(Matthew 5.43-49 and Luke 23.33-34)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 34th Sunday in Ordinary Time: November 22, 2009
When I finished this sermon, I thought to myself, If I were sitting where you’re sitting, this might be the kind of sermon I’d dismiss. It’s based on two of the most impossible-to-follow statements Jesus ever made. And if I were sitting where you’re sitting, and heard this sermon, I might think, That might have worked for Jesus in the world he lived in. But when I look at my life, and when I look at how the world works, this doesn’t work.
Listen for a word from God.
Matthew 5.43-48
Jesus continued speaking to those gathered on the hillside above the Sea of Galilee:
“You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’
and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’
I’m challenging that.
I’m telling you to love your enemies.
Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst.
When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer,
for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves.
This is what God does.
God sends the sun to warm and the rain to nourish to everyone, regardless:
the good and bad, the nice and nasty.
If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that.
If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal?
Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
“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.”
Luke 23.33-34
When everyone got to the place called Skull Hill, they crucified Jesus,
along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left.
Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”
(adapted from Eugene Peterson, The Message)
On October 2, 2006, a 32-year-old father walked into an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County Pennsylvania. After having the teacher, visiting parents, and the male students leave, Charles Roberts IV shot the ten girl students. Then he shot and killed himself. A note he left for his wife talked about their daughter Elise. Fourteen years earlier, Elise had been born prematurely. She lived for only 20 minutes. But her death lived still inside her father. Seeing living, happy girls drove him only to a deeper darkness about the fact that Elise was not alive. In his note, Carl Roberts said to his wife,
I am not worthy of you….I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself, hate towards God, and unimaginable emptiness it seems like every time we do something fun I think about how Elise wasn’t there to share it with us and I go right back to anger (Jonas Beiler with Shawn Smucker, Think No Evil: Inside the Story of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting…and Beyond. Howard Books, 2009, p. 41).
Any school shooting makes news. But a CBS report the day of the shootings shows what made this school shooting different:
In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civil leaders for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims’ loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman’s family or threatened to sue.
But that’s not the Amish way.
As they struggle with the slayings of five of their children in a one-room schoolhouse, the Amish in this Lancaster County village are turning the other cheek, urging forgiveness of the killer….‘The hurt is very great…But they don’t balance the hurt with hate.’
In the aftermath of Monday’s violence, the Amish are looking inward, relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries….
‘The Amish neighbor of Carol Roberts and his family came by the house,… and offered forgiveness to the family…. A man whose three grandnephews were inside the school said, ‘I hope [the Roberts family] stays around here and they’ll have a lot of friends and a lot of support’ (Beiler and Smucker, p. 117).
A man stood next to the body of his 13-year-old granddaughter. Her siblings and cousins were also there. Though it was only one day after the shootings, this grieving grandfather told these young people, “We must not think evil of this man.” Not only did these grieving, stunned Amish refuse to hate. Not only did they reach out to the shooter’s grieved, stunned wife and children. These Amish were determined to make sure their children did not get caught up in the cycle of hate and retribution (p. 119).
Two weeks after the shooting, 100 people from Nickel Mines gathered. All of the families of the schoolchildren were there. And so were Charles Roberts’ wife, her parents, and his parents. They first spoke. They apologized for what Charles had done. And they shared their grief in the loss of Charles.
Then the families spoke.
“How are your children?” they asked Charles’ wife.
“How are you?” they asked her again.
And each of the families echoed the same sentiment time and time again: “We don’t hold you responsible in any way for what your husband did. We don’t think your husband is a bad man – he was just confused and hurt and troubled.”
One of the Amish men who had lost a daughter stood to speak…. “I knew who you were before,” the Amish man said slowly, with tears in his eyes, “and I always recognized your husband. But I never really knew you or your family. I want to welcome you and your family to come to my home any time that you would like. I hope this will start a firm friendship between our families.” And the rest of the crowd quietly agreed. Just two weeks after their worlds were shattered, these people committed themselves to becoming better people and better neighbors to one another in the future (pp. 166-7).
The millions of people who listened to this story of the forgiving Amish kept asking themselves, “How? How can they not hate? How can they not want revenge? And justice?”
The Amish would tell you, “We didn’t just decide to forgive. The Amish have been practicing forgiveness for 500 years. And for 500 years we’ve been trying to pass it down to our kids. Not just by talking about it. But by how we live.”
From the time they gathered in Switzerland in 1525, the religious ancestors of the Amish were persecuted. The state church demanded Christians perform infant baptisms. The Amish believed the person being baptized had to choose freely to follow Jesus. So, even though they’d been baptized as children, they performed a second baptism on believers. That’s why they were called Anabaptists. Second baptism. The state arrested, tortured, and killed these Anabaptists unless they were willing to turn against their faith. Early on the Anabaptists decided that their response to this very real persecution would be nonviolent, even passive, favoring the rewards of eternity instead of the temporary, worldly ways of self-defense and vengeance (p. 157). Our impossible-to-follow teachings of Jesus for this
morning – love your enemies and forgive those who do you harm – are two texts that shaped this non-violent, forgiving lifestyle the Anabaptists adopted and taught to their children and grandchildren.
Another way they passed on this way of living was through a 1000-page book called Martyrs Mirror. This book tells the story of their religious ancestors who tried to put these clear, hard words of Jesus into practice. By loving their enemies. By forgiving.
One of the most well-known stories from Martyrs Mirror is that of Dirk Willems. In 1569, he found himself being hunted down by the local authorities for being an Anabaptist. If they caught him, they would give him two choices: renounce his faith in the second baptism or be put to death.
They discovered his whereabouts and sent a “thief catcher” after him. He successfully crossed a river than had a very thin layer of ice. Looking back, he saw the thief catcher break through the ice and flounder in the frigid current. Though his escape was now virtually guaranteed, Dirk couldn’t let the man die. He ran back across the thin ice and rescued him. Instead of rewarding his rescuer by letting him go, the thief catcher turned him into the authorities, who eventually tortured Willems and burned him at the stake.
When Amish parents reads this story to their kids, they are “teaching them how to respond to those who treat them unfairly. And [they are] reminding them that even if a troubled man walks into a humble schoolhouse and kills one of [their] daughters, [they] can draw from the same rich reservoir of forgiveness that led Dirk Willems to show mercy to his own executioner” (p. 178).
What if we tried to take seriously Jesus’ teachings to love our enemies and forgive those who harm us? What if we decided to be a place where our children and grandchildren and nieces and cousins and friends saw us trying to follow this impossible way of Jesus? This commitment to refuse to hate. To release ourselves from anger, resentment, hate, or the urge for revenge despite the injury we suffered. To let go of hope for a different past (p. 178).
A man who was raised Amish and wrote a book about the Nickel Mines school shootings ends the book this way:
I often think about my own life, and what it means to forgive. I wonder if sometimes, when someone wrongs me, I hold on to that pain, almost as a monument to remind me how much they hurt me. Do I sometimes secretly enjoy those reminders, allowing myself the freedom to look occasionally on them and remember how that person was so wrong to do me that harm? The Amish were wise enough to tear down [the school where the shootings took place so it would not become] a “monument” that would remind them, every time they passed it, of thee pain dealt them by one man. Am I willing to dismantle those things that have caused me bitterness and pain?
What about you? Remember what the Amish said when they were asked how we should represent them to the press. All they wanted was to see this tragedy point people to Christ. Have you let the hurts you have experienced at the hands of others keep you from enjoying the abundant life God intends for you?
[Y]ou really do have a choice when it comes to forgiveness. You can wear your old hurts like a badge of honor, dragging yourself and others into the vortex of bitterness and anger. Or you can take the high road, the wise road, and, like the Amish, tear down those old strongholds, rake thee soil free of the debris that reminds you of your pain, and plant new seeds of friendship and grace. It won’t be easy. And it will take time. But if you let the new grass grow in your life, who knows?
Maybe your children and your grandchildren and even their children will follow your example.
It has happened before. (pp. 207-8).
Amen.
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