Monday is my day off, and I try very hard to stick to that—mostly successfully. This meant that this past Monday, I had a chance to watch quite a bit of the news coverage following Pope Francis's death. One thing that really struck me was a press conference from Westminster Cathedral given by Cardinal Vincent Nichols and Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe. 

One of the things that I lament a lot these days is the base level of so much public conversation.  The insults.  The mocking.  The scorn.  The hate even.  In the digital realm.  On the streets.  In real life.  This news conference was so refreshing.  We know how combative press conferences can be.  How filled with talking points and not really answering the question, etc.  These two men described how one may have inner peace through knowing Jesus.  They spoke about Matthew 25 – welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry.  They spoke about the importance of personal encounters and the belief that when we encounter one another, we are meeting those who are made in the image of God and beloved by God.

It's refreshing, and I pray that we will be refreshed and renewed as we go back to Matthew.  Watching Jesus and listening to Jesus.  Learning Jesus.  We have proclaimed “Christ is risen/He is risen indeed!”  We want to keep on proclaiming this great truth in our words and with our deeds.  We want to know what it looks like to live out a new life. 

We remember the last words of Jesus to his disciples – “Go to all the world baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, making disciples and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”  If we’re going to be able to teach things, whether it be in our actions or in our words, we need to be learning them ourselves.  We’re now in the period of the traditional church calendar called Eastertide – 50 days between Easter and Pentecost Sunday, where we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit in a special way.  A time to sit with the reality of the risen Christ.  A time to hear God speak to us.  How welcome they are!

These words that we’ve heard this morning are from the Sermon on the Mount.  Matthew 5-7.  Jesus is preaching.  Preaching can have a bad reputation, I know.  Blame us preachers for this, though.  Jesus is speaking words of life here, and I pray all preachers are doing the same (starting with myself).  We’ve heard about a Kingdom where things are upside down.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.  Jesus has talked of how his followers are to be like salt and light.  Flavouring.   Illuminating. 

We’re in the final part of the first section of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus sets up six antitheses.  You have heard that it was said…. But I say to you…  Jesus speaks of anger, of adultery, of divorce, of speaking the truth plainly.  Finally, he speaks of retaliation and enemies.  Which is where we are this morning.  The Sermon on the Mount is the most famous, arguably, of Jesus’ teachings, and there have been different ways it’s been interpreted.  Some have said that the ethics in the sermon are for priests or religious professionals in general.  Some have said that they’re there to show us how impossible it is for us to meet them and so point us to God’s grace.  We need God’s grace most definitely!  Some may look at them literally and say, “Put your eye out?  Cut your hand off?  Ridiculous!” and so dismiss the whole thing entirely. 

We want to take Jesus’ words seriously.  We talked about things getting shaken up on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  Christ’s death and resurrection as an epoch-shaking/shaping event.  Jesus uses language here to shake us up. Is Jesus advocating in our text this morning that people who are being sued walk around without any clothes?  Is Jesus advocating that I don’t take any intervention if I see someone being assaulted on the street because I’m not supposed to resist an evildoer?  I believe the Word of God, and I endeavour my dear friends to take the Bible seriously.  Every word of it. Sometimes I’ve been accused of being overly serious, but I’m a fun guy, as one of my basketball heroes once said.  In his sermon this morning, Jesus is describing what a re-orientation of our hearts looks like.  It’s open-ended and goes beyond simply performing a list of outward requirements. 

To take Jesus’ words here seriously means that we won’t read them in such a way that we turn them into another list of requirements.  It means we won’t read them in such a way that leads to fanaticism and/or unworkability.  It also means we won’t dismiss them as purely figurative or as mere suggestions from Jesus.  Life in the risen Jesus is learning a whole new way to walk; learning a whole new way to see; learning a whole new heart.  Learning Jesus.  Learning what it means to be children of God.  Learning what it means to take on to bear the family resemblance with God as our Father and Christ as our brother.  The new age of the Kingdom of heaven has dawned.  The Kingdom of Heaven is here.  At the same time, we wait for its fulfillment.  Jesus is coming back, and at the same time, Jesus is with us just as he promised.  We want to grow into an ever fuller understanding of what living in the reign of God looks like. Here’s what someone has said and this is good: “Those who are to belong to God’s new realm must move beyond literal observance of rules, however good and scriptural, to a new consciousness of what it means to please God, one which penetrates beneath the surface level of rules to be obeyed to a more radical openness to knowing and doing the underlying will of ‘your Father in heaven.’”

We start with retaliation.  This is a good one for us these days, I think.  The question we must always be asking ourselves is, “Are my norms based on societal norms, or are my norms based on the character of God?”  Societal norms may say I need to get my own back, particularly if you’re part of or a descendant of a shame/honour culture (and trust me, I know this very well).  You have offended my honour, I must get my honour back.  Practically speaking, if you cut me off in traffic, I must get ahead of you so I can then cut you off.  Seriously, it happens.  An eye for an eye – that’s the law.  That’s the requirement.  It was a law designed to limit compensation for a wrong done. By Jesus’ time, it mainly meant limiting monetary compensation in a legal matter.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other one toward them.  Does this mean I shouldn’t defend myself if I’m physically attacked, or does it mean that if I’m insulted as I would be with a backhanded slap on my right cheek, I don’t need to avenge myself of the insult.  I don’t need to try and reclaim my honour.

In whom is my honour after all?  My honour is in the risen Christ!  What might this mean for online communication, comment sections, message boards?  Conventional wisdom says protect your own.  Protect your assets at all costs, and if someone has wronged you, don’t take the law into your own hands; take them to court.   We don’t need to try and explain these words of Jesus away – they’re meant to shock us.  They’re meant to fire our imaginations in terms of what it might look like for us to live as followers of Christ in the world.  Followers of the one who had no need to respond to insults because his honour was from his Father. 

The question is always  “What does love call for here?”  “His law is love and his gospel is peace,” as the great carol “Oh Holy Night” puts it.  I love that line.  There could be no end of speaking about this, and I hope we have some good conversations around it.  Jesus uses open-ended examples (which are also open to interpretation) not to substitute one list of rules with another, but to show that surpassing righteousness has more to do with an inner disposition than ticking off boxes.  It’s not about getting my own back or protecting my own in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus is talking about giving us a whole new heart, which results in a whole new way of being in the world. 

The world which God loved in this way, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life.  That we might have fullness of life.  Life now.  Life always. 

God, who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. God doesn’t separate us into camps.  Who are our enemies?  People who wish me ill or actively work for my harm?  Jesus says stop thinking in terms of us and them.  Our world is full of us and them thinking, and it’s getting worse and worse.  Stop it, says Jesus, and we do very well to pray the words of the hymn, “teach me to love as thou dost love.”  Teach me to love as you love.  “And do as thou wouldst do.”  And do as you would do, Lord. Funnily enough, I read an article about the three keywords to improve one’s emotional intelligence.  I said, “I have to know what these words are!”  Do you know what they were?  I love you.  Not necessarily to be spoken aloud, as that could get awkward, as the kids say.  In every interaction, to have these words continually on the tip of our hearts and to add to them, “God loves this person.”  “What does love call for here?” is the question we must always have at the top of our hearts, and by hearts, I mean the centre of our being, our volition, our will.  When we’re talking about love here, we’re not talking about warm and fuzzy feelings toward those who actively wish and work for our ill.  I mean actively working for their good.  “Ah,” some may say, “Very wise!  In this way, you turn them and get them to come over to your side or your way of thinking!”  This may be the case, but this isn’t the reason that Jesus gives.  Why is this Jesus’ command? 

So that you may be children of your Father in heaven.  So that our ways are ever coming to reflect God’s ways.  So that, children of the King, we are ever more coming to bear the family resemblance.  So that people might look at us and see children of God, whether they realize it or not.  One day they might.  Who knows what the future will bring, but we do know that God’s word won’t return to God without accomplishing that for which God purposes it, and if Jesus is the Word of Life and we’re ambassadors of Jesus or living letters of Jesus then we’re in some way God’s word to the world.

I’m talking about actively seeking the good of others just as God in Christ has actively sought and actively seeks and will actively seek nothing but good for us.  Our Father wills nothing but good for us.  Why would we consider doing anything else?

This radical reorientation toward those who don’t like us can apply to many different people in many different ways.  Jesus speaks very practically in this way, though.  “Pray for those who persecute you,” he says.  Bring them with us, in other words, into God’s presence.  When we see people in the light of God’s love, we can’t help but see them differently.

Don’t get to be thinking too much of ourselves when we love those who love us.  “Respect me and I’ll respect you” doesn’t cut it in the Kingdom of God.  “Even Gentiles do that!” says Jesus.  If we greet only our brothers and sisters, what more are we doing than others?  Now, the good greeting, the good hello,  is important, and you know I’m always going on about that.  Jesus is going beyond merely saying hello here, though.  Even greeting in those days was a desire for the other person’s good – Peace be with you.  Shalom.  The ancient Jewish greeting.  The ancient Christian greeting.  Peace be with you.  How might I actively work for your peace?

Because it’s a new kind of family.  A family that is called to be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.  Not in an impossible-to-follow morally sense, but in a “Christ has done it” sense – therefore let us be perfected, completed in Christ.  This is going to look like something.   As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it - “The followers are the visible community of faith; their discipleship is a visible act which separates them from the world—or it is not discipleship. And discipleship is as visible as light in the night, as a mountain in the flatland.”  We’ll spend one more week with Jesus on the mountain.  In the meantime, may God continue to teach us and help us to love as God loves, and do as God does.  May this be true for us all.  Amen