Sermon from Sunday, February 19, 2017

Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:38-42

You know that you have been taught, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”   

But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you.   
When someone slaps your right cheek, turn and let that person slap your other cheek.   

If someone sues you for your shirt, give up your coat as well.   
If a soldier forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two miles.   
When people ask you for something, give it to them.   
Don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you.

In the Sermon on the Mount and in his whole life, Jesus has a vision of how life on Earth can be, and how humanity especially -- we people, can be when we begin to realize and take seriously the unity we all have – the unity we all are together on the face of the Earth, as children of one God. 

What Jesus sees is more than just learning to get along, to accept and tolerate one another’s differences, and have everyone safe and secure in their own little area – inside the bounds of their own little circle. 

What Jesus sees is all the different pieces and parts of humanity actually coming together, inter-mingling, crossing boundaries and walls, connecting, learning from one another, and together growing into something new – a new body made up of all the different parts we are, all the different pieces coming together like the puzzle that we are so that we are able finally to see and enjoy the whole picture of what God has made us to be.

Jesus knows the things that divide us – culture and religion, age and gender, type of education, whether we are rich or poor, popular or lonely, our citizenship, our colour, whether we’re physically fit and able or not. 

Differences are always there.  It’s the variety of humanity.  Because how could the fullness and all the glory and truth of God be expressed in just one kind of person, be compressed into just one race or culture or gender or even religion?

But how can we start to live into this unity that we’re meant to be, and that we really are?  How can we cross the boundaries and take down the walls that so easily divide us into different groups and camps?

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus suggests some practical steps that can be taken.  They aren’t easy, but they are guaranteed to start opening the door on a new world – the kind of world and kind of people God intends us to be.

We’ve just heard one of the steps Jesus tells us to take:  “You know that you have been taught, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 

What does that mean?

And doesn’t Jesus agree with it, as a rational, sane, safe way of living?

“But I tell you not to try to get even with a person who has done something to you.  When someone slaps your right cheek, turn and let that person slap your other cheek – your left cheek as well.” 

Let me ask you … if someone slaps you or hits you, what do you feel like doing?  What do you do in response?

How does Jesus’s way sound to you?  What is he saying we should do?

Walk away and hide?  Stay there and let ourselves be beaten up?

Let’s think about the details of what he says. 

First of all, his was a highly structured society in which people were divided in very rigid ways into hierarchic classes – each class having a different degree of dignity and respect attached to it, and each class knowing exactly how they could treat (or mistreat), and be treated (or mistreated) by, people in classes above or below them.

Now imagine being hit on right cheek.  In a world where most people are right-handed, this most likely means you are being slapped back-handed by the person hitting you – in other words, you are being struck the way a person of a superior class would strike a slave, servant, or someone beneath you, or even a dog.  And isn’t that what a lot of hurts, a lot of slaps, a lot of insults and injuries and attacks are about?  About someone feeling superior to another, and thinking the other person, their ideas and needs, their races or their religion, or just they themselves do not matter, do not count enough to be treated as equal?

Now think of being hit on the left cheek.  That would happen in a case where you are hit by someone you are dealing with face-to-face, as an equal, disagreeing about something, and the other person gets so angry they just have to slap you … so they raise their right hand and slap your left cheek.

So, what Jesus is saying is, if someone treats you as being less than them, and injures or hurts or attacks you as though they are superior … stand up, invite them to look you in the eye, be face-to-face as an equal, and if they still want to hit you in anger, well, that’s their business … but you at least invite them to see you as an equal, and you treat them as an equal.  They live by a rule of hierarchy and superiority, but you invite them into – you confront them with, and invite them into a new game, with new rules – the rules of equality.

I want to tell you a story about something that happened last September in Edmonton.  Jesse Lipscombe is a black actor and entrepreneur, who was shooting a video about his love for downtown Edmonton, promoting the city, when he was interrupted (while shooting) by a man in a car stopped at a nearby intersection yelling racial slurs at him from the car – used the n-word a few times, yelling out “The … are coming!  The … are coming!!”

What would you do?

-          yell back, attack?

-          sue, lay charges?

-          ignore, walk away?

What Jesse did (I saw it in the video) was to walk, not run to the car where it was stopped for a red light.  The he bent down at the open window where the man was sitting, so he could meet him and talk to him at equal levels, eye to eye and face to face, and asked him to repeat what he said, and explain it to him – face to face / up-close / in person.

(To see a video of the encounter, go to   

https://www.facebook.com/lipscombe/videos/10157457456425061/)

I can’t imagine that was easy … not for Jesse, not for the man in the car… but that’s the kind of step Jesus tells us to take, to start living the kind of world and the kind of humanity we can be by changing the rules of the games we live by – from rules of hierarchy, superiority and being able to dismiss and hurt people because of their differences, to rules of equality, mutuality and unity as children of one God.

Scripture Reading: Matthew 5:43-48

You have heard people say, “Love your neighbours and hate your enemies.”   

But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you.   
Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven.  
 He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people.   
And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.  
 If you love only those people who love you, will God reward you for that?   
Even tax collectors love their friends.  
 If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that?  Don’t even unbelievers do that?   
But just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, 
so also you must be complete.”

This step can be just as hard.  “You have heard people say, “Love your neighbours and hate your enemies.” 

Is that what we hear people saying?  Is that we’re taught – to divide the world and its people into two groups – those that deserve our love and care, and those who don’t – those we pay attention to, and those we can afford to ignore and even kill or try to do away?

Here is what Jesus says, “But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for anyone who mistreats you.  Then you will be acting like your Father in heaven.  He makes the sun rise on both good and bad people.  And he sends rain for the ones who do right and for the ones who do wrong.  If you love only those people who love you … If you greet only your friends, what’s so great about that?  But just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.”

Let’s get practical. 

This is my cell phone and my laptop.  Neither are the most up-to-date, but they let me do all I need them to.  With them I keep in touch – texting, email, Facebook.  And all this internet, web stuff, social media are supposed to help us be in touch with all the world – to break down barriers, aren’t they?  Put us in touch with the whole world?  Create a new unity?  A new humankind?

But how does it really work most of the time?  It lets us keep in touch with the group we are part of, gives us news about things and with a perspective we already agree with, reinforces us in our little bubble.  It makes us feel connected and as though we’re in touch with all the world, but really just encases us in an echo chamber, where we hear our own opinions and the opinions of others who agree with us, over and over and over again.

How would Jesus use Facebook, email, and social media?  Would he use them for what they can do?  Most likely yes, for particular purposes.  But he would also be aware of their limitations, and take every opportunity not to use them … to step outside the box and outside the circle, and to spend time with people different than himself, with different viewpoints and experience and perspectives and needs … to learn from them and grow together with them into something bigger, something more whole and holy … into the kind of human family we all are together as children of God.

One of the things I used to see written in essays on the breakdown of civil society, and the disintegration of society into tribes, groups and isolated sub-communities, was a note about the church being one of the places still where we find ourselves drawn into company with people vastly different from ourselves, into community across lines that normally divide us in society.  The church was seen as one of those places that explicitly and intentionally was not just a bubble of like-minded people, but a place where people consciously and graciously grow beyond what they already are, towards the unity we are with all others as children of God.

Are we still that?  If so, how do we continue to nurture it?  If not, how do we get back to that high calling of living towards the unity that we are with others different from us, as children of one God?