We are continuing our series called The Story; God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. As you may be aware, the last few weeks we have been focusing on the New Testament portion of the story. Specifically the story of Jesus. The ministry and the miracles of Jesus. A few weeks ago, we touched on the first miracle of Jesus which was where, at the wedding feast in Cana, Jesus turned some water into wine. Last week we looked at how Jesus hung out with some of the outcasts of society known as the tax collectors and sinners. We know that Jesus performed a lot of miracles and Jesus hung out with people. When Jesus wasn’t performing miracles or he wasn’t hanging out with people, he was often involved in teaching. He was teaching in various places and ways. We know that when Jesus taught, he often challenged people to think about things in a new way. Today’s passage out of the book of Matthew, chapter 5 is really no exception. In this particular passage, among other things, he goes against the grain. He basically says if someone was to smack you on the face, you should ignore it. You should learn to turn the other cheek. So we are going to look at that portion of the story along with other portions of the story. A little bit of context is that this particular passage is found in a larger body of work called the Sermon on the Mount. It is referred to as the Sermon on the Mount because it is believed to be a sermon by Jesus or what some would suspect is just a series of sayings or teachings by Jesus. Whatever the case, it was given on the side of a mountain. Apparently, the crowds were following Jesus, and he decided to sit down on the side of a mountain and begin to teach the people. We know that in this large body of Jesus’ teaching there are a lot of good things. It is in this body of teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, that we learn about the beatitudes. We learn about the parables of Jesus. We learn about the Lord’s Prayer in this particular section. We also learn that the Sermon on the Mount is really a manual for discipleship because we learn so much about discipleship through the teachings of Jesus. In today’s story, what we learn about is really, when people are mean to you and insult you or even possibly try to do some physical harm that we are supposed to respond differently than the world. I am going to read beginning at Matthew 5:38 and read down through verse 48. (Scripture read here.)
I don’t know about you, but this passage is hard to swallow. It is one of those passages that, at a minimum, causes you to want to flip quickly through it and get past it because it is challenging us to behave in a different way. At a maximum, as a Christian, we may decide to just throw up our hands and say this Christianity is for the birds. It is just too difficult to do. As much as we think it is difficult to follow those types of teachings, imagine what the first century disciples experienced. This Sermon on the Mount was really very early in Jesus’ ministry. This group of disciples and followers that were with him were probably experiencing some of these teachings for the very first time. They are sitting at the feet of Jesus and Jesus starts saying things like turn the other cheek if somebody slaps you. Or if somebody takes your shirt, give them your coat. If a soldier takes you into service and makes you carry something, go the extra mile. I have to imagine the disciples were saying you can’t be serious, Jesus. Is this the best you’ve got? Because no one in their right mind would so such a thing. In fact, no ordinary human being could do such a thing. I suspect if somebody did say something like that, Jesus would give them a little reminder. He would remind them that as a disciple and follower of Jesus Christ, you are really not an ordinary person. You are an apprentice of Jesus Christ. As an apprentice of Jesus Christ, he invites them into a new way of living, a new way of being, a new way of acting that he would refer to as the kingdom way of living. He would probably remind them that when he spoke of the good news of the kingdom, he wasn’t trying to speak of the good news as if you die tonight you are going to heaven. That is indeed good news. But really the good news is that if you are going to live tonight and the next day and the next week and several weeks afterwards, you are going to be welcome into the kingdom of God right now. In other words, the doors of the kingdom are open to a better way of living at this very moment. At the same time, he would probably explain to them that the kingdom of God, as good as it is, it is kind of a wacky place to be because really the kingdom of God is kind of an upside-down way of thinking. In order to learn how to live in the kingdom, you have to sit at the feet of someone who understands what it is like to live in the kingdom and that person would be Jesus Christ. In other words, you have to sit at the feet of Jesus. You have to sit and you have to listen to Jesus. No matter how crazy some of his teachings are, you have to begin to trust Jesus and what he is saying is really for your best interest.
He goes into these strange teachings and starts off very simple by referring to this idea of an eye and a tooth. He says “You have heard it said ‘Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.’” He is referring actually to an Old Testament law. It really is the law of fairness. In other words, if you accidentally put out an eye or knock a tooth out of somebody, you can’t have them killed. It wouldn’t be a fair exchange. Eye for an eye or tooth for a tooth. Some sort of a fair exchange. Although Jesus would affirm that these laws are good in a civilized society, they really have limited value in the kingdom society. What he is beginning to do is imply that to live in the kingdom you need to put on a different set of glasses. You need to see things from a kingdom perspective.
Then he goes on, by using a wide variety of illustrations, and begins talk about what this kingdom way of living would look like. He starts off with a passage that talks about this idea of turning the other cheek. He goes on to say “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” A little bit of context here. We read this and we think maybe like a fist fight or a boxing match. He is not talking about a physical fight. What Jesus is referring to is an insult. Back in the day, if you were to strike a person on the cheek with the back of the hand, that was deemed a really grievous insult. When this happens, what Jesus is saying is you have three options. You can strike the person back, you can cower in fear, or you can take the better way. Just stand there and let them insult you even more. That sounds crazy and it sounds impossible, but again the person who is teaching this is the one who would later appear before the Romans and they would be smacking him in the face, and he would not strike back. By not striking back, he is diffusing their power and demonstrating that really he is the one that is in control. He goes on to unfold a series of illustrations. He talks about the idea that if you are in court and you get sued and somebody takes your shirt, then just give them your coat too. Then he goes on to talk about if you are walking along a road and a Roman soldier comes by and grabs you into service and says carry my backpack for a mile, when you get to the end of the mile, you are supposed to say something like can I take it for another mile. Then it is in Luke that is the parallel story he actually instructs the people that if someone is to curse at you, you are actually supposed to return the curse with a blessing. The words that put the whole thing over the top are the words when he speaks of the idea that we are to love our enemies. He goes on to say “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” This is way over the top. It is just unreasonable that he would ask his disciples and really us. To put it in modern context, it would be like you are at work and you receive an email from a coworker and it is very insulting. What you are supposed to do is ignore it or return it back with some sort of a positive thing. Let’s say you are riding down 65 and you cut people off on the road, which I am sure some of you have done because I have experienced it and I have done it myself. The person replies with a friendly hand gesture. You know what I am talking about because some of you have done that too. What he is saying is when you get to the stoplight, instead of honking on the horn or yelling at them just say God bless you. Or let’s say somebody at work is undermining you just trying to get your job. They are doing everything to undermine your work and to really destroy you and get you fired. Instead of retaliating, you go home and pray for that person. That is nuts isn’t it? That is the kind of stuff Jesus is asking us to do.
He has given a series of illustrations really that are kind of over the top. He is using a rhetorical technique called hyperbole. He is using exaggeration really to make his point and not only to make his point but to help elicit some sort of a response within us. When we give those examples, we begin to feel a little pushback within our heart because that is not the way we are wired. In fact, since we were little kids, we were not wired to be loving to people. We are wired to learn how to retaliate. If your brother or sister smacks you, what do you do? You smack them back. You are not supposed to, but that is what often happens. Or you are at work and somebody sends you an insulting email, you send it back. You insult them back. What about if you are at school and somebody bullies you, you bully them back. What if you are a nation and somebody fires a rocket at you, you fire back. Kind of what is going on in the Middle East right now. What Jesus is saying is this is not the best way to respond. I want to teach you the kingdom way of responding. As a side note, what I want to make clear, Jesus is not giving a new set of laws. He is not trying to replace the old laws to give you a whole new list of laws that you can memorize and try to do in every given situation. He is not doing that. What he is trying to do is give examples to show how his disciples, the followers of Jesus Christ, would normally respond or eventually respond given similar situations. They would respond in love.
About this time, I begin to feel a little bit of pushback from the audience mentally that this is crazy, Chuck. What are you saying? You are thinking about all these scenarios in your head. Well what about this? What about that? You may be thinking you are implying that I should be some sort of a doormat and let people walk all over me. The answer is no. The answer by Jesus would be no. In fact, if you respond in his ways, you are not going to be a doormat. You are probably going to actually be more powerful than your aggressor. Aside from that, Jesus is basically trying to teach you something. He is trying to teach you that when you encounter a situation where someone is mean or someone is abusive, you need to stop the auto-response that basically says when somebody does something mean to me, I am going to retaliate and I am going to seek revenge. That is what he is teaching you right here. That is all he is teaching you. He is trying to change your auto-response from revenge to love. If you begin to actually do the things that the greatest teacher in all the world, Jesus, says, he is pretty much saying that over time you will see something happening. You will see a change happening within. You will see something grow within. That is called character. Christian character. That is what you are trying to grow within. Over time, you begin to actually look and behave like Jesus. Like Jesus the one who hung on the cross, stared down at his murderers, and he asked God for their forgiveness because they don’t know what they do. They have no idea what they do. The people that are attacking you have no idea what they are doing to their own personal character and how they are destroying their very soul. You approach with grace and forgiveness. When you begin to do that, you not only look like Jesus, you look like the Father. You become sons of your Father in heaven. You look like the Father. You begin to act like the Father. In other words, you become indiscriminant in those who you love. You do not discriminate in whom you choose to love like the world does.
Jesus goes on to make this clear. He says “He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He being God. That is who Jesus is referring to, God the Father. What he is saying is that God’s goodness as expressed in creation in millions of ways, for some reason, he gives everybody access to it. He doesn’t discriminate. If you go outside, there are going to be mean people and nice people, and they both get to experience God’s sun. The physical sun. They both get to experience the rain that waters their garden. They both get to experience the breath of life. They both get to experience all sorts of God’s particular grace. I will be honest with you, there is a part of me that says I don’t like that. That is not fair. It’s not fair because we live under the law of fairness and reciprocity. Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. So if someone is nice to me, I will be nice to them. If someone is mean to me, I get to be mean to them. That is what we live under. But thank goodness God doesn’t live under that law. If so, very few of us, including myself, would probably not be standing around anymore. I am going to be honest with you, most of us, I would say everybody in this room, likely has a certain degree of mean streak within them. Some are very thin like a vein and others are as wide as their back. But given the right circumstance, challenge me later if I am wrong, even the sweetest people in this room, there is going to be a little bit of an attitude. A little bit of bitterness. A little bit of a need for retaliation or revenge to begin to come up. Thankfully, God does not deal with us the same way we deal with other people. Not only that, it is not just that God doesn’t deal with us the way we deal with other people. When we don’t choose to be different than the rest of the world, we miss out on transformation. The transformation of self and participation with God in the transformation of the world. We really do. The reason we miss out when we act according to the law of fairness or reciprocity or whatever you want to call it, we are no different than the rest of the world. We are really not.
Jesus goes on to unpack that a little bit more. He goes on to say “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? If you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than the others? Do not even the pagans do that?” What is he saying? He is basically saying even the mafia are nice to their kids. Even the atheists are probably very good people. They say hi to their neighbors. They say hi to the people they know. They hug their kids. They hug their wife at night. That is how everybody acts. That is the law of reciprocity. If you are nice to me, I will be nice to you. If you are mean to me, I will be mean to you. What happens when we adopt that type of mentality, we miss out on the character transformation that God is trying to do inside of everyone who would call themselves a disciple. As I said last week I think, when it comes to discipleship, if you really believe that you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, an apprentice of Jesus Christ, I hate to say it but you are expected to do this. You really are. In fact, Jesus goes a little farther. He says “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Then we read this and we say there is no way I can be perfect. This is just unreasonable. It is unreasonable because we are thinking about it in terms of sin. We are thinking about perfect as sinless. This isn’t what the original meaning is. It really is closer to the sense of maturity. It is really a sense of being a mature person. Specifically a mature disciple of Jesus Christ or a maturing disciple. In fact, I really like how the book by Eugene Peterson, The Message, says it. He says “In a word, what I’m saying is grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others the way God lives toward you.” He is pretty direct. He is speaking to disciples. He is speaking to every one of us that would call ourselves a disciple and saying grow up. Quit acting like a baby. Grow up and begin to live out the identity that you claim to be yours. The God-shaped identity. Live generously and graciously toward others. The exact way that God lives toward you. That is a hard message. It is a difficult message to actually put in place. Very extremely difficult. But I suspect that over time through practice, what happens is we find that, when somebody is mean to us, to respond in anger or retaliation to actually be the difficult response. I suspect when Jesus was hanging on the cross and he was looking down at his murderers and he said Father forgive them because they know not what they do, I think it would have been really hard for him to curse them, to spit on them, to yell at them because that was not who Jesus was. If he was able to do that, we should at least be able to eventually begin to do that.
What we find though is that I think people expect this to happen too soon. It is a process. It happens over time, not just in one sitting or two. It happens over time. The perfect example is Peter. He was probably the greatest apostle who ever lived. Peter was probably there at that Sermon on the Mount. He was a young disciple. Three years later he was sitting in the garden with Jesus saying I will never leave you or forsake you. Then all of a sudden the Romans come in and Peter takes out a sword and cuts one of the guard’s ears off. What does Jesus say? Peter, put away the sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. In other words, those who live with a violent attitude will die by a violent attitude. What we see in Peter is that it takes time. It is not going to happen overnight. The reality is even when you are doing your best at this thing and practicing this thing, you will probably only get it right about three out of ten times. That is 33%. Any baseball fans here? Is .333 average good? So good that you would reward them with millions of dollars. A .333 average. That is basically what Jesus is saying. If you get it right three out of ten times, you are doing pretty good by my standards. The question is how do we do such a thing? It is the same way a baseball player or somebody would do it. Be next to the coach. Learn from the coach. Go out and hit some balls. Go to a game and come back and watch the game tapes. Learn from it and go try again. It is really the same way for the spiritual life. Basically we sit down next to our coach, who is Jesus, and because Jesus is physically not here any longer, we sit and connect to his spirit. The Holy Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of Christ. We learn to present ourselves with the Spirit. To sit with the Spirit. To learn from the Spirit. Over time we begin to look and act like Jesus Christ. What I am talking about is a basic discipline called prayer. Basic discipline.
In fact, when I was thinking about the Vacation Bible School, the theme was about we are in a battle. We all sang the song. We should believe that we are in a spiritual battle for our very souls. As the week went on, we added different pieces of battle gear to our armor. By the end of the week, we had all our battle gear and the kids were thinking they were ready to fight this battle, but there was a missing piece. Probably the most important piece that came on Friday was the missing piece of prayer. Prayer is the discipline. Prayer is the activity that allows you to get into the presence of God and allow God to begin to speak to you. Sometimes we know what is right, but we just can’t do what is right. Because you are at this sermon today, you can all leave here knowing what is the right way to act. The question is will you do what is right. That is the difference. Christians know a lot of good stuff. We can memorize all sorts of facts and answer the Bible challenge. It is really not that big of a deal. The bigger deal is when you not only know what is right but you begin to do something right. That comes through the basic, basic, basic discipline of prayer. Some of you think prayer is complicated. If you think it is complicated, all you have to do is take a passage in the Bible and just sit and think about it and let it filter through your soul and heart. Read it three or four times and think about it. Begin to see it. Begin to experience that whole passage. If you are brave enough, say God reveal to me where my armor may have a gap in it. Reveal in me where I have a little bit of a mean streak in me. When somebody does something to me, I just want to get even no matter what. People say God doesn’t answer prayer. Try that prayer and you will see an answer. I pretty much guarantee it. God does answer prayer. It is just that we don’t want to hear it. He will reveal to you the status of your heart. Not only that, what he may reveal to you during that prayer is somebody in your context of relationships that you are holding some sort of a grudge against. Somebody who may have responded to you in a mean way. Somebody who may have insulted you. Ask God to reveal that person to you. Take the next bold step, which is very hard, and choose to pray for that person. Really pray for that person. Pray for their family. Pray for their health. Pray a blessing on that person. Pray goodness on that person. Pray love upon that person. When you do that, the people may not be any different at all. But you will be different because you will begin to grow Christ’s character within you. By doing so, what will happen over time is that character will begin to not only transform you but affect others in your circle. Really that is all I have to say.
In closing, as we go into our time of prayer and Debbie gets up here and plays the music, I want you to do something different. Just close your eyes and instead of just sitting there and thinking about something else, try it. Try to think about the sermon. Think about the passage. Think about what the passage is saying. Think about what I say. Then ask God in total honesty to reveal any bitterness in your heart. Any sort of a vengeance idea or a feeling of retaliation or revenge that you hold in your heart. Take it one step farther. Ask God if there is someone in your life that really you are bitter towards. Have him show it to you. It may be somebody in your family. It may be someone in your school. It may be someone in the workplace. It could even be somebody in this room. What I would say again is that if you are experiencing that, I would say take the next move, and before you finish off your time of prayer, just offer up a mental prayer to God. Say God this is difficult, but I want you to bless this person. I want you to see this person as a child of God. See the status of their heart and just bless them. Pour out your goodness on that person the same way you continue to pour your goodness on me when I sin. That is what we are going to do. Let us pray.
