Sermon Sun 12 March wk28: The Law and/of love

Lent 2/
1st READING: Ps 112
2nd READING: Matt. 5:17-48

SERMON
Let’s pray:
May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of all our hearts,
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

The great Dame Edna Everage – cultural icon of Australia –
and no stranger to British shores,
has been known to sing a song, when in concert that shares the reason for her success:
telling her audience just why she’s done so remarkably well in life.
The lyrics go a little like this:
‘Many people ask me my secret of success:
is it in the way I speak,
or the lovely way I dress?
Is it poise or personality –
what elusive little facet?
Let me help you put your finger on
my single greatest asset...
It’s my niceness –
I pride myself on my niceness;
it’s such a gift without price to be nice, 
even when you feel blue -
‘cos I really care, and I’ve come here to share
my wonderful, wonderful niceness with you...’

She goes on to share that, of all the creatures on the planet,
‘Dame Nature’s blessed us alone with the gift of being... nice.’

Niceness.
Sometimes it’s very easy to think that the Gospel –
essentially the message of the good news of God’s love to, and for, all people –
is a message about basically... just being ...nice.
I suspect you know what I’m going to say:
No.
It’s not.
Now don’t get me wrong:
it’s nice to be nice –
but there’s more to the Gospel and to being God’s people than mere niceness.

Last week, we began to explore that section of Jesus’ teaching known
as the Beatitudes – and we considered the people who Jesus called ‘blessed’.
This week, the beatitudes move on to consider God’s law –
of Jesus being the fulfilment of the Law, found in the Old Testament;
of Jesus talking about righteousness,
and of murder, adultery, divorce,
and of the making of oaths.
Along with this, he talks of a tradition of ‘an eye for an eye’ –
this, from the Book of Leviticus –
and he then talks of a different way:
instead of the way of retaliation through violence, he talks of the way of love.
Sounds...nice, doesn’t it?
But when you tease this out a little, it’s no light and fluffy nice thing at all:
it’s something that takes enormous courage, strength, and an inner core of integrity.
But before we do tease this passage out, first, a little bit of background.

‘You have heard it said ‘eye for eye, and tooth for tooth’ –
Jesus is referring to Leviticus chapter 24 verses 19 to 20 which states:
'If someone injures a fellow citizen, they will suffer the same injury they inflicted: 
broken bone for broken bone, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. 
The same injury the person inflicted on the other will be inflicted on them.'
Basically, the Law’s saying that if someone does something to you,
you have the full weight of the Law behind you to go and do
that same thing right back at them – to treat them as they’ve treated you.
A law of retaliation – to satisfy the damage that you’ve suffered.
And, on those days when someone’s done some mean thing to you,
this law sounds pretty darned appealing, right?
You can find yourself thinking:
‘They did this, well, I’m going to go and do even more...
They’ll really pay for what they did, and then some!’
Except, that’s not what the law is actually about.
It’s an attempt to stop an escalation of violence.
If someone’s taken your best tup, you don’t get to kill that chap's sons.
The most you get to do is to take their tup.
It’s a mirror image of the crime committed –
you don’t have free reign to do anything beyond this.
Similarly, if someone picks a fight with you and ends up knocking out your front tooth,
you can go no further than knocking out their front tooth –
the law is there as an attempt to stop things spiralling out of control.
The law is not about revenge – it’s about justice.
And justice is important.

We all know the sting of what suffering an injustice can feel like.
Earlier in the year, I met up with an old high school pal of mine from Australia.
She was on a quick trip over here with her hubby.
Hubby had been duly sent off to clamber about old ruined castles
while we two caught up after a small gap of ...
well, okay, quite a substantial gap of many years.
Within minutes, however, the years fell away, and the stories and memories flowed –
and we recalled a particular incident at school, where we,
two of the really annoyingly ‘good’ kids,
found ourselves utterly unjustly accused of something by the Headmistress.
Let’s just say that, even though we finished high school in the 80’s,
the sting of just how wrongly, how unfairly, we’d been treated
was as fresh as it had been so many years before.
Which also made us laugh a little later.

Injustice rankles.
Justice is there to take away the sting.
However, here in our text, Jesus points to something more:
‘You have heard it said...but, I say to you... 
don’t take their eye out, don’t knock out their tooth’...
Justice is important –
but Jesus is calling his followers to do even more than
just follow basic principles of retaliation:
he’s calling his followers beyond that –
to temper justice with mercy, love, and, with a desire to seek peace.
Andrew Young, friend of Martin Luther King, stated:
‘If we continue to practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, 
we’ll eventually end up with a land of people who are blind and toothless.’
But it’s hard, isn’t it, when all you really might want to do is strike back?
While it may be nice to be nice
it’s hard, so hard to love –
especially those who have done some unkindness to you;
those who’ve done harm to you, or, to those you love.
Perhaps we’d rather Jesus didn’t ask us to do this.
Perhaps we’d rather Jesus kept these lovely ideals to himself;
perhaps we’d rather he was a little bit more realistic, times, after all, have changed.
We look around and, via our 24/7 access to news media,
we see and hear a constant stream of stories featuring
a whole host of folk around the world,
around our neighbourhoods,
who’s seeming sole purpose in life is to harm us.
We are shown potential enemies everywhere –
nations and groups apparently wanting to take us over...
take away our freedoms,
our rights,
our way of life.
How could Jesus possibly talk of loving one’s enemies –
and, of praying for them?

While Jesus didn’t have access to modern media,
he did have 24 / 7 access to knowing what it was like to see enemies all around:
Jesus lived and ministered in a land that was a Roman province.
He lived knowing the reality of what it was to have a
foreign occupying power controlling everything:
that bit about ‘if someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two’?
That’s a reference to Roman practice:
you could be quietly minding your spice stall in the market and a
Roman soldier was perfectly entitled to force you to carry his pack for him...
however, only for a mile, for that was also part of Roman law.
Still, that leaves your stall unattended while you carry a pack a mile up the road,
and then have to walk the mile back.
This could be demanded of you at any time, in any place –
it displayed public control over the population:
it was an act of power, of subjugation.
To this, Jesus says ‘practice the law of love’ to the Roman oppressor,
retaliate by overcoming evil with good.
Going the extra mile, while done in love, also had a knock on effect:
it shamed the one who had ordered the forced march.
The initial act of what was intended to be humiliation was changed –
the power dynamic shifted:
by freely offering to go that extra mile, you were refusing to accept the humiliation...
Jesus is not calling for niceness,
he’s calling for radical transformation;
he’s calling for a complete dismantling of justice based on retaliation,
replacing it instead with justice based on love.
Using love as quite a counter-intuitive way of protest.

The Gospel reading this morning formed the foundation for the
nonviolent resistance of Mahatma Ghandi’s strategy against British colonial rule,
and Martin Luther King Junior’s movement to dismantle racism.
‘Love your enemies’ is not an instruction to be passive toward cruelty,
rather it guides one to defiance,
to work against the system and cycle of violence or racism
or any other way people are demeaned and diminished by refusing to be part of it.[1]
King famously said:
'Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, 
adding a deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate,
only love can do that.’
Jesus’ instruction to turn the other cheek and not resist the evildoer
points to a different level of resistance, a non-cooperation in hate and violence.

Earlier, I said that walking the way of love took courage, strength, and an inner core of integrity.
In reference to the way of love, and especially with regard to loving one’s enemies,
the last verse in this section of the Beatitudes states:
‘Be perfect, therefore, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.’
Wait. Hang on...
Jesus is asking us to be perfect?
But... only God is perfect.
What’s actually being implied here by Jesus is less a moral perfection,
it’s about reaching an intended outcome:
as God’s people, our aim ... our intended outcome...
is to grow in the grace and love of God -
created in God’s image and, called to be who he created us to be.
In essence, Jesus calls us to ‘be complete, as our Father in heaven is complete.’
It’s a process – we are God’s handiwork, still being fashioned.

Can we do what Jesus asks –
turn the other cheek, love our enemies,
pray for those who persecute us?
No, not perfectly.
On some days, maybe not at all.
But that’s not really the point.
Rather, it’s about having the courage, the strength, the inner core of integrity –
that is, knowing who and whose you are –
that keeps you walking in the way of love.
It takes courage, strength, and that inner core of integrity,
to keep you from falling in with the crowd who are crying out for an eye for an eye,
crying out for revenge and retaliation.
Jesus calls us to grow...
actually, Jesus calls us to grow up,
and to move to that place of completion –
to go beyond the need to strike back, and instead, to work to change the system
that would have everyone blind and toothless.

The Psalmist says:
‘even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate person.’
The way of love underpins God’s justice:
it is the way that, bit by bit, the world is changed for the better,
that the world becomes ... brighter.
And, we start with our own small corner of the world.
How might you start in this, your small corner?
Perhaps, a simple way of beginning is to try to pray for someone with whom you struggle.[2]
It’s a small step, but, as God’s beloved, it’s a step you can take with God beside you,
helping to give you the grace, and the love, so that you can continue to walk his way of love.
Remember:
it’s not the Law and love – it’s not an option -
it’s the law of love.   Amen

[1 and 2] via David Lose at Working Preacher