A New Path to Aliveness
Have you ever had a conversation with…say a 13 year old…about a responsibility. Maybe it is about cleaning their room. And your expectation is that you can walk through their room and not find any overt health hazards. And that expectation exists 24/7.
They realize that you’re not talking about a monthly or quarterly inspection. They realize instead that you really mean all the time. And you really mean that there should be no mold growing anywhere and no stinky socks creating a cloud of gas. All the time. 24/7. Without being asked. Without being told. Without being cajoled or bribed. Because that is the way it is. That is the expectation. All the time.
Have you ever had a conversation like that?
I surely have. Over and over and over again about a range of expectations and standards.
Grades.
Personal hygiene.
Ethical choices.
Health.
Dating.
You name it.
There’s been a conversation with an adolescent that went something like that
Today, we step further into the teachings Jesus offers the disciples on hillside in Galilee.
And I kind of feel like we are witnessing one of those moments – Jesus is making expectations clear in new and eye opening and overwhelming ways to his disciples. He is very carefully, very intentionally reframing the law (Torah) which would be very familiar and sacred to so many.
Sometimes this stretch of teachings is interpreted as a reversal or a rejection of Torah. But if we read carefully, that is not what is happening. There is so much more happening.
We’ve shortened the reading for this morning, but I encourage you to visit the entire text – Matthew 5: 17 – 48. The full text includes teaching on anger and murder, lust, marriage and fidelity, oaths, retributive justice and retaliation. So much.
Like a good teacher would, Jesus begins this lesson by setting some expectations and intentions. He tells those gathered that he’s got some things to say about the way scripture is understood and interpreted.
I note that 2000 years ago on a hillside in Galilee, Jesus was teaching about the interpretation of scripture to folks who would wrestle with what he has said. And here we are 2000+ years later still teaching, hearing, learning and wrestling the interpretation of scripture today.
Jesus sets a daunting expectation early in this text, a rubric for the lesson he is about to teach – not only must you be righteous to enter the kingdom of heaven – you must be more righteous than the Pharisees and the Scribes – more righteous than those who determine what righteousness looks like in action for that society.
Amy-Jill Levine, in her book about the Sermon on the Mount, provides a helpful description of what Jesus is doing here. Throughout this teaching, Jesus is acting as rabbi – a teacher who has pupils, some of whom he expects to follow in his footsteps as a teacher of his tradition to others.
Throughout this teaching, Jesus uses hyperbole – exaggerations not intended to be literal – to make the point. Thus we don’t cut of our right hand and throw it away because it is causing us to sin. Hyperbole is a teaching tool he keeps in his back pocket for these conversations.
As a rabbi, he is talking to his disciples about how they are to live – and specifically, he is setting up an ideal way of life for a community of his followers. He’s setting down a path for them to follow.
In the rabbinic tradition, Levine notes this particular set of teachings serves to “build a fence around the Torah,” something rabbis were known to do.
Jesus’ teaching here sets up expanded boundaries. Just like a fence around our house offers a hedge of protection beyond the structure of our house, rabbis teach boundaries that keep us from edging up against the law.
Murder is forbidden by the law, but Jesus teaches that we also should avoid anger – instead seeking reconciliation. Because angry words and thoughts lead to angry deeds.
Infidelity in marriage is one thing – but the thing that leads us to infidelity is the actual lust over something that is no ours. Therefore we should avoid lust. We can lust over bodies, possessions, food – lust is a root desire that can drive us to actions that are harmful and unloving.
As Brian McLaren suggests in We Make the Road by Walking, Jesus moves past the “doing external wrong,” to suggest instead that we should focus on “transforming” the “deeper desire” of our hearts that might cause us to do harm to another.
In the text you heard today about offense and retaliation – that tough text about turning the other cheek, giving up your cloak or walking an extra mile – Jesus is helping us see a powerful third way of being. Jesus is going further than building a fence that protects Torah – he is helping his followers imagine a completely different way of being in the world - a non-violent way in a violent world.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also…”
Jesus tackles a teaching from Exodus that was understood to create some space for acts of revenge against an assault. Jesus offers a different option for response. Rather than meeting violence with violence, he recommends we can respond with a kind of resistance.
In the context of Roman occupation, Jesus here is saying that when someone acts to oppress you, you have the opportunity to react in a way that highlights a way of love up and against their choice of oppression. This is hard to unpack. And yet I think it is possibly one of the most powerful teachings for us in this day and age.
This explanation comes from Walter Wink’s essay Beyond Just War and Pacificm: Jesus’ Non-Violent Way:
"If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Why the right cheek? A blow by the right fist in that right-handed world would land on the left cheek of the opponent. An open-handed slap would also strike the left cheek. To hit the right cheek with a fist would require using the left hand, but in that society the left hand was used only for unclean tasks. Even to gesture with the left hand at Qumran carried the penalty of ten days' penance. The only way one could naturally strike the right cheek with the right hand would be with the back of the hand. We are dealing here with insult, not a fistfight. The intention is clearly not to injure but to humiliate, to put someone in his or her place... A backhand slap was the usual way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews. We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would be suicidal. The only normal response would be cowering submission…
… Why then does he counsel these already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because this action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, "Try again. Your first blow failed to achieve its intended effect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me." ?
Such a response would create enormous difficulties for the striker. Purely logistically, how would he hit the other cheek now turned to him? He cannot backhand it with his right hand (one only need try this to see the problem). If he hits with a fist, he makes the other his equal, acknowledging him as a peer. But the point of the back of the hand is to reinforce institutionalized inequality. Even if the superior orders the person flogged for such "cheeky" behavior, the point has been irrevocably made. He has been given notice that this underling is in fact a human being. In that world of honor and shaming, he has been rendered impotent to instill shame in a subordinate. He has been stripped of his power to dehumanize the other.”[1]
Whoa. So that teaching about turning the other cheek, giving away your cloak as well as your shirt, and going the second mile – that is all about making a point about shared humanity between oppressor and oppressed. It is about not letting the oppressor off the hook. It is about not allowing someone to dehumanize you.
Jesus was teaching some complicated stuff. And we’re not done yet.
Finally, in our text today is Jesus’ extension of the law about loving our neighbor to include not just our neighbor but the person we understand as our enemy. Commentators make the point that there is no suggestion in the law that you should hate your enemy, just to be clear (remember that point about Jesus using hyperbole to make a point? Here he goes again). Jesus goes on to note that God makes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the evil and the good. We model the love God has for all of God’s creation by loving without judgement. As my favorite study bible notes say, “Jesus extends the command to love neighbors to everyone, an imitation of God’s indiscriminate love and life-giving mercy to all, both good and bad.
In the face of a society under pressure, Jesus walked with those who believed the right way was total compliance with the letter of the law and with the oppression of Rome. He also walked with those who believed the right way was a complete rejection of Torah and violent rejection of Rome by force. And here’s Jesus proposing a completely different way of looking at it.
This is the new path to aliveness that McLaren sees – a path that is not merely technical compliance with the tradition. It is an expansion and a deepening. This new path – this third way – is a way of love, honoring God each step of the way.
I want to name the good work I see in this community of living into this third way.
This third way undergirds our “Love One Another Ministry” efforts. It undergirds our claim that black lives matter. It undergirds our recognition that our LGBTQ+ siblings are formed in the image of God. It undergirds our understanding that we all stand in need of God’s grace and that grace is available to each of us.
I give thanks for all the work we are sharing to find this third way as we make the road by walking. Or as we run this race with perseverance.
As it is written in the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 12:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.
Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us…
May it be so.
Amen.
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