"But I Say to You"

38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” ³⁹But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; ⁴⁰and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; ⁴¹and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. ⁴²Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ⁴⁶For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,^* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:38-48

“But I Say to You”

In our Sunday night Bible studies this semester, our UKirk group is focusing on different questions about faith—and if you know this group and how smart and curious they are, it should come as no surprise that their first question about faith is one of the big ones—predestination. We spent this past Sunday night reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapters 8-11. Paul’s words in these letters are fascinating, challenging us to understand that God is the one who chooses us from the beginning before we can ever know it, sending a Son to be with us and instill faith in us and bring us to salvation—and that our faith means nothing if we just say fancy words about Christ without doing whatever we can to show Christ’s love to the neighbors and strangers in our midst. Paul’s words in Romans are deep and challenging, inspiring, but sometimes seemingly contradictory to each other. We discussed what we do when we read things in the Bible that contradict each other, talked about how we go about interpreting the Bible for ourselves and our communities. One of our students said, that when the Bible seems to contradict itself, she turns to the words of Christ in the gospels to discern the answer, to the sermons he preaches, the commands he gives to his followers, discovers how he lives his words out as he heals and listens and calls—all of the ways he shows God’s great love to each of us.

I’ve been thinking about that so much this week as I’ve studied today’s lectionary texts, thinking about Jesus’ words to all of us, thinking about how we turn to what Jesus said and what he did as we search for answers in the midst of today’s world. For the past several weeks, we have been reading from Matthew’s Gospel in our lectionary, specifically Jesus’ sermon on the mount. This sermon is so beautiful, so challenging, so revolutionary—both in its time and in ours. As the fifth chapter of Matthew begins, Jesus reaches out to his followers and all who are gathered there, reaching out to all of us, to share about God’s great love with us, to nurture us, to challenge us. He sits down and begins teaching, saying that God’s blessing of love comes to us when we are poor in spirit, when we are mourning, when we are meek and humble. He says that God’s great love for us comes as we are searching for ways to heal through righteousness, to love with mercy, when we seek to be pure in heart as peacemakers in the world, and especially when we suffer because of it. Jesus tells us about God’s love in this part of his sermon, calling us to rejoice and be glad.

Jesus teaches us about how greatly God loves us and then calls us to go out into the world and show God’s love to others. “You are the salt of the earth,” he tells those gathered there, says to us. “You are the light of the world, so let your light shine before others and before your God in heaven.” Jesus teaches and reminds us that we are called to be salt to the earth, to give the world preservation, to give it the flavor of life; he teaches and reminds us that we are light, called to be light to each other, called to give light to the world.

Through Jesus’ words on the mountain, we are reminded that God loves us no matter what is happening, no matter what we are going through. Because we have been given God’s amazing love, Jesus calls us to shine our light before others. And in this last part of Matthew’s 5^th chapter, we are called and shown how to go out into the world, what to do—we are shown how to treat others, how to live in community together. We are told how to interpret some of the toughest questions, told how to act in love when the world, especially when the world feels like it is full of questions and contradictions.

Jesus pretty much lays it out for us, not leaving much doubt:

“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 and evildoer…if anyone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other also.’”

“…if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.”

“…if anyone forces you to go one mile, go for the second mile.”

“Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”

Love your enemy. Pray for those who persecute you. Love those who love you—and those who don’t. Greet your brothers and sisters, but don’t just stop there. Love the stranger, the alien, the refugee in your midst.

“You have heard that it was said, but I say to you.” Jesus preaches an amazing sermon here, calling us to act, calling us to reach out to friends and strangers—and enemies—alike, calling us to turn the other cheek and give what we have. Jesus shows us a portrait of God and God’s great love for us, teaching us what it is like to live in God’s kingdom, God’s community. When we live as people who have been created and called and saved, we love without reservation and we think of others first before we ever consider ourselves.

“You have heard that it was said, but I say to you.” In God’s kingdom, we act out love and welcome everyone, friend, stranger, or enemy, as a sister or brother in Christ. In God’s kingdom, we have a great capacity for love, empowered by God’s love for us, love that in unselfish and kind and giving. In God’s community, we can forgive those who have hurt us or persecuted us or broken us.

“You have heard that it was said, but I say to you.” In God’s kingdom, we are called to give what we have to those who have little or nothing. In Jesus’ sermon to us, he shows us his ultimate hope for us—that we will live in God’s community together, and that because of God’s love, we will love each other without even giving it a second thought—that it will become our way of life.

When I took a week of study leave last month, I took two books with me I have been intending to read for a while. One was Just Mercy, Auburn University’s common book about racial injustice and the death penalty. It is both fascinating and very hard to read, and I hope you will all pick up a copy and read it. The second book is called The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be a Christian. It is written by a minister and author named Brian McLaren. In the book, he talks about how people, particularly younger folks, are leaving the Christian faith in great numbers because, simply put, they do not feel that Christians are modeling their Christ and living out his love in the world. In the book, McLaren talks about Jesus’ sermon on the mount, reminding us that Jesus’ emphasis has always been the ethic of love, reminding us that, no matter what, in every situation, Jesus calls us to love. He writes:

Of the many radical things said and done by Jesus, his unflinching emphasis on love was most radical of all. Love was the greatest commandment, he said. It was his new commandment, his prime directive—love for God, love for self, for neighbor, for stranger, for alien, for outsider, for outcast, and even for enemy, as he himself modeled. The new commandment of love meant that neither beliefs nor words, neither taboos, systems, structures nor the labels that enshrined them mattered most. Love decentered everything else; love relativized everything else; love took priority over everything else—everything. In the Sermon on the Mount…Jesus makes this audacious statement: God generously showers both the good and the evil with rain and sun. In other words, God love is completely nondiscriminatory: God loves us not because we are so deserving and lovable, but because God is so loving, without limitation or discrimination. This nondiscriminatory love, Jesus says, is the true perfection, the true maturity toward which we should aspire: to be perfect as God is perfect is to love without discrimination because that is how God loves.

McLaren speaks beautifully about Christ’s ethic of love. “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you”: Love is the prime directive, the most important concept in the world. Christ’s commandment for us to love takes precedent over any ethic we practice, any questions we ask, any contradictions we might see. God’s love is complete and nondiscriminatory, so our love must be as well. This is the news we need to hear in this sanctuary today, in our homes today, in our country today. We are called to love without discrimination because that is how God loves. We are called to aspire to this perfection of love because God’s love is perfect. And the best news of all is that God is with us, with us in the flesh in Jesus Christ—God is loving us all along the way. So, what are we going to about it? How are we going to shine Christ’s light, the light given to us, in the world? Thanks be to God. Amen.