The Power of the Imaginative Story: Matthew (part 8)

At the end of Matthew chapter 5—the end of the first third of what we call “The Sermon on the Mount—Jesus says some things that tend to drive people crazy:

“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, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)

It seems difficult to conjure up warm and fuzzy feelings toward people who wish you harm. But that may not be the point of love, and perhaps that’s not the point of what Jesus is saying.

God is the central player in the generous act of love, and Jesus affirms that as he describes the way that God cares for all people through the natural order of things. Love for the enemy, like all of God’s love, is an ongoing activity into which we are called to participate. In other words, God’s love is a party in process, and we’re always showing up at a celebration that is fully underway.

I like to think of things like love and hate as spinning cycles or wheels. You can either break the spinning of the cycle or you can latch onto it and enjoy the ride. You can join into the cycle of hatred and it will keep spinning faster and faster. You can also break that cycle by not offering it the energy it demands. In a similar way, you can jump into God’s cycle of love, allowing it’s power to carry you into places you could never go to on your own power. And even though you can never break God’s cycle of love, you can certainly refuse to participate in it.

I believe there are a number of things that work this way, things like love, forgiveness, and generosity. That’s why what Jesus says at the end of the quotation is so important to us:

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

In the Greek of the New Testament, the word that we often translate as “perfect” can also be “mature” or “complete.” This is not an impossible call to strive toward perfection, but rather a call to participate in the generous, loving, life of God, to launch our lives into the spinning cycle of his reckless love—a love that has universal impact. Love finds perfection, not in our flawlessness, but in our vulnerable engagement with God’s love.

The Power of the Imaginative Story: Matthew (part 6)

Jesus shakes up his listeners by declaring that certain conventional and legal actions (or inactions) are not at the heart of goodness, not at the core of righteousness. He reminds them of what everyone already knows (“You have heard . . .”) and then pulls the rug out from underneath their feet by pushing them away from their perceived moral and ethical safety zones (“But I say to you . . .”). So:

Not committing murder doesn’t eradicate the internal anger that resides in one’s heart.

Not committing adultery doesn’t magically erase the objectifying of someone as a mere object of sexual desire.

Following the legal rules that allow a man to divorce his wife—thereby forcing her into a new marriage relationship in order to avoid becoming destitute—doesn’t wipe the slate of oppression clean.

These first three admonitions, while clearly not ignoring the fact that actions and thoughts do not necessarily have the same consequences (actually killing someone brings a more severe result than just thinking about murder), bring to the forefront two important emphases:

First, there resides in the human heart the potential for the worst of human actions. Therefore, all people stand together in a sea of dark possibilities. It’s one thing to make a right judgment about something, as in bearing witness to some observable event (such as, “Officer, that car made a left turn and crashed into the light pole;” or, “I saw that man strike that woman and run away with her purse”). It’s another thing to claim that the possibilities for wrongdoing and error do not exist in those of us who haven’t committed any crimes. Such a claim is at the heart of judgmentalism.

So, just because a person didn’t pull the trigger on the gun doesn’t mean that her inner anger, an anger that makes murder a possibility, has no unrighteous power.

Just because a man hasn’t cheated on his wife doesn’t mean that his constant lusting over his neighbor’s wife doesn’t have the potential to destroy lives and relationships.

Second, legal permissions and boundaries do not necessarily mirror what is truly right. In Jesus’ day, a man could divorce his wife, sometimes on flimsy grounds, as long as he gave her a certificate of divorce (most likely a legally-recognized document that freed her to marry another). To be a divorced and disempowered woman in that time would be a sure ticket to destitution. Jesus wouldn’t allow for such a legally protected action, as though the boundaries of the law eliminated the destruction that would surely follow.

I wonder how things would change for us if, when we heard that someone did something awful, rather than saying, “How could he do that?” we lamented, “I am capable of the same thing.”

I wonder how generous our hearts might become if, while respecting the reality of our national laws, we didn’t allow legal regulations to be the ultimate definers of righteousness? For example:

Do the existence of immigration laws and national borders mean that “neighbor” is defined only by the legalities of residency and citizenship?

When the courts make a declaration requiring obedience—whether related to abortion, marriage, immigration, discrimination, and any number of other important issues—is the conversation over for followers of Jesus? Or do we look to him and wait for him to say, “But I say to you . . .”?

The words of this sermon in the gospel of Matthew—typically called “The Sermon on the Mount”—have been studied, reflected upon, and cherished by people for centuries. But they are not necessarily words of comfort. They force us as readers to confront ourselves and challenge our own perceived securities.

There is a road leading down from a mountain in Mexico where I have ridden my bicycle several times. There is a big sign on the side as the road begins its winding, eight-mile descent. The sign reads, “Curvos Peligrosos.” Dangerous Curves.

There should be a heading at the beginning of this message from Jesus that reads: “Palabras Peligrosas.” Dangerous Words.

The Power of the Imaginative Story: Matthew (part 5)

In the movie Minority Report, the minds of three young seers are tapped to give future law enforcement authorities the ability to stop crimes before they actually happen. These glimpses into the future allow the police to thwart wrongdoing—especially murder—when the acts are nothing more than possibilities bubbling in the perpetrators’ minds.

Jesus said some startling things about guilt, sin, and righteousness—things that didn’t allow for the disconnecting of the mind from the body, of intentions from actions, of the state of the heart from the committing of the crime. He showed that the apparent outward righteousness of certain religious leaders—specifically the Jewish scribes and Pharisees—was a smokescreen that obscured the hidden realities of their inward realities. He wasn’t shy in his attacks against their hypocrisies and would say things like,

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth.” (Matthew 23:27)

As Jesus sat with his followers on the side of the mountain, he must have shocked them with the contrasts he made concerning what they had learned from their childhoods in home and synagogue against the deeper way of thinking about life that he was laying before them. He challenged them with seven brain-twisting examples drawn from the law of Moses and also from conventional folk wisdom:

Murder

Adultery

Divorce

Oaths

Retaliation

Love for the enemy

Giving of alms

Jesus brilliantly reminds his followers about what they have heard about each of these topics, and then moves behind the veil and reveals the heart that birthed each action. Are people free from the sin because they haven’t committed murder or adultery? No, because the reality of anger and lust in the human heart binds all people together under a shroud of guilt where the seeds of destruction and violation are planted, sometimes sprouting and sometimes not.

Are people safe when they build walls against one another through the legalities of divorce, the craftiness of contractual language, rules allowing for revenge, and the acceptability of hatred? Jesus collapses them all, and draws his listeners into ways of engaging with others in the completeness of love that comes only from God.

It was probably easy for people in Jesus’ day to allow social, religious, political, and military frameworks to provide artificial safety zones in which to live. It’s just as easy for us to do it as well. It’s easier to label other people as sinners when we deny the realities of our own hearts. It’s easier to allow the boundaries and borders of nation-states to define the word “neighbor” than it is to see all people as co-humans made in the image of God. It’s easier to crush others under religious dogma than it is to listen deeply and find where God is already at work in the lives of those who are not like us.

There are many areas of life and thinking where Jesus rightly declares, “You have heard that it was said . . . .”

It’s more important for us to hear, “But I say to you . . . .”

[See Matthew chapter 5 for the details of Jesus’ words to his followers]