Matthew
5:38-48
March 2, 2014
“You have heard that
it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do
not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the
other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak
as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give
to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow
from you.
“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.
For the past three weeks we have been doing a sermon
series on the Prayer of St. Patrick. This week we come to the last lines of the
prayer, which are “Christ in hearts of
all that love me, Christ in the mouth of friend and stranger.”
The prayer in general is profound because it presents the
deepest ideas of Christian faith possible. It is very “Johanine” in its
perspective. I’m not sure if you know what that means, but it means that it
follows most closely the thinking and theology of John’s gospel. John’s version
of Christ’s life is very different from the other three. The other three tell
the story of Jesus from the outside, focusing mostly on the events of his life,
while distilling his teachings down to manageable chunks. They present a
picture of Jesus as being the messiah, and in their theology God still resides
mostly in heaven. John’s gospel is very different. John teaches about Jesus
from the inside—from within the most profound of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus isn’t
just the messiah, but God’s presence on earth. In John’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t
teach us about God who is in heaven. He speaks about God who is in us and in
the world all the time. This is Jesus who says, “Those who live in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from
me you can do nothing.” He tells them that they have seen the Father
because “I am in the Father and the
Father is in me.” Later he prays to the Father, saying that the Father and
he are one, and that the faithful and he would be one. All of this is captured
in St. Patrick’s prayer, where Christ is before us, behind us, below us, above
us, and within us.
Out of all the guidance in St. Patrick’s prayer, the last
line—Christ in hearts of all that love
me, Christ in the mouth of friend and stranger—is both the easiest the
hardest to live out. If Christ is everywhere, then it’s relatively easy to find
Christ in those who love me, but what about in the stranger? That’s where it
gets hard. Do we naturally find Christ in the stranger? There’s more than one
way to think of this question.
What about the stranger who is simply the person we don’t
know? These are all the people you see at Giant Eagle, at sporting events, driving
on the highway with you, on the news, and anywhere else. Do you see Christ in
them? In comparison, it’s relatively easy to see Christ in the people sitting
with you in the pews, but what about all these other people? It’s hard to see
them with anything else other than indifference.
What about the stranger who is actually strange? Or at
least strange to you? I’m talking about the person who may have mental or
physical difficulties that make them seem strange. Maybe they look different.
Maybe they act different. Maybe they think different. Can you see Christ in the
person who you think is strange?
What about the stranger who really is someone from whom you
are estranged? This is the person who has really hurt you. This is the person
with whom you have had conflict, who has neglected you, or who has abused you.
Can you see Christ in her or him?
What’s hard is that our passage today tells us to
especially love people from whom we’re estranged. Jesus has a message regarding
them. He says in our passage, “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 do you have?”
Loving our enemies is the hardest thing to do, and it is
what makes it so hard to find Christ in them. I’m especially talking about
those who treat us poorly. How do you love the boss or co-worker who treats you
terribly? How do you find Christ in and love the family member who treats you
abusively or critically? How do you love the person who has really, really harmed
you?
I know that a woman named Sue Norton struggled with this,
and learned how to find Christ in an enemy. In January of 1990, she received
terrible news at her home in Arkansas City, Kansas. Her parents had been
murdered in their in their isolated Oklahoma farmhouse. A man named Robert
Knighton (B.K.), committed the murders all for $17.00 and an old truck. It was
a brutal murder, and one that tore into Sue’s soul.
She says she felt "numb" all during the trial.
She couldn’t understand why someone would want to hurt people who were old and
poor. She sat through B.K.’s trial, filled with conflicted feelings. She had
been deeply hurt, but she couldn’t understand the way the people attending the
trial were acting. Everyone in the courtroom was consumed with hate. They all
expected her to feel the same way. But she couldn’t hate the way they did
because she says, "it didn’t feel good."
The last night of the trial she knew there must be
another way. She couldn’t eat or sleep that night and prayed to God to help
her. When morning came, she sensed God saying, "Sue, you don’t have to
hate B.K., you could forgive him".
The next day, while the jury was out for deliberation,
Sue got permission to visit B.K. in his holding cell. Sue said afterwards,
"I was really frightened. This was my first experience in a jail. B.K. was
big and tall, he was shackled and had cold steely eyes." At first B.K.
refused to look at Sue. She asked him to
turn around and he answered, "Why would any one want to talk to me after
what I have done?" Sue replied, "I don’t know what to say to you. But
I want you to know that I don’t hate you. My grandmother always taught me not
to use the word hate. She taught me that we are here to love one another. If
you are guilty, I forgive you.”
B.K. thought she was just playing games. He couldn’t
understand how she could forgive him for such a terrible crime. Sue says,
"I didn’t think of him as killer, I thought of him as a human being.” As a
result of her publicly saying she forgave B.K., many people thought that she
had lost her mind. Friends would step to the other side of the road to avoid
her. But she said in response, "There is no way to heal and get over the
trauma without forgiveness. You must forgive and forget and get on with your
life. That is what Jesus would do.”
B.K. was executed in 2003, but prior to his execution,
Sue often wrote to him and visited occasionally. She felt that B.K. should
never leave prison, but she didn’t want him executed. She eventually became
friends with B.K. and because of her love and friendship he became a devout
Christian. Her forgiveness allowed some good to come out of her father’s death.
As she said, I have been able to witness to many people about Jesus and
forgiveness and helped others to heal. I have brought B.K. and many other men
on death row to our Lord Jesus Christ. I live in peace with my Lord!" (adapted from “Stories of Real Forgiveness,”
found at http://www.catherineblountfdn.org/rsof.htm).
The interesting thing about Sue Norton’s forgiving B.K.
is that we tend to think that she was special, or that her situation was
special, and not like ours. That’s often the way we think of many Christian
teachings. We think that biblical characters were special, or that those who
excel at love are special. But if you look at the disciples, what was really
remarkable about them is how ordinary they were. What made them extraordinary
was not their natural abilities, but their choices. They chose to see Christ in
everyone, and to spread Christ’s love and grace.
The same principles of love apply to our situations as to
Sue Norton’s and the disciples’. To love our enemies, we need to do several
things.
First, we need top recognize that the person who hurts us
is broken, not whole, and that the Christ within that person has been pushed deeply
down. It is really hard to see this, but we have to realize that often the
person who treats us abusively or neglectfully or critically has most likely
been treated the same way. If we are able to overcome our hurt, just even a
little bit, then we can work on loving them and seeing Christ in them. And
maybe, just maybe, we can help them let Christ within them be set free.
Next, we need to treat that person with respect and care
despite his or her bad behavior and attitude. In other words, just because we
have been treated poorly isn’t an excuse for responding the same way. We can’t
control how people treat us, but we can control how we treat them. To treat
people the way they treat us makes us no better than them. But to treat someone
better makes us better—not better than them, but better in life.
Third, be willing to lovingly stand up for yourself—not
aggressively or apologetically, but assertively. Loving others, and finding
Christ in them, doesn’t mean becoming a doormat for them. Loving another
doesn’t mean allowing ourselves to be abused. There are times when we need to
stand up to them. Giving an enemy the other cheek is not a wimpy act. It is an
act of receiving their blow, and standing back up in their face and saying, “I
will love you and treat you respectfully no matter what you do to me.”
Responding to people in this way was a hallmark of how
Martin Luther King, Jr. responded to the anger, bigotry, and violence towards
the Civil Rights Movement. It is also why he was one of my heroes. When they
were set to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, the walkers were
trained. They were told to wear coat and tie or dresses—to dress their best—and
to respond to slurs, violence, and anger with respect. They walked and sang, no
matter what the bigots around them did. This was an act of seeing Christ in the
violent stranger.
Finally, let the Christ within you be your guide. When
you are stuck in a situation in which you don’t know how to find Christ in the
other person and love her or him, pray. Ask God to guide you. Ask God to lead
you. Ask God to teach you what to do.
In essence, the key is holding onto the prayer of St.
Patrick, who forgave the Celts, loved the Celts, and in the process transformed
a people. If you remember from our first sermon in this series, Patrick had
been captured as a teen, and was forced to be a slave for almost 6 years. He
was treated brutally. Still, he knew that Christ was in them. So after his
escape he trained to be a priest and a missionary, and eventually returned to
show them Christ’s love—the same love found in the prayer attributed to him. So,
in that spirit, I’ll ask you to close this sermon by praying his famous prayer:
Christ be with me, Christ
within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to
win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ
above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all
that love me,
Christ in the mouth of friend and stranger.
Amen.
