The Life of This People Jesus Gathers: The Desire to Embrace an Enemy
(Matthew 5.9, 21-24)
A sermon preached by Dave Shull
Spirit of Peace United Church of Christ
Sammamish, Washington
The 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 25, 2011
The first in a series of reflections on what a community that takes its shape from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount might live like.
When they hear words like Christian or Jesus, a lot of people start running the opposite direction. They point to horrible things people throughout history right up to today have said and done in the name of Jesus Christ. And they don’t want any part of such violence and hatred and exclusion.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to his followers: you are salt for the earth; you are light for the world. And I think those of us who want to show the world a different way to follow Jesus have been a bit shy. In my youth I tried to help my mom make dinner. Whatever I was making called for a teaspoon of salt. I put in a tablespoon instead. Everyone who ate it knew it. There’s nothing subtle about salt. We are salt for the earth. We are light for the world.
In the coming months, we’ll take a slow walk through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And open ourselves to hear what Jesus says it means to be salt and light. I hope the Spirit can use Jesus’ words to break us open. So we can imagine daring, bold ways to show the world the life of this people Jesus gathers. So those who flee when they hear the name Jesus might see how we live. And see us loving with an risky, extraordinary love.
Jesus starts the Sermon on the Mount with nine statements that begin with the same word. It’s the word blessed. These nine statements are called the beatitudes, because beatitude is an English form of the Latin word for blessed. Examples of the beatitudes are,
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Everything Jesus says after the nine beatitudes expands on one of them. Our passage this morning is about anger and torn relationships. It expands on the beatitude almost all English translations of the Bible express as
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God
(Matthew 5.9, New Revised Standard Version).
Twenty years ago, a Palestinian Christian named Elias Chacour realized that the tone of the beatitudes doesn’t sound like Jesus. He says blessed sounds so passive. The people listening to Jesus give his Sermon on that hillside in Galilee lived under Roman occupation. The people Chacour works with live under Israeli occupation. Chacour asks,
How could I go to a persecuted young man in a Palestinian refugee camp…and say, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” or “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”? That man would revile me, saying neither I nor my God understood his plight, and he would be right.
Jesus doesn’t tell people who are suffering just to grin and bear it because God loves them. But that’s what Blessed are those who are persecuted makes it sound like. That they’ll be rewarded in heaven. So it’s okay if they have to live in a refugee camp now. It’s okay if Israeli soldiers shoot a desperate Palestinian father as he rams through a checkpoint because the only hospital that can save his dying daughter is on the Israeli side of the wall.
So Elias Chacour did some studying. Jesus would have preached this sermon in Aramaic – the day-to-day language of first-century Palestine. The English word blessed sounds pretty passive. But how does Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God come across in Aramaic? Like this:
Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called the children of God (Megan McKenna, Matthew: The Book of Mercy, New York City Press, 2007, p. 60).
That’s how to be salt and light for this world. To be grabbed by Jesus so we get up, do something, and move. Grounded in love, in non-violence, in extravagant welcome.
Filled by this new way of hearing what it means to be blessed, let us hear Jesus words about how those he gathers respond to anger and torn relationships. Listen for a word from God.
“You’re familiar with the command to the ancients, ‘Do not murder.’ I’m telling you that anyone who is so much as angry with a brother or sister is guilty of murder. Carelessly call a brother ‘idiot!’ and you just might find yourself hauled into court. Thoughtlessly yell ‘stupid!’ at a sister and you are on the brink of hellfire. The simple moral fact is that words kill. This is how I want you to conduct yourself in these matters.
If you enter your place of worship and, about to make an offering, you suddenly remember a grudge a friend has against you, abandon your offering, leave immediately, go to this friend and make things right. Then and only then, come back and work things out with God”
(Matthew 5.21-24, The Message ReMix © 2003 Eugene Peterson).
In this words, I hear Jesus saying: Look at your own anger, Dave. Look at your relationships. Look at who you demonize, who you curse, who you hate. What to do you see? If people who flee when they hear words like “Christian” and “Jesus” see how you respond to anger and torn relationships, what kind of Jesus do they see you following? Do they see you loving with an extraordinary love? Or do they see just the same old self-righteous anger and blaming the other for the torn relationship?
One of my favorite people who write about Christian faith is a Croatian guy named Miroslav Volf. During the Balkan Wars in the 1990s, Serbian soldiers killed many people he loved. So when he writes about how Jesus calls his followers to mend broken relationships, I listen to him.
Miroslav Volf has a simple way to see how well he’s following Jesus’ call to control his anger and mend broken relationships. He thinks of these Serbian soldiers … or the thinks of anyone he hates, and asks himself, Do I have a true desire to embrace my enemy (Exclusion and Embrace, Abingdon Press, 1996, p. 126)?
It’s outrageous. What kind of God expects us to want to embrace people who hurt us and those we love? It’s natural to hate such people. Why would I want to follow Jesus if he expects me to try to control my anger and mend a relationship with someone who’s brought so much pain to me and those I love?
Because hate doesn’t work. When anyone in the world still hates, there can be no peace.
I believe Miroslav Volf is speaking a dreadful, horrible truth. I believe Jesus asks the people he gathers to do whatever they need to do to nurture a desire to embrace their enemies. For only then can followers of Jesus call the world to walk the path to peace.
We who wish to follow Jesus must keep our eyes on him. We see him on the cross. When I’ve seen images of Jesus on the cross, I always see unspeakable suffering. When Miroslav Volf looks at Jesus on the cross, he sees sees
the arms of the crucified are open – a sign of a space in God’s self and an invitation for the enemy to come in (p. 126).
Volf looks at the cross, and sees Jesus opening his arms to embrace the people who put him there.
That’s what it means to be a peacemaker. That’s what it means to respond to anger with healing love. That’s what it means to mend relationships that have been broken.
Yesterday, I talked to friend on the opposite coast. The church she’s part of is going through a horrible time. People in the church are deeply divided. She said, “When it’s time to pass the peace of Christ, and say, ‘The peace of Christ be with you,’ now there are people I can’t embrace and offer those words to. And there are people who would always walk toward me with wide open arms and say, ‘The peace of Christ be with you!’ who now look at me and turn away. I’m so angry. I just want to leave that place and never go back.”
That is so real. I imagine all of us have felt that kind of anger and that kind of brokenness. All of us have had torn relationships we’ve had no desire to try to mend. There’s been too much hurt.
This week, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas executed three of God’s beloved children. Troy Davis Derrick O’Neal Mason, and Lawrence Russell Brewer were killed because they were convicted of killing. Has there been any healing? Are we any safer, any more just, any more loving? If followers of Jesus took seriously his call to seek to receive and nurture the desire to embrace an enemy, what could have happened?
And when I am ready to say Jesus can’t expect me ever to want to embrace someone who’s caused me so much hurt, I hear his words in this morning’s gospel lesson. And I think of a speech I heard five years ago.
Peter Storey is a Methodist bishop from South Africa. He served on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This was the healing process in South Africa that brought people who committed atrocities face-to-face with the victims of those atrocities. In his speech, Peter Storey said, “A mother spoke about how a police officer beat her son to death. The police officer was in the room. During the hearing, the woman whose son had been murdered by this man walked over to the table where he was sitting. She looked at him. And she said, ‘Your first name means blessing. God needs you to be a blessing. To be a blessing you need a mother. Now come here,’ and she opened her arms to embrace him.”
Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called the children of God.
Amen.
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