The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Psalm 119:33-40
- Romans 12:17-21
- Matthew 5:38-48
The Sermon title is Upside Down Vengeance
Early Thoughts: This Sunday is two days before Remembrance Day. How do we get to "Never Again" in a world that seems hardwired to repeat history. How do we get to Peace in a world so prone to violence?
By turning things upside down. By living into Jesus' upside down logic and commandments.
Jesus challenges our understanding of how to react in the face of mistreatment (real or imagined I would say). Much of the time the natural reaction is to want to strike back or at least to complain. Jesus seems to tell us to go further along the path of being mis treated.
Jesus challenges our understanding of how we respond to our enemies. Common sense says that you love your friends but have different feelings about your enemies. Jesus tells us to love them and to pray for them. [To be fair he does not say how to pray for them so there may be room for malicious compliance on that count.] Jesus points out that any fool can love their friends but the true calling is to love your enemies also.
Then there is Paul. Writing to Rome, Paul points out that payback is not the way of Christ. Years ago Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said: "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.". I have heard that for years without realizing how deeply rooted it is in Romans 12. Dr. King understood that to live into a new word meant changing our thinking. We move beyond payback and vengeance. We act lovingly instead. It is a hard calling. It is easier, and feels better, to at least dream of getting back at others. Though I do like the slightly twisted idea that by loving our enemies we "heap burning coals on their head". We overcome evil with good, maybe in part by shaming the other????
Psalm 119 is a very long piece of poetry -- 176 verses -- that talks about the glories of following the Law. In Jewish tradition the Law is often seen not as burden but as gift. In the same way that boundaries can help children grow healthily or "good fences make good neighbours" (as Robert Frost tells us) the Law, a set of rules about how we live together, helps keep us healthy. In a world where we lift up the importance of self and self-determination we might lose sight of this principle but we need boundaries to be healthy as individuals and as a society. In these verses we see the psalmist asking God for guidance and wisdom so we might stay inside the boundaries.
We will never get to true peace by putting down others, even if "they did it first". At no point in human history has the path of vengeance and pay back led to lasting peace. As it has been said, "eye for eye and tooth for tooth only leaves everyone blind and toothless".
Instead we lift up the upside down logic of the Reign of God. The path to peace is to love your enemy, to act lovingly toward them. The path to peace is to let God lead us in new ways. The path to peace is to stay between the lines -- even when the lines seem to lead in a strange direction.
May we continue to let God turn our worlds upside down.
--Gord
