Madly in Love

Madly in Love

Text:  Matthew 5:38-48

            A baby is born and it’s not too long before someone says, “Oh, I think she looks just like her daddy.  Poor wee thing!”  He’s got his mother’s eyes.  She’s got her granny’s ears.  His head is the same shape as his uncle. 

            After Naomi was born people were passing judgement about who she resembled.  A good friend of mine took a look at her and said, “She looks like a baby!”  He was quite right too.  A baby looks like a baby and it’s too early to tell the similarities or lack thereof with mum and dad. 

            It’s not merely the physical features that convince us of a likeness between child and parent.  Mannerisms such as a particular facial expression, gesture of the character, or gait in walking may be strikingly similar.  Personality traits such as a gregarious nature or an inclination to be pessimistic may be pinned on a parent. 

            There’s something in human nature that looks for resemblance to distinguish our family from another family, our community from another community.  Sayings about family resemblance are embedded in the English language:  Like father, like son.  The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.  Can you think of any others?

            (Pause for responses)

            “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” drives home all that Jesus has been teaching to his disciples on the mountain.  “Be perfect” startles, confounds, and disturbs us.  Be perfect as our heavenly Father?  Is this not an impossible demand?  How can you or I possibly look and act like our Father?  How can we have the same features, manners and characteristics as him?

            The word ‘perfect’ in English carries connotations of being flawless.  We think of perfect in terms of a fixed state of being.  It’s about never putting a foot wrong.  In other words, always getting things right.

However, the word ‘perfect’ translates the Greek word teleios which means ‘complete’.  And so we could rewrite the verse:  “Be complete, therefore, as your Father is complete.”  Perfection is not a state of being but a direction of life.  It is an orientation to the end for which we were created:  to be like the Father.

The word ‘therefore’ points back to what Jesus has already taught his disciples.  The call to be perfect/complete as the Father is anchored in what Jesus has told us about the Father.  It’s as if Jesus is saying, “You are children of the Father.  Your actions and words should resemble him.  People should be able to look at you and say, ‘She sure looks like her father!” 

Children of the heavenly Father resemble him in the way that he loves.  The Father is madly in love with those whom he has created.  His love is unconditional.  He loves those who do right and those who do wrong.  The sun shines and the rain falls on the good and the bad.  Our love like his love.

The whole of Jesus’ teaching on the mountain calls us to radical love.  Moses received the Law on Sinai and now Jesus, a second Moses, completes the Law and teaches his disciples how to be a harmonious, loving community.  Jesus describes the attitudes of those who are content, trusting God with the whole of their lives.  Their lifestyle is flavoursome like salt and luminous as a light thrown on the glory of the Father.  Love of God and neighbour is the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees.  Jesus takes the Law and takes it to its loving conclusion.  Jesus deals with the laws against murder, adultery, divorce and rash oaths.  These begin in the heart that does not love and trust God, long before they are enacted. 

The radical love of the contented goes against the grain of human nature.  Jesus quotes the law, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Ex. 21:24; Lev. 24:20; Dt. 19:21).  This Mosaic law was found in other ancient law codes.  It was designed to ensure that people did not go ‘over the score’ in seeking revenge or compensation.  It was a law intended to make things fair. 

Jesus ratchets up the demand, saying, “Do not resist an evildoer.”  The examples Jesus’ gives are directed at ‘wrongs’ committed against us on a personal level. 

Non-resistance grates against human instinct.  In Jesus’ world people had a distinct sense of defending honour.  There was no glory in being humble.  Humility was for the weak.  It was important to do whatever was necessary to defend one’s standing in society by whatever mean.

“Do not resist an evildoer” rankles with us too.  We are conscious of our human rights and we’re prepared to defend them.  Jesus’ words don’t seem right to us.  Shouldn’t we stand up to those who do wrong to us?

The radical way of Jesus is that love is the perfect challenge to evil.  If a person slaps you on the right cheek then turn your left cheek.  To be struck on the left cheek by the back of a hand was highly insulting.  It was an offence that could receive a fine.  If a person takes your coat then give them your undercoat too.  You will stand before them naked.  If a Roman soldier makes you walk a thousand paces (a Roman mile) then walk two thousand paces.  Give to all who beg.  Lend to all who ask.  Love surprises evil by reacting in a way that is unknown to it.  Love meets violence with peace.  Love meets unjust demands by exceeding them.  The generosity of love is mind blowing.

Jesus’ words raise lots of tough questions that don’t have straight forward answers.   Does Jesus want a victim to allow their abuser to carry on abusing them?  Is he telling us that we should roll over to those who oppress us?  Does Jesus want us to give to beggars even if we know they are going to blow it on booze or drugs?  How can we lend if we’re not sure that we’re going to be paid back?

These are some of the hard questions that Ghandi and Martin Luther King had to answer in their own struggles.  From the way that Jesus dealt with marginalised people in other parts of the Gospels, I don’t think Jesus is advocating that woman and children should be abused.  I don’t think Jesus was in the business of propping up the Roman Empire.  Ghandi and Luther King understood what Jesus was getting at.  They knew that if people refuse to mimic violence then violence will not know how to respond.  If people respond to aggression with peace then love will empty wrongdoing of its power.  Love shames evil.

“Do you wanna have a fight after school on the hill?”  This boy was tougher than me by miles and he knew it.  He had been intimidating me for sometime.  I rose to his challenge.  “OK.  I’ll meet you on the hill.”  I had no intention of fighting him but felt the bullying had to come to an end. 

I climbed the hill.  My heart was pounding.  The palms of my hands were sweating.  I was carrying my book bag.  I stood face to face and a crowd of kids surrounded us to watch me get a pummelling. 

I dropped my book bag as if to say, “Bring it on.”  I told him to get on with it.  “Aren’t you gonna fight back?” he asked incredulously.  “No,” I replied.  I figured I had nothing to lose.  If I fought him I’d get a beating.  If I stood there and took it then, at least it would be over with.  He looked at me as if I were mad.  He mocked me.  “You’re a chicken.”  He walked away and the onlookers dispersed.

Jesus quotes the law that says, “You shall love your neighbour.”  He adds something that is implied in the Old Testament, “and hate your enemy.”  Those who are not on God’s side are enemies of his people.  Jesus expands the circle of ‘neighbour’ and draws it around the enemies of God those who persecute the faithful.  This radical love reflects the love of the Father for all people, good and bad alike.

Jesus points out the bald truth that it is a straightforward matter to love people who love you back.  Tax collectors and Gentiles love those who love them back.  Love is not, “If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”  Loving sisters and brothers in the faith is no big deal.  Love within the boundaries of the community doesn’t mark us out as being any different.  It’s nothing more than looking out for the family interests.

Looking and behaving like our heavenly Father means that though we love and live in harmony with our own, we look beyond the boundaries of our community and love the people who threaten our existence.  The Father is so madly in love with those he created that he risked sending Jesus into the world, welcomed by Magi and despised by Herod.  The Father’s love is for all. 

Do you and I live with a tit-for-tat, giving-as-good-as-we-get philosophy?  We don’t mind loving neighbours who return our kind words and gestures?  But what about the neighbour who keeps me up all night with loud music and inconsiderate behaviour?  I don’t mind loving Christians who are nice to me.  But how can God possibly expect me to love the person in the church who irritates me and doesn’t treat me with the respect that I know I deserve?

The call of Jesus to radical love...to be complete in love as the Father is complete in his love...is a radical love he lived.  Jesus did not give in to evil.  He did not ignore injustice.  He did not overlook the marginalised.  He met evil head on with the love.  Turn the other cheek?  They spat in Jesus face and slapped him (26:67).  Walk the extra mile?  Simon from Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus’ cross (27:32).  Give the shirt off your back?  They stripped Jesus naked and gambled over his clothes (27:35).  Love your enemies?  Jesus was mocked and derided, cried out abandoned, and breathed one great, last sigh (27:45-50).  And in that moment of a torn curtain, quaking earth, and cracking rocks, a centurion who had seen the humiliation of Jesus declared, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”  In that moment love surprised evil and routed her into a decisive defeat.  Will we resemble the Father revealed to us in Jesus?

Corrie ten Boom with her family hid Jews during World War 2.  When they were caught by the Gestapo her father was imprisoned and died two weeks later.  Corrie and her sister were eventually interned at Ravensbruck.  Life was brutal.  Guards watched them as they stood naked in gang showers.  The beatings were merciless.  Betsy’s health gave way and she died, her body thrown onto a pile of corpses.

After the war Corrie began a ministry of reconciliation.  She encouraged people to forgive the wrongs done to them because of the immensity of God’s love.  Following one of the meetings a man approached her and held out his hand to shake hers.  She recognised him as one of the guards.  She felt such hatred.  She could not forgive.  It must have seemed like hours in what may have been seconds.  She psrayed, “God, I can’t forgive him.  Give me love for him.”  She describes love flooding through her body that enabled her to return his handshake.

God is madly in love with us and calls us to radical love of those who do not love us.  Will we follow Jesus in the way that he showed us to love?