This sermon was written for the evening service at the Baptist Tabernacle in Auckland, NZ for 11th November 2001.

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Today is November the 11th – Armistice Day. On this day in 1918, the treaty of Versailles was signed ending the first World War. The treaty was signed at 11 o’clock on the 11th day, of the 11th month, so that no-one would ever forget. Stu actually suggested that I should preach until 11 tonight so that no-one would ever forget. You’ll pleased to hear that I have decided not to take his advice, and so will try and wind things up by about 10:30.

You have heard that it was said, `Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Mt 5:38-42)

Bruce spoke last week of how this passage has been used to justify Christian pacifism, and throughout the life of the church, there have a been a number of people who have taken this passage quite literally. Martin Luther describes the crazy saint ‘who let the lice nibble at him and refused to kill any of them on account of this text, maintaining that he had to suffer and could not resist evil’. At my last flat in Palmerston North, we often would have ant problems. We would have thousands of them swarming around the kitchen. One of my flatmates would sometimes find them in his bed. I don’t think he would have appreciated it very much if I told him that he was not allowed to kill any of the ants, because we had to suffer, and could not resist evil. The nineteenth-century novelist Leo Tolstoy, also took this passage literally. He believed there should not only be no soldiers, but also no police, no magistrates and no law courts. He opposed organised government because it maintained itself through coercion, and he condemned private property because he believed that ownership was secured by force.

The phrase ‘An eye for an eye’ is actually found there three times in the Old Testament law. So let’s take a look at one of them as an example.

If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse a man of a crime, the two men involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the LORD before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against his brother, then do to him as he intended to do to his brother. You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.(De 19:16-21)

It says that the judges must make a thorough investigation. The command ‘an eye for an eye’ is intended for the judges of Israel to use when sentencing those found guilty. It was not intended to be used as justification for personal vengeance. The command was given to ensure that the punishment fitted, but did not exceed the crime. It was designed to rule out escalating revenge. This is still a valid principle as it prevents an escalation such as: ‘I hit you on the nose. You cut off my hand. I kill you. Your brother kills me and my family.’ This law of judicial retribution forbids our taking the law into our own hands. Jesus was addressing here an invalid application of the Old Testament law. It was being used to justify revenge, and Jesus clearly says that this was not the intention.

Jesus then gives four concrete examples of how this principle can be applied. Firstly, he gives an example of loss of pride. According to Jewish tradition, and even today in the Middle East, a slap in the face is regarded as a particularly insulting assault. It’s a gesture showing the greatest possible contempt for someone. And Jesus said we were not to retaliate.

In one of his books, Nicky Gumbel tells the story of the nineteenth-century Cornish miner and evangelist Billy Bray. Billy was a really good fighter before his conversion. And soon afterwards, a fellow miner who had lived in terror of Billy before his conversion, made the most of his opportunity after it. He hit him without any provocation. Billy Bray could easily have laid him out unconscious, but instead he looked at him and said, ‘May God forgive you, even as I forgive you.’ The result was that after several days of agony of mind and spirit, the man was converted.

Secondly, Jesus talks about the loss of possessions. ‘And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well’. Now in those days, a cloak was an extremely valuable possession. Most people would only have had one, and you may recall in several passages in the Old Testament law, it says that if you take someone’s cloak in payment, you must return it each night so they could use it as a blanket. So here Jesus seems to encourage us to not only give up inessentials without opposition, but to add even that which we consider essential.

Next Jesus talks about loss of time. ‘If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles’. In Roman occupied Israel, the Roman soldiers used to force citizens to carry baggage for them, generally for about one mile. It was under this custom that Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry Jesus’ cross. Again, Jesus teaches us not to respond with a vengeful attitude, but to offer to do even more than was required. We may be able to draw a parallel here by considering any form of service in which we find ourselves as conscripts rather than volunteers. So when Jinny ambushes you to get you to help with setting up for the Christmas Xtravaganza, the correct response is to do even more than required.

Fourthly, Jesus gives an example of loss of money. ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.’ Again Jesus goes further than the requirements of the law, teaching us to put the needs of others before our convenience, and to be willing to suffer financial loss in the service of others who will never pay us back.

In each of these four situations Jesus described, our Christian duty is to so completely give up the idea of revenge that we even allow the ‘evil’ person to double the injury. And Jesus lived up to his teaching on this. The Jews spat on him, blindfolded him and struck him in the face, and then the Roman soldiers did likewise. They crowned him with thorns, mocked him, and struck him. And Jesus, with amazing self-control and love, held his peace. He demonstrated his total refusal to retaliate by allowing them to continue their cruel mockery until they had finished. And as Christians, we are called to follow the example of Jesus. In the words of Charles Spurgeon, we ‘are to be as the anvil when bad men are the hammers’. But there is a difference between being an anvil, and being a doormat. Jesus’ example does not show the weakling who offers no resistance, because he challenged the High Priest when questioned by him in court. His illustrations and examples instead depict the strong person whose control of themselves and love for others is so powerful that they absolutely reject every conceivable form of retaliation. He demonstrates the selfless love of a person who, when injured, refuses to satisfy themselves by taking revenge and returning evil for evil, but is willing to give to the limit – their body, their clothing, their service, and their money, in so far as these gifts are required by love.

"You have heard that it was said, `Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies[2] and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5:43-48)

Although the entire phrase ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy’ does not actually occur in the Old Testament, it was considered a legitimate interpretation of the Old Testament by the Jews. This interpretation was used to justify revenge. And so Jesus contradicted their interpretation as a gross distortion of the law: ‘But I say to you, Love your enemies’. As we see so clearly illustrated in the parable of the good Samaritan, our neighbour is not necessarily a member of our own race, rank, or religion. They may not have any connection with us. They may be our enemy, who is after us with a knife or a gun. In God’s vocabulary, our neighbour includes our enemy. Our neighbour is simply a fellow human being in need, whose need we know and can do something about.

So, how should we go about loving our enemies? What practical steps can we take to show our love for them? If we turn to Luke’s account of this passage, in Luke 6:27, we are given some ideas. "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you." (Lk 6:27-28). We should show love to others through our actions, our words, and our prayers. Our enemy is seeking our harm. We must seek their good. And we do this not by trying to manufacture ‘loving feelings’ about our enemies, but instead by acting as though we loved them. We should ask ourselves, ‘if I really loved this person, what is one practical thing that I would do about it?’ Once we have found the answer, go and do it. And we often find that as we start behaving as though we love someone, we actually come to like them more.

We should also express our love through our words we speak. If our enemies call down disaster and catastrophe upon our heads, expressing in words their wish for our downfall, we retaliate, by calling down heaven’s blessing upon them, declaring in words that we wish them nothing but good. We are to reply to insults with compliments. It is normally possible to find something positive to say. Proverbs 15:1 says: "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh answer stirs up anger". A gracious reply to a rude and aggressive comment can turn a potential enemy into a lifelong friend.

Thirdly, we are to pray for our enemies. Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by their side, and plead for them to God. This is I think the ultimate test of whether we can love someone. Are we willing to ask God to bless them with the knowledge that God may answer that prayer? Are we prepared for the blessing to be even greater than we anticipated? Are we willing to risk God opening up our hearts so that we come to love them even more? And again, we follow the example of Jesus in this. While he was being crucified, he said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing’.

So, we should be actively loving our enemies. But who are our enemies? Most of us probably don’t have too many people who are actively persecuting us, or seeking our downfall. Does that mean that we have escaped the clutches of this passage? Can we breathe a sigh of relief that obviously Jesus was not talking to us when he said this? Unfortunately, I don’t think we can. Our ‘enemies’ certainly would include those who are actively persecuting us, but I would suggest that we should be applying these principles to those people who cause problems for us. We should be loving those people who create extra work for us to do, who waste our time, and who generally cause inconveniences for us.

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a software engineer working for a company called Orion Systems that is based in Mt Eden. We mainly write software that is used in large hospitals, particularly in the US, the UK, Australia, and Asia. And one of the reasons that we have managed to expand so successfully is that we have some really good sales people. They could probably sell ice-creams to an Eskimo. They somehow manage to convince big overseas companies to trust us with writing their software, and give us large sums of money for it. The problem is that they also excel at selling software that we haven’t actually written yet. They show off Symphonia, which is our flagship product, as something which solves all your problems. Now this causes major headaches for the software developers, particularly my team. It can put us in tricky situations. There have been several times where I’ve had to go on conference calls knowing that if I was asked a particular question during the call, I was going to have to directly contradict our sales rep and make them look stupid. And another time two months ago, our whole team had to stop what we were doing for over a week to work on some new feature that had been promised to a customer without checking with us first. This really annoyed our team. Here we were, already overloaded with work to do and deadlines to meet, and some sales person, puts us another week behind schedule because he wasn’t considerate enough to check with us before promising this new feature. It’s the sort of thing that makes you tear your hair out. So, as you can see, there is more than a little friction at times between the development teams, and the sales team. Now I don’t think that they do this on purpose. They don’t try to cause us huge problems when they promise things to customers, and so I couldn’t define them as enemies in the normal sense of the word, because they are not actively seeking the downfall of our team. But they do cause major inconveniences for us, and waste our time. And it can be very difficult to love them, and be nice to them, knowing that they have just wasted a week of your time, and that they are likely to do it again in the near future. Now in these situations it is very easy to get really angry with them, and to treat them really badly, refuse to talk to them and so on. And unfortunately that is how I have acted sometimes. But what would Jesus do in this situation? Well, as far as I know, Jesus never worked as a software engineer and never had to deal with zealous sales people. But he had to deal with people who did more than just waste his time. While he was being crucified, he was able to pray: ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.’ With my situation at work, it is one that sometimes stretches my patience, but it also gives me an opportunity to demonstrate the unconditional love of God. And I’m sure that most of you have similar situations, at work, at home, at university, at school, or in other places, that force you to deal with people who do cause you problems. The challenge is to show these people love anyway.

In this passage that we’ve looked at tonight, Jesus shows us a progression from a negative to a positive. The first: ‘Do not resist one who is evil’, and the second ‘Love your enemies and seek their good’. The first is a call to passive non-retaliation, the second a call to active love. St Augustine said: ‘Many have learned how to offer the other cheek, but do not know how to love him by whom they were struck’. We are to go beyond non-retaliation to service, beyond the refusal to repay evil to the resolve to overcome evil with good.

In this passage Jesus points out that even the hated tax collectors love those who love them, and they greet each other. Jesus in effect asks us ‘what more are we doing than others?’. A greater righteousness is required. The life of fallen humanity is based on rough justice, avenging injuries, and returning favours. The life of redeemed humanity is based on divine love, refusing to take revenge, but overcoming evil with good. Alfred Plummer put it like this: ‘To return evil for good is devilish; to return good for good is human; to return good for evil is divine’. This is what God is like: He returns good for evil. Our Christian calling is not to imitate the world, but the Father. And it is by this imitation of Him that God’s love is shown to others through us. May we be people who show that divine love. Amen.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 12:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)