Hilton Head Island, SC – November 1, 2015
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 5:38-42; 43:48
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” – Matthew 5:44 (RSV)
The Wisdom Of Jesus: Adversaries
Today I am starting a series of sermons on The Wisdom of Jesus. It will continue periodically for several months. In order to understand what that general theme connotes, we need to know something about that section of the Hebrew Bible, which we Christians call “the Old Testament,” that is known as The Wisdom Literature.
Over many centuries leading up to the time of Jesus, the Hebrew scriptures eventually came to be grouped into certain categories. The first five books -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy -- were called the Torah. That is a Hebrew word which means “law.” The next group of books, from Joshua through Esther, were the History section of the Hebrew Bible. The next five books are the Wisdom Literature, and I will come back to that. The final group is the Prophets, of which there are seventeen books.
The five books in the Wisdom section are Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon, or the Song of Songs as it is sometimes called. (By the way, I question whether the Song of Solomon should ever have made the final cut. A sizeable portion of it is virtually X-rated. But they didn’t ask my opinion, even though, on that as on many other things, I have one.)
Old Testament scholars say that no one can be certain who actually wrote everything in the Wisdom Literature. The Book of Job is very old; on that nearly all scholars agree. But they don’t concur on who wrote it. Various Psalms, but not all Psalms, are claimed in the superscriptions at the head of these Psalms to have been written by various people, King David being the most prolific alleged writer. Proverbs and the Song of Solomon are said at the beginning of each book to have been written by King Solomon, but apparently few experts believe Solomon was the actual author. In the first verse of Ecclesiastes it says this: “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.” That sounds like it should be Solomon, who was the son of David, and was king in Jerusalem. However, the writing style is very different from either the Proverbs or the Song of Songs, which purportedly also were written by Solomon. Therefore, the scholars say the author was the man called in Hebrew Koheleth, which means “Preacher.”
Our responsive reading this morning was from the 16th chapter of Proverbs. The first verse that was read tells why the subject of “wisdom” was held in such esteem by the Jews. “To get wisdom is better than gold; to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.” Some proverbs are easily remembered. “A fool and his gold are soon parted.” “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Suffice it to say that the Israelites (or the Jews) greatly valued the pearls of wisdom which were written in the five Wisdom books. They were not the Torah, nor History, nor the Prophets. But they were lessons for life which were believed to apply to everyone in every age. They were timeless truths, permanent instructions, perpetual pericopes of precious nuggets which were intended to have relevance for all peoples in every culture. We all need to be exposed to the wisdom of the sages, and the Wisdom Literature provides literally thousands of pithy examples of wisdom. There is a lot more to be known about the background of the biblical Wisdom Literature, but for our purposes, that is all you’re going to know on earth, and all you need to know, as John Keats might have said, and did, but in quite a different context.
Jesus of Nazareth is perceived by Christians to be the embodiment of many things. To many he was and is the Incarnation, “God in the Flesh.” He is the Son of God, the Word of God, the Lamb of God, the Savior, and the Redeemer.
In addition, however, Jesus also was a Man of Wisdom in the same tradition as the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible. His observations about life and about how it should be lived are invaluable to anyone who wants to live life as wisely and as productively as possible. But instead of having a collection of the wisdom of Jesus all edited into a separate book, we find his wisdom sayings scattered throughout all four Gospels. There is a non-canonical gospel not included in the Greek (or the Christian) Bible called the Gospel of Thomas. It has no events or episodes at all, but only isolated sayings of Jesus, much like the Quran, which is the isolated sayings of the prophet Muhammad. Unlike the Gospel of Thomas, many of the wisdom passages of Jesus are prompted by incidents which occurred in his three-year public ministry. But many are not.
Today we shall look at two passages about how we should relate to personal adversaries. They are included in what the Church has always called the Sermon on the Mount, which is found in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 5 through 7. The entire “sermon” illustrates many examples of what may properly be called “Wisdom Literature.”
Matthew 5:38 quotes Jesus as saying, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” There are three verses in the Torah which essentially say that, not verbatim, but the idea is the same. It is what is known in Latin as the Lex Talionis, the Law of Retaliation. If someone knocks out your tooth, you may only knock out one of his teeth --- not two or three or more, but only one. If he pokes out your eye, you may poke out only one of his eyes, and not two. In other words, God’s law sets limits on retaliation. To put a spin onto the Golden Rule: Don’t do more harm to someone than someone did to you.
But that is not what Jesus said. “I say to you,” he said, “Do not resist one who is evil. But if one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
I shall soon address the major point of those words, but I want to note two small things. First, Jesus talks about turning the other cheek to him who strikes you on one cheek. Did Jesus use that word generically, to mean everyone, or did he mean a male, a man? Whatever he may have meant, it is a fact that males are much more likely to use force in trying to settle disputes than are females. Hormones may explain this, but they don’t excuse it, and I am certain Jesus would agree. Secondly, Jesus alludes to the fact that even twenty centuries ago, people went to court, using litigation to try to overcome their adversaries, suing over such relatively minor matters as coats. Litigation or adversarial law is more widely practiced in the USA than anywhere else, but Americans hardly invented it.
The primary point of Jesus’ wisdom here, however, is, “Do not resist one who is evil.” This observation had a profound effect on two giants of 20th century socio/political history, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Both taught their followers to engage in what is called non-violent resistance, or passive resistance, or peaceful or peaceable resistance. However it is described, the idea is that the followers of Jesus were commanded by him never to strike back with force against anyone who attacks them with force.
It is imperative to make a distinction here. Jesus is not talking about nations retaliating against nations. Instead, he is talking about individuals retaliating against one another. This isn’t about national enemies; it is about personal enemies.
The truly amazing thing about Gandhi and MLK is that they effectively used non-violent resistance against two formidable collective enemies, the British Empire in the case of India and unjust and discriminatory laws in the case of the American South. Both men were ultimately able to succeed because the national and systemic powers against whom they struggled had a degree of moral understanding and affirmation which many national enemies never possess. The Allies would have been totally unsuccessful in overcoming Nazi Germany or imperial Japan by using non-violent resistance. Non-violent resistance in contemporary Syria against the Assad regime would never work, because Bashar Assad has almost no moral scruples. Nonetheless, peaceable resistance was effective with Britain and in the American South, because there was enough of a moral foundation in those two instances that Gandhi and King eventually persuaded their adversaries to accede, however grudgingly, to their righteous demands. But in these verses we need to realize that Jesus was not promoting national, but rather personal, pacifism.
It has often been said that the limited retaliation code of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, when taken to its logical conclusion, leaves the world blind and toothless. And that, I believe, is why Jesus objected to its basic premise. It is fundamentally self-defeating. Violence against violence only produces more violence. The way to break the vicious cycle of physical assaults is to refrain from assaulting. Don’t hit back if someone literally hits you. Don’t hurl hurtful words against someone who throws hurtful words at you.
The format of the presidential candidates’ debates for both political parties is flawed from the outset. The media moderators invariably encourage the candidates to attack one another verbally in the hopes of gaining an advantage. Besides, the media love the brief sound bites of such attacks, and play them over and over again to make sure everyone knows who said what about whom. It is a tawdry spectacle which brings out the worst not only in the candidates but also in all the viewers.
It is impossible to deny that our nation is politically very polarized. Not only is that true in the halls of Congress but also in the hearts of the American people. Your primary enemies may be people of the opposition political party or persuasion. All of us, politicians and citizens alike, must learn to disagree more agreeably. Shouting at or past one another only makes the situation worse. We need to moderate our words to prevent even greater polarization.
There is an old aphorism which we all were taught as little children: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” The idea behind that catchy couplet is that we must learn to overlook derogatory things that are said about us. However, sometimes words are more injurious than physical assaults. Deliberate calumnies or ignorant allegations may actually harm people more than violent attacks. The destruction of reputations may be more damaging than the destruction of body parts such as an eye or a tooth. People accused of pedophilia who are not pedophiles suffer far more from the accusations than from their imprisonment. Marriages are damaged as much by allegations of infidelity when there is none as by the legal proceedings which lead to divorce. The marriage is over before the divorce decree is signed, if the purported offense is false.
And so we come to the second of our readings from Matthew 5. Jesus begins, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you….For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?”
Walter Zanger died a couple of months ago. Walter was the American-Israeli tour guide who led every tour group I ever took to Israel. He was one of the best friends I ever had, although he and I agreed on almost nothing of substance on almost any subject, including American and Israeli prevailing political policies.
Walter was one of the best-read people I ever knew. I remember him taking strong objection to Jesus ever saying, “You heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Walter insisted that in no place in the Tanach, the Old Testament, did it say that. I trust that is correct. However, it is possible that Jesus was familiar with an incorrect version of that particular scripture passage. That is certainly possible, because back then there were no mass- produced Bibles. Instead, every version of every parchment scroll of every biblical book in the Hebrew Bible was literally hand-copied. Perhaps some scribe somewhere had made a mistake in the version Jesus heard in the synagogue in Nazareth or elsewhere.
I agree with Walter’s objection. No genuine part of the Bible would counsel people under any circumstances to hate their enemies. Either Jesus heard a defective scroll or he misremembered what it said.
All that being set aside, however, the main point is this: the wisdom of Jesus of Nazareth commands us to love our enemies, those individuals who derive great pleasure in trying to get under our skin. We must prevent them from doing that by mentally setting aside their verbal assaults, and by giving them our best when they insist on giving us their worst.
To accept the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:38-48 is to experience in the fullest sense a “come to Jesus” moment. It is to affirm that Jesus is able to open our eyes to truths we might never discover for ourselves because we get lost in the messy business of everyday life. We cannot see the forest for the trees. Jesus is the one who shows us what we need to see. But perhaps even better than having a “come to Jesus” moment is to have a “Jesus came to me” moment. It is to discover that Jesus is able to penetrate through the armor we wear and the fortifications we construct around ourselves. When Jesus does that, we render ourselves vulnerable to the slings and arrows our personal enemies may hurl against us. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Whether it is the wisdom of Jesus or the wisdom of the Hebrew Bible Wisdom Literature or the wisdom of the apostle Paul or any of the other writers of the Greek Bible, biblical wisdom is intended to convince us that God wants all of us to live in harmony with one another and with the human and natural world around us. Nothing is gained for anyone when enemies are allowed or especially are encouraged to remain enemies. God’s way of our overcoming our enemies is to make them our friends. Therefore, “Do not resist one who is evil….Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Those are very tall orders. However, not to follow them is to live short and stress-filled lives. Practice wisdom. Never strike back at those individuals who attack you.