Perfectly Compassionate
19 February 2011
Seventh Sunday After Epiphany Year A
homily given by the Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP. Ph.D.
8 am said and 10 am sung Mass
Trinity Parish Church, Ashland Oregon
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23; Matthew
5:38-48; Psalm 119:33-40
“Love your enemies. Pray for those
who persecute you, so you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he gives the blessing of sunshine and
rain on both the evil and the righteous alike… Be perfect, therefore, as your
heavenly Father is perfect.”
The Greek word here for “perfect” is
teleios. This means “in conformity with your telos,” or
intended purpose. Rather than primarily meaning “without defect or flaw,”
it means “in accordance with what God intended when he created you.” The
Aramaic word that Jesus probably actually used, tam, had roughly the
same semantic scope. The point is fullness of life, shalom, in
keeping with all of the intentions of the good and loving Creator who made us “in
his own image.” Just as God gives the blessing of rain to good and bad
alike, so should we, who bear God’s image, reflect God’s beneficence and intend
good things for all our fellow creatures who bear his image. In order to
be the person God intends, we need to surpass “fair,” go beyond mere
“justice.” We need to have the beneficence and compassion of the one in
whose image we are made. It's in today's Hebrew Scripture lesson: be holy, as God is holy. And what does that mean practically, don't be stingy. Don't hold tightly onto what is yours. Let your fields go ungleaned, your trees not completely harvested, so poor people might have some too. Be generous as God is generous.
“You have heard that it was said,
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’” Jesus is quoting here from
the Torah’s rule that vendettas and vengeful escalation of violence should not
be pursued, the lex talionis or the law of measured retaliation.
Wherever harm is committed—whether intentional (Leviticus 24:20) or deliberate
(Exodus 21:24)—the Law said the response was not to surpass the original harm.
You could put out the eye of someone who had put someone else’s eye out (an
"eye for an eye") but not take their life. The principle
is one of proportional response, and of punishment fitting the crime, and
embodies what the Torah sees as justice (Deuteronomy 19:21).
But as Ghandi later taught: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
leaves the whole world blind and toothless.”
Jesus here says we should not respond to violence with
violence. Jesus proposes another strategy: overcome evil with good.
The idea is developed and made explicit in the doctrine of Satyagraha,
or Truth Force, taught by Gandhi. It is
also present in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s program of peaceful active
resistance or direct action. The goal is
to overwhelm the evildoer by an exposing of the evil through a show of
good. In the shame-based society in which Jesus lived, he advised that we
respond to humiliation by shaming those who abuse power. We should
respond to unjust loss of face by forcing a just loss of face. And this
is done precisely through the mechanism of not stooping to the level of
the abuser.
Walter Wink (in Naming the Powers)
noted a crucial detail in the text—“if someone strikes you on the right
cheek.” In that society, you only would have used your right hand for
interacting with others. So mentioning the fact that it is the right
cheek that is being struck implies a haughty overlord giving a brutal but
dismissive backhanded blow to someone seen as much lower in the social pecking
order. Jesus says “Don’t strike them back. Instead, stand up tall. Force them to use their open palm on your
left cheek as they would a social equal.”
Jesus uses a second example of his
strategy for engaging people with God-like good will. “If a
creditor sues you for your outer garment, give him your inner garment as
well.” The outer garment was used for warmth and as a cover
at night. The inner garment could be worn alone without shame, but there
were no underclothes beneath it. By saying “throw in your inner
garment as well,” Jesus was saying “Strip naked before the creditor; Shame him
before all and reveal the true nature what is going on: an exploitative system of large landowners
forcing all small farmers off their land.” (It was only because
these ancient middle-easterners “went commando” that he could argue for such
“guerrilla theater.”)
The third example Jesus gives is
being compelled to carry baggage for the Roman Army. The Roman Military
had the right to force local people to carry their substantial baggage.
Remember how in the Passion narrative they simply compel a passerby—Simon of
Cyrene—to carry the crossbeam for Jesus’ cruxifixion when Jesus himself
collapses under the task. But abuse of this right had led to deep
anti-Roman sentiment and riots by people stranded far from home. So the Romans
set a limit: only one mile, a thousand broad paces, was allowed. Punishments
were meted out to Roman legionaries who broke this rule and provoked
unrest. “If you are impressed to carry baggage a mile, walk on another
mile as well.” One can imagine the humorous situation of the soldiers,
afraid of breaking regulations and being punished, begging with a head-strong
follower of Jesus to please lay down his load after the required 1,000
steps. Again, a demeaning insult is turned on its head by an aggressive,
but peaceful act.
Jesus here is teaching that God is
above the fray in some ways, but very actively involved in others. And we
must be similarly detached (not following a gut instinct to react in kind) but
all the while very, very actively engaged.
The reason for this is simple.
The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is cold, uncaring
indifference. Jesus wants us engaged and actively responding to evil with
the same active love of the loving, but sometimes bothersome God whose image
reveals our true end, our telos. Being
perfect means neither to hate nor to be indifferent. It means being full
of burning, attractive, painful love.
A common and traditional way of
seeing Jesus in these verses is thinking that he taught his disciples to be
docile and accepting victims of abuse. If that were so, one of the few
historical facts that we actually know with certainty about his life—his
execution at the hands of the Roman authorities—makes little sense. If he
taught gentle and tidy submission to all authority, even abusive authority
working against God’s purposes, it is highly unlikely the Romans would have
used crucifixion to kill him. This particularly brutal and refined form
of public torture and slow suffocation was the punishment they reserved for
those found guilty of sedition and rebellion, a charge that is certainly
implied by the title they fixed over Jesus’ writhing nailed body, “King of the
Jews.” Had Jesus simply taught acceptance and peaceful submission,
the Romans probably would have let him pass him as an odd, but welcome voice
that helped them maintain control of their restive Empire. But that was
not the case. They basically put him to death for fomenting social disorder,
for subverting in sayings like these the basic order of an Empire. The
Romans put Jesus to death because he taught that the value of each of every
person was greater than the need to maintain proper Primate grooming rituals in
a military dictatorship.
We are all God’s creatures and all
bear God’s image, no matter how we may have distorted and twisted it, including
our enemies. We are all in this together. God loves us, each and every one. So we
must learn to love each other. Not pretend to love each other. Not
practice passive aggression as we despise the other. Not silently
disengage and passively submit, detached, from the abuses others subject us to.
But love. Have compassion. Love as God loves, which means sometimes being
a pain in the neck and almost always means challenging the beloved.
Today’s collect says it all: “O Lord, you have taught
us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and
pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace
and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.”
May we be perfectly compassionate,
as our Father in heaven.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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