Hilton Head Island, SC – June 22, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 10:5-15; Matthew 18:15-22
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” – Matthew 18:15 (RSV)
Living Peaceably With Extremists
It is very likely there have always been extremists of various sorts: religious, political, cultural, social. They are the ones who insist that their beliefs alone are acceptable, that their narrowly-defined politics alone are correct, that their strict observance of certain customs and mores are the only proper ones, that the races or sexes or social classes should always be kept apart for the benefit of what they think represents valid social cohesion.
Individually, we occasionally encounter extremists. There is that neighbor who is member of a small Christian sect who is convinced she alone understands the Bible, and she constantly tries to convince you of the error of your ways every time you see her. There is that lunatic liberal who makes Elizabeth Warren or Chris Mathews look like hidebound conservatives by comparison, or that caustic conservative you have known for fifteen years who makes Rush Limbaugh or Rand Paul look like Elizabeth Warren or Chris Mathews by comparison. There is that angry man who insists they should stay by themselves and we should stay by ourselves.
Extremists are everywhere. They aren’t numerous, or else they wouldn’t be extremists. By definition only those who are on the extremes of any issue are extremists. If there were many millions of them, they wouldn’t be extremists; they would be centrists, because most people would agree with them. I am not going to address how anyone becomes an extremist; I simply note that many people do, and that’s just the way it is. But how are we to deal with them?
Before trying to answer that question, however, we need to observe that there are currently numerous examples of extremist activity through the world. Probably it is not more prolific than ever before, but it is certainly in the news headlines more than it used to be. Weeks ago Muslim extremists in Nigeria kidnapped three hundred girls from a Christian girls’ school in northeastern Nigeria. They have not yet released their captives. A couple killed two police officers in Las Vegas and then themselves because they were opposed to the government. A 27-million dollar private Creation Museum has been built in northern Kentucky. It has exhibits featuring Adam and Eve, and suggests, among many other unusual ideas, that tropical poison-dart frogs became poisonous only after Adam and Eve had sex. Who would have guessed? Only a certain kind of person could even conceive such a notion. The NYPD recently closed their unit which spied on Muslims, concluding it was a non-productive effort in extremist surveillance. As you are well aware, extremist Sunni Muslims have recently conquered many cities in northern Iraq, killing thousands of people in the process. The government of Uganda passed a law sentencing gays to life in prison, and it has also banned miniskirts, among other social infractions. Spain passed a law banning abortion under any circumstances after fourteen weeks of pregnancy. The government of Sudan threatened to execute a woman who is a Christian, whose husband is a Muslim. Thousands of Christians are being arrested, jailed, expelled, or killed in certain countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Thousands of Jews are beginning to leave Europe for Israel, Britain, or the US because of growing anti-Jewish sentiment there. A young American man became a suicide bomber in Syria, killing a hundred soldiers. And the list goes on and on.
How should we, collectively, deal with such situations? It is evident that our nation again is considering military measures to help stop the Sunni Islamist advance from Syria into Iraq. Having lost one war in Iraq, we seem intent on losing yet another one. But there is talk that we might consider joining forces with Shiite Iran to stem the tide. If that happens, it is an apt illustration of the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows. The Great Satan and the Shiite Islamic Revolutionaries would make a highly improbable team for fighting the Sunni revolutionaries.
But how should Christians who are being persecuted in Islamic countries act? Many of them are fleeing. Few remain to fight their adversaries. The percentage of Christians in the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa is steadily declining as extremists drive them out of places where they have thrived for generations. But when one is up against a huge anaconda which threatens to squeeze the life out of you and swallow you whole, it is probably wisest to move away, lest the snake does what the snake feels it has to do.
Does that represent cowardice? Is it moral timidity? What ought people to do in such situations? How should we combat extremists?
According to the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus sent his disciples out on their mission, this event occurred early in his career as a preacher and teacher. Everything about these marching orders suggests Jesus didn’t want them to be gone long. “Take no money and no extra clothes. If someone receives you warmly, rejoice; if not, shake off the dust from your feet.” In other words, you are not going out to have lengthy debates with skeptical people. You are going out to proclaim the kingdom of God, which was the essence of Jesus’ Gospel. Just preach it, and then move on to the next village.
Jesus already had theological enemies by Matthew, Chapter Ten. We read about them in Chapter Nine. From Jesus’ standpoint, his enemies were extremists. From their standpoint, Jesus was the extremist. They were convinced he refused to follow the laws and customs which had been laid down over the previous twelve hundred years. And while Jesus confronted his adversaries in all four of the Gospels, he did so only verbally and non-violently. He never lifted a finger against them, and he forbade his disciples from taking up arms against their enemies. “Love your enemies,” Jesus said. “Pray for those who persecute you.”
Too often extreme measures are taken against extremists. Do you strongly disagree with someone? Lay him out in lavender! Smite her with withering words! Fight them tooth and claw, because extremists are always dangerous!
That is true. Extremists are always at least potentially dangerous, because what they propose is always by its very nature extreme. Extremes in anything are enemies of the Golden Mean in everything. Rarely if ever is truth completely encapsulated in the statements or the actions of extremists of any kind.
However, nothing is to be gained by taking extreme actions against extremists. Such conflict only convinces them that they are right. From their standpoint, if they weren’t right, why would anyone fight them? In their minds, violence against them proves the correctness of the cause. If the US joins with Iran or the Iraqi national government to combat the extremist Al-Qaeda Sunni ISIS forces, it will result in the voluntary enlistment of thousands of other Sunni extremists from all over the Middle East. If misery loves company, extremism loves misery even more.
“Love your enemies” is not a winning slogan in politics or in warfare. “Pound your enemies” generates more enthusiasm by far. But remember this: loving our neighbors or our enemies (and sometimes they are one and the same) does not mean that God requires us to like them. Some people are very hard, if not impossible, to like. But to love them means to do them no harm, to respect them as fellow human beings, to refrain from hurting them in any way.
A few nights ago, Public Television had a two-hour documentary on the Freedom Riders in the early Sixties. These were blacks and whites, males and females, mainly younger but also some older people who rode public buses from the North into the South, seeking to break the customs which had sanctioned separate waiting rooms in the bus stations and separate sections for blacks and whites in the buses. The cameras rolled as these brave men and women were spat upon, punched, and dragged around like rag dolls. The racists who did this to them were unquestionably extremists, but the freedom riders never fought back; they never struck those who struck them; they never used violence against those who used violence against them.
And what was the result of their heroic efforts? Eventually laws were passed throughout the South which overthrew the faulty bromides of “separate but equal.” Prior to the Sixties and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the two major American races were separate, but they were not equal. They are still not equal, nor are Latinos equal to whites by most social measures, although the so-called Asians, which likely means what “Orientals” used to mean, have become equal, if not superior. Racism is not dead, but the extreme racism of the Forties and Fifties is no longer tolerated, even by most extremist racists. And those changes came about mainly through non-violent resistance.
As a principle, “Love your enemies” works. But it always takes time. Usually it seems to take too much time, but it does work. When Jesus told his disciples to get on with their mission and to do it quickly, he wasn’t organizing a long-term non-violent insurrection against religious or social extremism. He just wanted his closest friends to get their feet wet in the business of Christian mission. Later, after Jesus had been crucified and resurrected, they could take longer to do what they had to do, but a few months after he started preaching in the Galilee, he wanted them to feel what it would be like when they really set out, going and making disciples of all nations.
But what should we do personally when somebody becomes a genuine thorn in our side, whether or not that person is some sort of extremist? That Jesus addressed shortly before he went up to Jerusalem, and into Holy Week, and onto the cross. In Matthew 18 Jesus was speaking specifically to his disciples, and he said, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Mt. 18:15). Don’t turn it into a verbal tussle. Don’t argue it; just discuss it. That is hard, and definitely harder for some of us than for others, but Jesus tells us there is no point in turning differences into intractable disagreements. But if that doesn’t work, Jesus advised, then talk it out with two or three witnesses. And if that doesn’t work, take it to the church. Incidentally, that is only the second time in all four of the Gospels where it is claimed Jesus ever used the word “church.” He did so first in Matthew 16:18, where he told Peter he was the rock (which is what the Greek name Petros means) upon which Jesus would build his church. If the church couldn’t settle the dispute, then Jesus said we can treat the offender as an outcast, and ignore him. Frankly, I find it impossible to believe Jesus really said that, but that’s what Matthew said he said.
To my knowledge, no one who regularly attends The Chapel Without Walls is an extremist. Some of us are more “out there” than others, to be sure, but nobody among us is a violent or even a non-stop-yammering extremist. In any case, violence against extremism is not only wrong; it also never works. It is always destined to fail. Violence begets more violence as surely as manure begets weeds. Furthermore, loud verbal exchanges against extremists are likely to make them even more extreme. It is very hard to be reasonable with unreasonable people, but we must always remember it is also unreasonable to be unreasonable with them. We are all children of God, no matter how much we may disagree with one another, but God commands those of us who think ourselves to be reasonable to act reasonably with the unreasonable.
The quote on the front of the bulletin is by Brian Doyle, whom I have quoted before, and no doubt shall quote again. He is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland. It comes from a column in Christian Century called “Notes on loving your neighbor.” He is an outstanding lay theologian who makes his points with crystal clarity and a unique thrust. He declared that even Osama bin Laden, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin were surely children of God as much as any of us. He wrote, “(I)f you and I cannot believe that God made even them, breathed his love into their hearts as infants, gave them their chance to sing and share the Gift, then we are shameful liars. That is what Christianity demands. It is about love, period. It is not about easy love. That is the revolution of it, the incredible illogical unreasonable genius of it. It is about loving those you hate and would happily imprison or execute.”
Those are very tough thoughts for people who need to become very tough in loving extremists who seek to turn the world into their version of what they alone believe to be true. When the extremists in the other political party are driving you around the bend, when beyond-the-fringe loonies seek to turn the world into one gigantic loony bin, when religious crazies are at the gates of Baghdad, New York, or Hilton Head Island (but don’t worry; they are very unlikely to bother with us), ask yourself: What would Jesus do? Here is what he wouldn’t do: He wouldn’t strike out against them in violence, no matter how violent they might be; he wouldn’t trade insult for insult or angry words for angry words; he wouldn’t attack anyone who attacked him.
Reason is the best course of action against extremists. It alone will succeed, if even it succeeds. But bitterness or unkind words or violence cannot succeed. They are guaranteed to fail. In the words of the greatest man ever to draw human breath, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”