“The Price of Perfection”
Matthew 5:38-48
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
2/19/17
In 1999, theologian Walter Wink published a book entitled The
Powers That Be: Theology for the New Millennium. The centerpiece of this
book is the author’s research on the historical context of Matthew 5:38-42. Wink
concludes that Jesus’ instructions about turning the other cheek, giving away
both coat and cloak, and going the exstra mile are not about capitulating to
evildoers and bullies. In fact, says Wink, Jesus teaches just the opposite.
To
understand Wink’s interpretation of turning the other cheek it helps to
visualize. Imagine yourself standing face-to-face with someone who, for
whatever reason, becomes physically aggressive and strikes you on the right
cheek. According to Walter Wink, this scenario implies a relationship between
people of higher and lower social standing. For two reasons the blow to the
right cheek of a person of lower standing must be accomplished with the back of
the aggressor’s right hand. First, in ancient Palestine, the left hand is a
person’s bathroom hand. It would disgrace
even the aggressor to hit with that hand. Second, to hit with a right hand, is
to acknowledge an opponent as a social equal. A right-handed backhand to a
right cheek both rebukes and belittles.
“Turn
the other cheek” means offer the left
cheek. Dare the aggressor to humiliate himself by slapping you with his left
hand, or to acknowledge you as an equal by hitting you with a right cross.
The
courtroom scenario does a similar thing. Wink says that Jesus’ hearers would
understand him advising to strip naked in a public place, thus embarrassing the
one who has taken you to court. And going the extra mile has to do with a law allowing
Roman soldiers to draft peasants to carry their gear. That law, however, limited
the conscription to one mile. The illegal extra mile puts a soldier at risk of shameful
discipline by his superior officer.1
Many
people, myself included, jumped on Wink’s bandwagon. The idea of sticking it to The Man holds far more
appeal than simply getting slapped around. The more I’ve thought about it,
though, the more it seems that Wink’s theories make some assumptions that sidestep
contingencies in the scenarios, not to mention the deep and disrupting scandal
of the gospel.
Throughout
the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges us to live lives of justice. And God’s
justice isn’t about punishing wrongdoers. It’s not about getting even. God’s
justice is about setting things right. It’s about restoration and reunion. Please,
don’t hear me saying that justice means getting “back to the way things used to
be.” There’s never been a time when all was “right.” And if future generations are
to know peace, we must help by working for it today. Restorative justice is a
way of life, a gift handed down. Doing holy justice means taking what feels
like unjustified initiative to love with the radical, restoring love of
Jesus. And he throws us straight into the hard stuff.
“Love
your enemy,” says Jesus. Anyone can love
those who love them back. Loving those who don’t love you, though, loving your
enemies, that Love does justice, loves kindness, and walks humbly with God.
Then,
in what sounds like a moment of spiritual pique, Jesus says, Look, you all have to be perfect. Just like God is perfect.
Perfect?
Seriously?
The
Greek word is teleios, and it is
variously translated as perfect, mature,
complete, full grown. Eugene Peterson’s translation of this verse is
helpful. “In a word,” says Jesus, “what I’m saying is, Grow up.
You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.
Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.” (Mt. 5:48, The Message)
The call
to recognize and live out our “God-created identity” took me back to our book
study conversation last Wednesday night. We are reading The Book of
Creation: An Introduction to Celtic Spirituality by Philip Newell. The
chapter under discussion had to do with the image of God as understood in the
ancient and quietly enduring disciplines of Celtic Christianity.
Most
of us who were raised by the western church were taught that at The Fall, we
lost all trace of our holiness. We are born out of and into iniquity. It is our
defining reality. According to this theory, original sin, God was so deeply
offended by human sin that God cannot forgive, that God is, in fact, powerless to forgive, except through some
satisfying act of retribution. So, God sends Jesus, the righteous one, to atone,
by substitution, for our sins.
Let
that sink in. For generations, the Church has been preaching the love of a God who can be satisfied only by the savage torture and
execution of an innocent person. When that is our image of God, and thus the
image in which we are made, how will we treat each other? Specifically, how will
we treat those whom we label enemy?
The ancient
Celtic tradition teaches something different.
“To
say that we are made in the image of the divine,” says Philip Newell, “is to
say that what is deepest in us is…the love…wisdom…creativity, imagination, and
wildness of God.”2
What
is most essential and primordial in humankind, then, is not iniquity and
brokenness, but a mystical wholeness. We are made in the image of creative,
transforming, eternal Love. And when that
is our image of God, and thus the image in which we are made, perhaps we will
treat each other differently.
“No
one is to be regarded merely as an object,” says Newell, “for at heart each
woman and man is a holy mystery.”3
Jesus
saves us not by satisfying God’s need for violent retribution, but by fully revealing who God is and, therefore, who
we are, regardless of what it costs him to do so.
Our
sin is real, of course. We’re far from perfect. We prefer a God who allows us
to feel fear, judgment, and vengeance toward others. The price of perfection has
to do with dying to whatever false self we have willfully created – or dutifully
accepted – and embracing a God who desires that we experience and reunite with the
holy love, wisdom, creativity,
imagination, wildness, and mystery
that lies at the heart of the Creation. Only when we accept that God lies at
the heart of all things can we even begin to imagine what it might mean to love
our enemies as Jesus loved those who opposed him, ridiculed him, and killed
him.
Remember,
too, loving our enemies doesn’t mean “tolerating” them. Tolerance implies a
distance and a perceived sense of superiority over the one tolerated. We can
both tolerate and exploit someone.
To
love means to listen and to speak, to share stories, to want to understand. It
means to be in relationship. It means to hold on, at all costs, to the
conviction that beneath all that seems threatening, off-putting, and just plain
wrong about someone, he or she holds a promise of blessing for us because that
person carries, deep inside, the very same stuff that lies at the heart of our
own being – the essence of God.
A
truly humble, patient, and grateful faith. That
is the price of perfection.
1I could not find my copy of this book for
specific page references. The Powers That Be: Theology for the New
Millennium, was published in 1999 by Doubleday. The Cokesbury website lists
two ISBN numbers: ISBN
10: 0385487525; ISBN 13: 9780385487528.
2J. Philip Newell, The
Book of Creation: An Introduction to Celtic Spirituality. Paulist Press,
New York-Mahawah, NJ, 1999. P.84.
3Ibid. p. 84.
No comments:
Post a Comment