Peace be with you.
Friends, we continue our reading of the marvelous
Sermon on the Mount.
We’re in the heart of chapter 5.
Can I just recommend to you?
Get out your Bibles.
Matthew 5, 6, and 7
is the central teaching of Jesus.
Probably what he would typically teach as he made
his way around the countryside, but it’s gathered here
in one place for our contemplation.
Here’s, I think, a key now to reading
the Sermon on the Mount: we can’t read it
as just one sort of moral philosophy among many.
So, everyone from Plato and Aristotle all the way up
through Kant and Hegel and John Dewey
have a moral philosophy
—here’s our understanding of how humans ought to behave.
Or they have a political philosophy
—here’s the way we think society ought to be organized.
That’s true, again, from Plato through Karl Marx
and everybody in between.
And they say, well, here’s Jesus’
ethical teaching, here’s Jesus’ political philosophy.
That’s precisely the wrong way to read it.
Because one thing you’ll notice,
I think, is no one sounds like Jesus.
And I mean ancient, modern, I mean
religious people, non-religious people,
no philosopher, no ethician sounds like Jesus.
Jesus, in fact, sounds a little bit crazy.
Name another moral philosopher who says,
“I say to you, offer no resistance
to one who is evil.”
I remember some years ago when Christopher Hitchens
was all the rage, the famous atheist,
and he just took Jesus to task for that.
Like what do you mean don’t resist evil?
That seems the worst thing you could possibly say.
If great evil is being done,
well of course you should resist it.
“Someone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn the other one as well.”
Name one other moral philosopher, ethician,
political figure who would say such a thing.
“Anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic,
hand over your cloak as well.”
This sounds like lunacy.
And then, press it, “You have heard it said,
‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you, love your enemies.”
Now see, mind you, Jesus is coming out of this
great Jewish tradition,
which is a very ethical, very morally astute tradition.
Would anyone that preceded him in his own tradition
have said something like that?
Love even your enemies.
No, I mean, love your neighbors, love your friends.
Stand to thwart your enemies.
This is a deeply strange teaching.
That’s what I want you to see.
Now, why?
Because he’s not trading in ordinary moral thought here.
He’s certainly not trying to lay out a political program.
Whether that’s Plato’s republic or it’s Thomas Jefferson’s America
or it’s Karl Marx’s Communism or whatever it is
—oh, then there’s Jesus’ political program.
Well, no, it’s not like that at all.
It’s something qualitatively different.
What’s the key?
Well, I mentioned it last week.
I’ll say it again.
“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
See, what’s Jesus interested in?
It’s not primarily making us ethically upright.
I mean, fine, of course, it’s better than
not being ethically upright, don’t get me wrong.
He’s not primarily interested in
creating the right political program.
Again, I’d prefer a just political program
to an unjust one,
but that’s not what he’s primarily interested in.
What he’s interested in is divinization,
divinization,
that we become conformed to God’s way of being.
The Church Fathers, I’ve quoted this before,
said “Deus fit homo ut homo fieret Deus”
—God became man that we might become God.
Extraordinary claim that goes right back
to the earliest of the Church Fathers.
The purpose of the Incarnation?
God becomes one of us that human nature might be
lifted up to share in God’s own life.
Okay, if that’s the game
—and not primarily just regular ethics
or ordinary politics—
if that’s the game, what’s God like?
What’s the nature of God’s perfection?
Well, here’s another clue:
“That you may be children of your heavenly Father”
—listen—
“for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”
The sun shines. Why?
It’s its nature.
That’s all the sun knows how to do.
Does the sun say, well, let me check first
if you’re worthy of my warmth and my light?
No, it just shines.
On good people, uh-huh, it’s shone on Mother Teresa;
but it’s shone on Hitler too.
He makes his sun to shine on the good
and the bad alike.
God’s love, listen now, is not something that is
doled out according to our categories of justice.
“Well, that person doesn’t deserve the divine love,
come on.
That person, yeah, that person does,
that’s a good person, she deserves
the divine love, not that guy.”
Well, see, that’s how we think.
That’s how we think and operate.
I—I’ll quote T.S. Elliot—
measure out my love with coffee spoons.
I’ll give a little bit if you earned it.
You were good to me, you were kind to me,
you were just to me, so I’m going to measure out
a little bit of my love and affection to you.
You’ve not been kind to me, then I’ve had it
with you, pal.
You’re getting none of my love and attention.
See, that’s our sinful sense of what justice is.
But that’s not how God loves.
Let me make a metaphysical point here.
God is not one being among many.
So all of us, we all influence each other.
We both move and are moved, right?
I influence, I am influenced.
That’s the way things work in the world.
But God is not a being in the world.
God is the creative ground of all that exists.
God is the unmoved mover.
He’s the un-caused cause.
See what that means.
That means his love is not predicated upon some
cause extraneous to itself.
I will love you because,
I will love you in the measure that,
I will love you under these conditions.
Well that’s how we creatures love each other,
but that’s not how God operates.
And Jesus is saying, I don’t want you just
messing around with Plato, Aristotle, Karl Marx,
or Thomas Jefferson, because they’re dealing
within a purely natural framework.
No, no.
I want you to be perfect,
as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Now listen again; he shifts the metaphor.
“He causes” —he, God—
“causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”
Now, mind you, rain is not a bad thing here.
These are desert people, so the rain,
that was great.
Like the years I lived in California,
we loved it when it rained;
that was a sign of wow,
finally, finally it’s raining.
So God makes his refreshing rain to fall
on those that deserve it?
No, he makes it fall on the just and the unjust.
Why?
Because that’s his nature.
God is love, we hear;
that’s all he knows how to do.
He doesn’t play the game of conditioned love,
love parceled out, love in bits and pieces,
love if you love me.
And we are meant to be perfect,
as our heavenly Father is perfect.
Okay, everybody, with that all in mind,
now revisit these particular prescriptions.
“You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth.’”
Well, yeah, that’s old-fashioned justice.
Hey, you harm me, I’ll harm you.
You’re good to me, I’ll be good to you.
You take a tooth of mine,
I’ll take a tooth of yours.
That’s old-fashioned justice in the sinful finite order.
But see, I say, love your enemies,
and “if someone strikes you on the right cheek,
turn and give them the other.”
Well, what are you talking about?
That’s crazy.
Yes, yes, it is a little crazy,
because I want you, Jesus says,
to be divinized and to love
precisely in the manner that God loves.
So someone wants to go to law with you
over your tunic,
well, that’s an act of great aggression.
The implication here, probably, it’s a poor person
that’s not been able to pay a debt,
and so he’s being sued for the coat on his back.
See, that’s a very aggressive move legally.
That’s like someone striking you physically;
they’re striking you here legally.
Someone does that to you, well what would we say?
Well, I mean, fight back, or defend yourself,
or get them back when you have a chance.
Jesus says, no, give him your cloak too.
God makes his sun to shine on the good and the bad alike.
He makes his rain to fall on the just and unjust alike.
And so, that’s how we should behave.
And then, I think, it’s really
summed up in this
—still after two thousand years—
still shocking command:
“I say to you, love your enemies.”
“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.’”
Well that was the old justice.
“But I say to you, love your enemies.”
Now, who’s an enemy?
An enemy is someone who by definition has harmed you;
that’s why they’re your enemy.
They’ve hurt you in some way.
So by a very ancient, deeply ingrained instinct,
we say, no, I’m going to at least defend myself,
if not strike back.
Love your enemy, will the good of your enemy.
Boy, that’s hard.
Everybody, look, I’m a sinner,
I confess it. It’s hard.
I think, right now, of enemies of mine,
meaning people that in some way have harmed me.
Yeah, I know.
It’s deep in my animal nature.
Think of it, we all came up from
the animal world,
and that’s deep in our instinctual makeup
to say, no, no, you fight back and you resist.
No, he says; don’t resist evil,
and love even those
—especially those— who’ve harmed you.
Can you see?
It’s the ultimate test of love.
If love is to will the good of the other as other,
what’s the test?
The test is that I would love someone who
will not answer me in turn.
That’s also, of course, in the Sermon on the Mount, isn’t it?
If I love those who love me, if I give a party to those
who will then give me a party in return,
well then I’m no better, Jesus says, than the pagans.
In other words, than those who don’t believe in the true God.
If that’s all I’m doing,
then I’m no better than the pagans.
No, no.
The mark of Jesus’ disciple is the one who can love
even his or her enemy.
Again, don’t treat this as ordinary ethics.
If you do, it’s kind of crazy,
and I don’t know one other moral philosopher anywhere
in the history of philosophy who says anything like this.
It’s being said to us not by Plato or Aristotle or
Thomas Jefferson or Karl Marx.
It’s being said to us by the Son of God,
who wants us not just to be just in some
ordinary human sense.
He wants us to be perfect,
as the heavenly Father is perfect,
the one who makes his sun to shine
on the good and the bad alike.
And God bless you.