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“NO OFFENSE BUT I THINK JESUS IS WRONG”
Matthew 5:38-48
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
February 20, 2010
A colleague checked his messages one day and found a voicemail from his daughter. She was to be the lay reader in worship the following Sunday and she had read the text that she would read in worship – the same text that I just read from Matthew 5. Erin, the earnest preacher’s kid left this voice mail: “Dad, I’m the lector at church Sunday, and I have that passage where Jesus says, ‘Turn the other cheek.’ You know that passage, right? Do the other Gospels have that same passage? Is it different in the other Gospels? Could you let me know, because…no offense, Dad, but I think Jesus is wrong.”[1]
Erin is hardly the first person to question the meaning and application of this passage. I recall leading a Bible study on Matthew 5 and when we got to this passage, one person exclaimed, “That’s ridiculous. Someone has got to stop evil people or they will take over.”
What does Jesus mean here? What does Jesus want us to do when he talks about turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and loving our enemies? Are we just supposed to give into bullies or abuse?
Before we answer these questions, we need to pay closer attention to what Jesus is doing here. He begins with a principle well-grounded in Jewish law that everyone listening to him would take for granted: “You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” This fundamental legal principle meant that those injured by another person did not have a right to vengeance, that was to be left to God, but they did have a right to compensation. Lest you worry that there were a lot of eyeless and toothless persons walking around in Jesus’ days, this provision was interpreted financially – that is, someone injured had a right to monetary compensation in the courts.
But after quoting what everyone would take for granted, Jesus sets off shock waves by dismissing and setting aside this legal principle. For Jesus’ disciples and followers, another commandment supersedes “an eye for an eye.” What is it? “Love your neighbor.” When you stop and look more closely at this passage, you realize that in this part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, he is really preaching about what it means to love our neighbor. So, what does Jesus want us to know about loving our neighbor?
First, loving our neighbor means that we never try to return “tit for tat.”
“Why did you hit her?” “She hit me first!” “Why did you knock over his block tower? “He knocked over mine first!” How often have parents and teachers heard these charges and counter charges! And lest we think that we easily outgrow these childish sentiments consider the bumper sticker which states the philosophy of many people: “I don’t get mad, I get even.” This is the philosophy embodied in the principle of “an eye for an eye,” and a “tooth for a tooth.”
But for Christians, life is not a matter of getting even, according to Jesus, whether it is in the form of seeking redress in the courts or striking a blow against someone who first struck us. Christians are to be different. We turn the cheek and go the extra mile. Love is to govern our responses, according to Jesus, “at the expense of individual rights and prerogatives.”[2] We forgive and learn to live with an uneven score. We do not try to overcome evil with evil but overcome evil with good.
Consider a simple real example from ordinary life. In a dispute at a track meet one coach starts yelling at an athlete on an opposing team and at the opposing coach. Instead of simply yelling back, the opposing coach, a Christian, asks in a calm, but strong voice: “Why are you yelling at my kid and me? Am I yelling?” Like a transformer, he steps down the other man’s anger. Before long, the confrontation turns into a conversation and a compromise solution is found.
Too often Christians fall into the trap of tit for tat, treating others as we have been treated. If others yell at us, we often yell back. If others put us down at school, we want to find a way to put them down. What Jesus wants his disciples to do is to see how we can break the cycle of tit for tat, to throw a wrench in the machinery of retaliation, using love.
Second, loving our neighbor is not the same as passive acceptance of abuse and wrongdoing.
What often bothers people most about this passage is the suggestion that we must accept abuse or bullying. That is why the preacher’s daughter had to tell her dad: “no offense but I think Jesus is wrong.” But that is not what Jesus is saying here.
When Jesus says, in the translation I read today, “do not resist an evildoer,” he is using a word that has a military context. In other words, what he is saying is “do not resistan evildoer violently.” Jesus certainly resisted evil. As the Biblical scholar Walter Wink points out, Jesus is a great example of nonviolent resistance of evil: Jesus “resisted evil with every fiber of His being. There is not a single instance in which Jesus does not resist evil when He encounters it.”[3] He is not afraid to confront the authorities and challenge them. But he never does so with violence, nor does he ever ask any of his disciples to lift up their sword in his defense.
Each of the first three cases that Jesus uses to flesh out his theme point to a subtle form of nonviolent resistance. Did you notice how Jesus says, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek?” The significance of the right cheek is that no person then would strike someone with anything other than his right hand. The only way for a right-handed person to strike a right cheek is with a backhanded slap, a slap not intended to hurt someone so much as to humiliate them. A backhanded slap was a way to put someone back where they belonged, it was the blow of a superior against an inferior, a master against a slave, a Roman soldier against a Jew. What happens then when you turn the cheek? Then that other person must hit you the regular way – and hit you with the blow of an equal.
In the same way, to give your coat as well as your cloak to the person suing you would be to stand naked before him – and shame that person with the silliness of hisgreed. To carry the Roman soldier’s gear a second mile takes the initiative away from the Roman soldier. In other words, in all three cases the one put upon is declaring “his inner freedom from oppression,”[4] his strength rather than his weakness.
There is nothing in this text that means a wife must stay with an abusive husband, or a student must let a bully have his way. As any parent knows, true love does not let a child get whatever he or she wants. In the same way, love of neighbor does not mean that we have to let our neighbor get everything he or she wants. Sometimes, love sets limits. If we are abused, then we are called to do whatever we can to get out of that relationship – both for our sake and for the sake of the abuser.
What Jesus is calling us to avoid is fighting abuse with abuse, hatred with hatred. When Branch Rickey was asking the intensely competitive Jackie Robinson to avoid fighting back when abuse was heaped on him, Robinson asked him in response: “Mr. Rickey, are you looking for a negro who is afraid to fight back?” Rickey replied, “I’m looking for a ballplayer with guts enough not to fight back.”[5]
Third, love of neighbor is never merely a tactic or tool.
Some Christians through the years have misunderstood Jesus’ words by overselling the power and effectiveness of love for our neighbor. Love indeedis a powerful thing. We have all seen nearly miraculous changes in people who experienced the love of someone who really cared about his or her wellbeing – a wayward foster child taken in by a loving foster parent, a struggling student who turns around because of a teacher who cares about her, a man who grows into a better man because of the love of a woman.
But change and success is not why we love our neighbor. Love is not simply a tactic or tool, a means of changing other people and turning enemies into friends. No, the love of which Jesus is speaking is an end in itself. When we love our neighbor, we simply seek the welfare of that person, regardless of his or her response. We try to do good for them regardless of whether they show gratitude or change into the kind of person we want them to be.
And we need to remember, not all people have miraculous changes of hearts. Not all enemies are transformed into friends. The cross of Christ is a reminder of that. We love our neighbor, not because that is the best tactic, but because that is what we are called to do – and that is who God is.
Four, when it comes to loving our neighbors, everyone is a neighbor.
“You have heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” Jesus says to his disciples and to the crowd. “But I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Here is the real rub. We understand the need to love our neighbor, but we always want to know where the line is drawn. Who is the neighbor I must love, and who are the strangers and enemies I do not need to love? Jesus, however, removes any boundary. Our boundary of concern is not limited to our family, our church, our community, or even our country. With Jesus there are no boundaries. We must love even our enemies.
Does this mean that Christians can never be part of a military, never take up arms, no matter how evil or threatening an enemy is? That is an appropriate topic for a much longer discussion. But let me just say this. Christians of conscience can disagree on this point – whether pacifism is always required or whether there are some cases when the right thing is to take up arms to prevent attacks and damage to other neighbors. But however we are led by the Spirit in the exercise of our conscience, we are called to alwaysrespect the consciences of other Christians, always avoid hatred and vengeance, and always do what we can to work for peace.
But stepping back from the big issues of war and pacifism does not remove all of the issues. Each one of us has someone we find hard to love, someone who may make us angry, someone who has hurt us, or hurt someone we love. How do we live out Jesus’ words with regard to those people?
We recognize that the love that Jesus is speaking about here is not a feeling but an action. There are a number of Greek words for love, one for the love of lovers, one for the love of parent and child, one for the love of friends, and one for a special, self-sacrificial kind of love. It is that word, “agape,” that is used here.
Feelings may come and go, but agape love can be steady because it is a love not of feelings but the will. How do we love with agape love? Through our actions. By treating others the way we want to be treated, no matter how we feel about them. By seeking what is best for them – no matter how we might feel about them. By praying for them – no matter how we might be feeling.
Indeed, it all begins with prayer. We pray for them…
…And we pray for ourselves: that God would help us pray; that God would remove the anger and hate that we feel; that God would somehow plant in us the seed of love for them.
And when we struggle with hatred and anger, when we find it hard to love everyone, then we look to the cross. We look there to be reminded that God is love, agape love, not just for those who are good but also for those who are evil, “for he makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good.” We look to the cross to be reminded that Jesus died for all sinners, not only for ourselves, but also for those we hate. Finally, we look to the cross to be reminded that even when we fail to love our neighbor or our enemy, God does not fail to love us.
One time, the great scholar of world religions, Huston Smith, was asked to list the unique characteristics of each religion. When he got to Christianity, Smith simply said, “Forgiveness, Forgiveness of enemies. This is the very strange notion that makes the teaching of Jesus distinctive.”[6]
And if we want to be a Christian, this is what we are called to do – not to be like others but “to be perfect as [our] heavenly Father is perfect.” “Perfect” here means complete and whole. What Jesus means is that we are to love and forgive as completely as God loves and forgives us. This is the goal for which we are aiming.
“Impossible!” you say. Of course it is. On our own. But with God, that is a different story. With God, all things are possible. Even this.
[1] Greg Carey, “Matthew 5:38-48: Exegetical Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year A, Vol. 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 381.
[2] Carey, 385.
[3] Walter Wink, “The Third Way,” 1.
[4] Douglas Hare, Matthew, Interpretation Bible Commentaries (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 57.
[5] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 190.
[6] William Willimon, “Matthew 5:43-48,” Interpretation, January 2003, 63.