At some point in our lives, I am sure we have all encountered bullies. I know it is de rigueur these days to talk about bullying, but, it has always been around. I remember when I was in high school in the United Kingdom in the northeast of England there was one lad in our school who was a terrible bully. He was big and he was brash and he wanted to exhibit his power, physical power over many who were there with him. He was notorious! People stayed away from him. I always suspected he had a troubled home life, but I never knew for sure. He would pick on people indiscriminately. There didn’t have to be a reason, he would just bully for the sake of it.
One day, a new student came to our school. He was an immigrant. He had come from another country. He was small of stature. Immediately, he became the object of the bullying of this particular person. In fact, he was terrible with him. He bullied him physically, he bullied him emotionally, it was almost as if he hated him. Then one day, the bully decided to pick an actual fight with the immigrant boy. He went to him and he pushed him a number of times. Then, he actually was getting to strike him, threw a punch, but the boy just moved his arms and flipped the bully on his back. The bully landed with a thud. Everyone rejoiced. The bully was quiet for days onward. It was sad to see the bully in tears! It was sad to see, because it had come to this.
Now, I want you to tuck that away in your mind, and I want you to change your focus entirely to Jesus and The Sermon on the Mount, and today’s passage. Jesus, as we have been looking at the last couple of weeks, has been talking to the crowds. The crowds that were following Jesus for the most part were very poor and simple people. Those who came to hear him preach were often farmers, but did not own the land. Many of them were fisher people, but they didn’t own the boats. Many of them were people who just simply were servants. Many others scraped out some kind of a living, but nobody really knows how in an agrarian society: maybe selling a few fruits or vegetables or carrying water for people. They found a way to live, but it was a subsistence way of existing.
So the people are gathered there on the hillside, and there are people who because oftentimes were poor, not solely but most were, were the subject of abuse: the abuse of power. They were subject to the Romans, the invading force. The Romans knew that they could find cheap labour by getting these people who lived in Galilee to do their work for them, and they physically challenged them to do it. Many of the religious elite would stand at a distance and criticize the followers of Jesus, because they didn’t fulfill all the rituals and religious laws of cleanliness. The people who gathered to listen to Jesus were the ordinary people, the ordinary souls from around Galilee, and one of their own was talking to them, one of their own was preaching to them. He understood their situation. The principle that was behind all of this and all of his teaching to the crowd was this: “You have heard it said, but now I tell you.” In other words, he was speaking what they knew. “ You have heard as a crowd already what you must do, but I am telling you something entirely different.“
Jesus was establishing in The Sermon on the Mount one great theme: that the rule of the kingdom of God was greater than the rule of the kingdom of Rome, that the rule of the kingdom of God was greater than the rule of those who were interpreting the faith for them, and that he was going to show them a better way. He gets right down to earthly matters. One of the great earthly matters is how do we respond when we are being bullied? How do we deal with it when there are aggressors? How do we handle violence? Well, Jesus says, “You have heard you shall love almighty God, but you should hate your enemies.”
Jesus knew that this was a principle that was starting to get warped in society. Originally, it was a principle in law called lex talionis, which is the principle of “an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth:” that there is a harm done and the response should be equal to the harm that has been conducted. If you look in The Torah you will see it is there in Leviticus 24, it is there in Deuteronomy 19, it is there in Exodus 21: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. In many ways, it was even older than that. There was a code from Babylon called Hammurabi. The Hammurabi Code was written 2,200 years before Jesus, and it also talked about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It also talked about the same principle of responding in kind to the evil that is done to you.
Originally this was seen as a good thing. It set the limits of the law and the boundaries of retaliation. In other words, an eye should only be retaliated with an eye, not with a life, a tooth with a tooth. In other words, it was to match up and have a balance between something that is being done to you and your response. Thus, it prohibits excess retaliation. But Jesus also knew his Bible. He knew the laws well. He turns, and he is thinking of Proverbs, for Proverbs also includes mercy. In Proverbs 25:21, the writer says, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If your enemy is thirsty, give him something to drink.”
Jesus knew then that even within the great history of his own faith there was the principle of mercy. And, while we often think, and I am afraid erroneously say, that the only principle in the Bible in The Old Testament is lex talionis that is not true. There is the principle of mercy. The principle of mercy is what Jesus highlights. But he takes it beyond the confines of Proverbs. He actually talks about loving your enemies. His response is one of non-retaliation. You can see it in the practical things that he talks about. This is a magnificent passage! It is absolutely incredible when you think about it!
Jesus is talking to the people, ordinary people about ordinary events, and he goes with one that they would normally associate with – being insulted. If you are insulted and someone slaps you on the cheek, this is what you are to do. He knew that people were insulted. He had been insulted himself. Already in his ministry he had been criticized for healing the leper, already he had been criticized for associating with the unclean, already he had been associated with being a friend of tax collectors, already he had been made fun of and insulted because of the followers that he had, already he had been insulted or following in the line of John the Baptist. Later on in his life, well before the Gospel itself was written, Jesus was insulted by both the Romans and the Jewish authorities, and on the Cross they actually took his clothing and they made fun of him, and they insulted him. They said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” He knew insults!
It wasn’t as if he was saying anything that the ordinary people hadn’t already experienced or he had experienced. He knew how vulnerable they were. He knew how easy it was for them to be pushed around. So he says to them, “If someone insults you by slapping you across the face, turn the other cheek.” It is interesting to note that the principle of slapping a face for insults was also a slapping of the face to get people to do what you wanted them to do, and the Romans would slap your face, never with the open hand, always with the back hand, always with the hand that was on the opposite side of the sword. To slap someone with your right hand across the face was an insult, but it was more than that: it was a way of getting them what you would have them do. Jesus had some fun with this!
When they say, “Slap you on the face” Jesus says, “Turn the other cheek.” The moment you turn the other cheek, they can’t slap you with the back hand! Jesus knows it can’t be done – unless of course they are going to lose dignity themselves, and it is undignified to use the open hand. Jesus knows that in telling the people to turn the other cheek, he is in fact not only stopping the violence from continuing, he is embarrassing the one who potentially could carry on the violence. Jesus knew that insults must in fact be dealt with in a peaceful way.
Look at our era and what young people are suffering these days with cyber bullying and the insults that happen on the Web, so-much-so that young women in particular take their own lives as a result of the bullying. It is terrible! It is worse often than the physical abuse of the bully in my school. It is for those who hide behind the shadows of their own incognito life where they can just simply make fun of others without a cost to themselves. How little that is!
Many of us have encountered similar forms of insults coming our way, and it is a painful thing. Don’t you want to retaliate when that happens? Don’t you want to feel the desire to send back the same note with the same vociferous tone as the one you got? It is human to do that. But Jesus knew that if you kept doing that then the very violence and insult that begins only gets exacerbated, only gets exaggerated. This is what happens to families when they get divided: often it is one insult, one wrong, one shame, one problem, and then all of a sudden it is retaliated against, and off goes the top of the pot and it boils over! Jesus said, “You get yourself in a situation like that, it is not easy to turn the cheek, bring down the tension.”
He says the same thing about legal matters. It is amazing isn’t it how many poor people end up in court. I think it is one of the great shames of society. It is often the poor who end up in court: some misdemeanour, some crimes, some small thing often is the case. It is easy. It seems to cleanse everyone’s consciences. I am not suggesting there shouldn’t be justice. I am not suggesting there shouldn’t be the law. But when you look in biblical times, it was often the poorest people who appeared before court, often because they couldn’t pay their debts, and were in a downward spiral of poverty. Many of Jesus’ followers were like that.
It was fascinating to realize that under Roman law, if you didn’t pay something and you didn’t have the money to pay it, you had to pay in kind. So one of the ways they would take from the poor who couldn’t pay their debts was to take their shirts or their tunics. People in those days often had two tunics and a robe: one tunic to work, one for pleasure. To hand a tunic over was a terrible thing. It was in fact almost to take away your source of cleanliness even, and that could spiral into religious problems. But, this was what was really fascinating, Jesus said, “If they come along and they want to do this to you, hand them your cloak as well.” Now, the cloak was the outer garment: it was like a blanket you would wrap yourself in at night. But, according to the Jewish law at the time, if you took someone’s blanket from them for your own warmth or protection, you had to give it back to them before nightfall or else you would be breaking the law. So Jesus is saying, “If they ask for your tunic, give it, but give them even more, give them the robe, give them the blanket, give them your source of protection” knowing full well they would have to give it back, and if they didn’t it would be upon their shoulders.
Jesus wanted people to go the second mile. He wanted them to do the extra thing. If a Roman came along to you on the side of the road and said, “I want you to carry my bags for a mile” then the Jew would have to do it: they were oppressed. Jesus said, “If this happens, offer to go the second mile. What does that imply: servitude, passivity? No! It shows that you are still the person who can make a decision, and that you still have your own dignity when you decide you are going to go the second mile. Why? It was because Jesus knew that is exactly what the disciples would have to do for the rest of their life and their ministry. He knew those who were going to follow him would have to do the same thing: they would have to go the second mile, go beyond what is ordinarily expected into what is ordinarily gifted by God. He knew this was a symbol for everything his disciples should do and should be.
The brilliance of Jesus was really to take the anger and the injustice and the insults and all its power and turn it on itself. I found out later from the young boy who had come to my school all those years ago that he was from Japan and he had learned Aikido, a martial art. Aikido uses the energy of the aggressor to be brought back on to the aggressor by simply moving it in another direction. It is brilliant! Someone throws a punch, you parry the punch and you use the energy from the punch to flip the hitter. It is incredible! This is what Jesus is doing. He is saying, “Don’t retaliate. Don’t punch back. Don’t use abuse when you yourself have been abused. Rather, deflect it with good.”
It gets even harder when Jesus starts talking about our enemies. This is a controversial passage, let’s face it. Many people wonder whether Jesus meant what he said when he said, “Love your enemies.” It was profoundly radical. For those who were sitting on the hillside with the Romans and the religious leaders giving them a hard time, the last thing they wanted to do was love their enemies, but they knew what he was talking about. They understood what Jesus was saying. He wasn’t saying, “Oh, I want you to love them like a brother or a sister.” He is not saying “I want you to love them emotionally in Eros.” He is not expecting them to love them in any other way except by the love of God. He wanted them to love them with an agape love: a love that is self-giving, a love that is not based on the emotions but is based on the will, a decision to love your enemies.
We might despise our enemies, we might find our enemies to be perverse, we might not even want the company of our enemies, but according to Jesus you can still love them. When Jesus was on the Cross being nailed he wasn’t looking down upon them thinking “Oh, aren’t they sweet, lovely people that are doing this to me.” But he loved them. He bore it for the sake of them. He was willing to suffer for that very principle, and he was willing to die for it, for Jesus knew that the love of God is greater than the hatred of the world. He knew that the love of enemies leads you even to the point that you pray for them. Can you imagine praying for your enemies? It is incredible! Yet, it is what Jesus calls on the people to do.
Can you imagine around the hillside in Galilee with the Romans and the Centurions down below and the religious elite being so self-righteous, Jesus gets them all together on a hillside and he says, “I am going to pray for these people. We are going to pray for those who persecute you, take away your land, and insult you. We are going to pray for the opposing Roman forces and their leaders. We are going to actually pray! You can’t hate those people, because how can you pray for someone you hate really? But you can love them with the love of God, and the love of God is greater than our emotions.” Jesus wants them to pray for them.
I was reading a wonderful article about something that happened in January 1968. It occurred in the South China Sea. There was the USS Pueblo, which was an American naval ship. It was during the Cold War. Everything was tense. Finally, the North Koreans realized that the ship was there, and they decided that they were actually going to take on this lone ship. So they did. With MIG jets and with their own ships they drove the USS Pueblo from international waters into the waters of North Korea, which were disputed at the time. The North Koreans then called the Russians, the Soviets, and they said, “Look, the Americans have come into our space. It is time for a conflict.” The Soviets were smart enough not to fall for it.
So the North Koreans boarded the ship on their own and they arrested the sailors and they brought them ashore and they terrorized them. They physically abused them. They tortured them. They bullied them. And there is an incredible story from the Pueblo. Of the 83 sailors that were in detention they would often have to sit in round tables for hours on end. What would happen is that a soldier or a sailor from North Korea would come in and the first seat by the door, whoever was sitting there, he would hit, he would bully, he would flail away at, and he would brutally beat.
Well, this went on for a few days, so the same man was getting beaten every single time and he was getting close to death. So everyone decided that every single day a different person would sit in that chair no matter what the North Koreans had said. Every morning a new person was in that seat knowing that they were going to be beaten and beaten badly. The North Koreans were so amazed that they couldn’t kill the spirit or the body of those who they were abusing that they learned respect for those who were their captives, and eventually they stopped the torture, but, before that happened, every single man around that table had been beaten and abused. They believed that they did it because this was the Christian thing to do, that this was the way you bear the suffering of the world: you get in a place where even though you may be terrorized, you give of yourself.
That is what Jesus had in mind for his kingdom. Universally, he knew that the sun shines on the righteous and the unrighteous, on your friends and on your enemies, but the one thing that distinguishes a Christian is that they love their enemies as well as their friends, they pray for those who persecute them, that they care for those who manipulate them, and they give of themselves.
Last year, I had an encounter with the writings of one of the great Chinese Christians of our age, Jason Yeung. He is the principal of a seminary said that one of the reasons he keeps going as a Christian, even though many times he faces imprisonment and great conflict, is that he believes that in the end his society that he loves so much will only be better and only progress if the caring, self-giving, sacrificial, loving nature of the Christian spirit is known in the land. It is almost as if he had been on the hillside listening to Jesus of Nazareth, who meant it when he said, “Love your enemies.” Incredible words from our Lord. Amen.