we might think this doesn’t effect us, but it does.

It effects our cities, our schools,

it creates crime instead of eliminating it.

And even if it doesn’t effect us now,

there is evidence all around that the

middle class is disappearing in America.

Wealth is being contained by a select few.

And I ask, which end of the spectrum will our children

and our grandchildren end up? The super rich, or in the darkness?

The darkness is all around us and coming closer.

And if we’re waiting for someone else to come and fix it

it’s almost as good as giving up.

The light won’t just magically come to us one day,

And doing justice isn’t easy, it isn’t simple, it often gets messy,

But it’s God’s call to us.

You are the light of the world.

Now, one person can shed some light.

But we have a justice ministry team here at Gethsemane.

And we are part of a group of 53 Churches in Columbus called BREAD.

Maybe there’s some other effective way to follow God’s call to

do Justice but I don’t know about it.

And I know Lutherans don’t like to be told what to do,

but do something. Be in our Justice network.

Come to our Justice Network meeting on February 17^th.

Be on our Justice team, support justice financially

Say yes when someone calls you and asks you to show up

at the Nehemiah Action in May.

Be part of the light.

“This the fast that I choose:

loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke,

let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn”

Be the light that helps the world little by

little fulfill the laws and the prophets,

the hopes and dreams of God.

You are the light of the world.

We have been blessed. We are loved by God.

We have Christ’s light in our life.

We are the light of the world,

Let your light shine before others,

so that they might see it

and give their glory to God as well.