Text: Matthew 5:38-48Revised Standard Version (RSV)
Concerning Retaliation
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; 40 and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; 41 and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.
Love for Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
Once again, Jesus turns our world upside down. And, even though we have heard these words all our lives, we still might find ourselves wondering just how we are to deal with them.
It seems as though each of us stands convicted by our inability to do things like “turn the other cheek,” and “love our enemies,” to say nothing of being perfect as God is perfect. How can we possibly be as perfect as God? How can we possibly live by turning the other cheek to others who would do us harm? How can we possibly love our enemies? It just seems impossible.
And yet, there it is in black and white for us to read and digest.
But let’s take a closer look at the meaning behind these words.
First, that troublesome word “perfect.” What does it mean to be “perfect,” anyway? Perfection in this world is arbitrary. The ancient Maya thought that the perfect human head was one that was pointed – like one of the coneheads in the old “Saturday Night Live” skits. So they would literally squish their babies’ heads between two boards until they grew in that shape. In ancient China, it was considered a sign of beauty if a girl had tiny feet, so parents squished their little girls’ feet until they had attained that ideal of perfection. We think that’s barbarous – but in Victorian and Edwardian times in this country as in Europe, women wore horribly constricting corsets made out of wire and whale bone which crushed their internal organs – just so they could achieve an hourglass figure, which was considered the ideal shape for a woman. All of these were considered “perfect” – yet none of these practices is carried out today. Worldly perfection is a fickle concept and an unattainable goal.
But what about being “perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”? It will no doubt come as a relief to you when I say that the Greek word translated in this passage as “perfect” does not mean “perfect” in the way we understand it. The word “telos” (τέλος) literally means “(a) an end, (b) event or issue, (c) the principal end, aim, purpose, (d) a tax.”[1] As our old friend Professor David Lose puts it, “One key observation here: the word we translate [as] ‘perfect’ … implies less a moral perfection than it does reaching one’s intended outcome. The telos of an arrow shot by an archer is to reach its target. The telos of a peach tree is to yield peaches. Which means that we might translate this passage more loosely to mean, ‘Be the person and community God created you to be, just as God is the One God is supposed to be.’”[2]
That understanding of what “perfect” means for us helps a lot. It removes the unhelpful understanding of “perfect” we might be laboring under and replaces it with a “do-able” understanding of how we are to be “perfect” in the way Jesus meant – by simply being the persons and the community God created us to be. It’s not a “holier-than-Thou” moral perfection, but rather the perfection that comes from achieving the goal of being the person you were created to be.
Lose goes on to say, “Interesting. Read this way, Jesus’ words are less command than promise. God sees more in you than you do. God has plans and a purpose for you. God intends to use you to achieve something spectacular. And that something spectacular is precisely to be who you were created to be and, in so doing, to help create a different kind of world. Jesus calls this new world the kingdom of God – where violence doesn’t always breed more violence and hate doesn’t always kindle more hate. Martin Luther King, Jr. captured the logic of Jesus’ kingdom well when he stated, ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.’”[3]
If you look at this passage like that, you can’t help but feel energized and positively fired up! God is using us even now for His purposes! We are even now part of something wondrous!
And this is a lucky thing for us, because we still have the rest of this passage to deal with!
Last week’s theme was “how are we to live together?” This week’s is “what kind of people do we want to be?”
These two themes are intimately related. In fact, you might say that they’re two sides of the same coin.
“What kind of people do we want to be?” Jesus gives us a pretty clear set of contrasts to guide us.
The “lex talionis” or the law of retaliation was – believe it or not – meant to be a fair and humane way to achieve justice. This ancient law was meant to keep things from getting out of hand. If someone injures you, you injure them back in equal measure, but no more. You were to show restraint. If you intentionally – or even inadvertently – knocked out a person’s tooth, that person had the right to knock out one of yours, but not two or more. If you lost an eye, owing to someone else’s action (or lack of it), you had the right to take one of their eyes. You were not allowed to take both of their eyes. Nowadays we might say that we are not to indulge in “excessive force.” Professor Emerson Powery, of Messiah College in Grantham, PA, tells us that this was a law that “express[ed] a commitment to justice… And, it ensures that the penalty is not arbitrary, making the punishment more severe than the crime.”[4]
Be that as it may, it doesn’t seem to me that this law really worked all that well. We certainly don’t have any law like that on the books today. It seems too simplistic, even crude. I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that modern laws take much more into account than just the loss of a tooth, for example – in other words, they concentrate not just on the what – as in “what happened?” – but also on the why – the intent of the people involved. If a defendant, when asked, “Did you intend to knock out Mr. Smith’s tooth?” answers, “Yes, I did,” the verdict will likely be different than if he says, “No, I did not.” Our modern laws reflect the concept that “the punishment must fit the crime.”
Nonetheless, I don’t think I’m saying anything surprising when I say that even our laws today are far from perfect, both in the way they’re created and in the way they’re applied. And our literature and popular culture are full of stories of eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth revenge and retribution. Some of our most ancient stories – the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” “Beowulf,” and others – are based on heroes risking life and limb to get revenge on someone or something that had wronged them. Revenge and retribution are staples of TV shows and movies. Somehow that is what we call “the real world.” Somehow we expect that a world of bloodshed and violence, of inequality and suffering, is the norm. To go back to the fight that caused our fictional Mr. Smith to lose that tooth, we would expect that Mr. Smith would give better than he got! One tooth? How about three or four?
We live in a society of raw power: The one with the strongest fists, the best reflexes, the one who is willing to go to any length to win, is more often than not the one who does win. We revere the Golden Rule, but a glance at any given daily newspaper or any even fleeting glimpse at the TV news tells us that our ethics really are, “Do unto others first, before they do unto you.” If someone does something bad to you, finish them off before they can do anything worse. As Woody Allen once said, “Don’t get mad; get even.”
Jesus has a fundamentally different strategy for dealing with evil. His objective is to overcome evil with good. He tells us to do something that goes completely against the grain of our human nature – “But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” F. F. Bruce writes, “[N]ow Jesus takes a further step. ‘Don’t retaliate at all’, he says to his disciples. ‘Don’t harbour a spirit of resentment; if someone does you an injury or puts you to inconvenience, show yourself master of the situation by doing something to his advantage.’ … The initiative has now become yours, and you can take it not by voicing a sense of grievance at having been put to such inconvenience but by performing an act of grace. This way of reacting to violence and compulsion is the way of Christ … Jesus’s injunctions are not usually of the kind that can be carried out automatically; they often require careful thought. Whatever sacrifices he expects his followers to make, he does not ask them to sacrifice their minds. What they are urged to do is to have their minds conformed to his, and when careful thought is exercised in accordance with the mind of Christ, the resulting action will be in accordance with the way of Christ.” [5]
There is nothing at all easy about turning the other cheek. And then it gets even harder when Jesus tells us to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
“Love your enemies”? How
Again, F. F. Bruce helps us out with this by reminding us that nowadays the word “love” is pretty much always defined as that gushy emotion we feel for, say, our wives, or husbands, or children. That’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about here: “The love of which the law and the gospel alike speak is a very practical attitude: ‘Let us not love in word or speech [only] but in deed and in truth’ (1 John 3:18). Love to one’s neighbour is expressed in lending him a helping hand when that is what he needs: ‘Right,’ says Jesus, ‘lend your enemy a helping hand when that is what he needs. Your feelings towards him are not the important thing.’”[6]
The act of going that extra mile for someone we don’t like or who has wronged us frees us from the prison of anger we have made for ourselves, because we are always the ones who suffer from our anger, not them. We need to break out of that prison. It might take a while, maybe even a long while, before we feel a change in attitude, but if we persist in doing those good turns for others and above all keep them in prayer, that change will happen.
And this brings us right back to where we started – this is how we become “perfect, as [our] Father in heaven is perfect.” This is how we achieve our telos, and become the persons and the community God has created us to be.
No, it isn’t easy. But no one ever said it would be. Thank God we have each other to help us bear our burdens and to help us live according to our higher selves – so we can become the kind of people we want to be!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Strong’s Concordance, cited in http://biblehub.com/greek/5056.htm
[2] Lose, David, “Epiphany 7A: Telos,” http://www.davidlose.net/2017/02/epiphany-7-a-telos/
[3] Ibid.
[4] Powery, Emerson, “Commentary on Matthew 5:38-48,” http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=840
[5] Bruce, F. F., Hard Sayings of Jesus, Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1983, p. 69 (emphasis added)
[6] Ibid., pp. 72-73