How Many Deaths Will It Take?” a Sermon Delivered by Rev

“How Many Deaths Will It Take?” A Sermon delivered by Rev. W. Benjamin Boswell at Myers Park Baptist Church On February 16th, 2020 from Matthew 5:21-26; 38-48

In the Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie describes a musician whose songs “could crack open the seals of the universe and let divinity break into the everyday world” and a poet who “opened windows into our hearts and minds through which both light and darkness could be seen.” These words could have been about Bob Dylan. Dylan grew up immersed in American folk and roots music and inherited a culture soaked in the Bible and Christian tradition; that had gone awry. He drew upon his Jewish heritage and study of the Gospels to become the Bard, the Voice of Protest, and the Voice of a Generation. In the song “American Pie” Don McLean called Dylan “the jester,” but when, Dylan was asked about the reference he said, “A jester? Sure, a jester writes songs like ‘Masters of War’, ‘A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall’, 'It's Alright, Ma' – some jester. He must be talking about somebody else.” Dylan wasn’t a jester; he was a prophet—one of America’s truest prophets of peace and justice.

In addition to protest songs, Dylan wrote a lot of love songs. He had a love/hate relationship with love. He sang things like, “Done so many evil things in the name of love, it’s a crying shame.” And “Love is all there is, it makes the world go ’round, no matter what you think about it, You won’t be able to do without it, Take a tip from one who’s tried.” Dylan also has a song called “Love Sick” that goes, “I’m sick of love. That I’m in the thick of it. This kind of love. I’m so sick of it.” And after singing it live, Dylan often says something sarcastic like, “That was a LOVE song. All of my songs are love songs. You know why? The band loves to play them.”

What do Bob Dylan, Valentine’s Day, and Jesus have in common? They’re all about love! A lot of people don’t know St. Valentine was a priest who defied the Roman Empire by marrying Christian couples at time when it was against the law. This wasn’t just a romantic gesture—it was an anti-war protest! At the time, if you were married it meant you could not be conscripted into the Army. So, early Christians who were non-violent and didn’t want to fight in war would try to get married—it was the first century equivalent of burning your draft card.

St. Valentine deliberately disobeyed the empire’s family separation policy by these performing illegal weddings. After being arrested he refused to recant his faith, and Emperor Claudius had him beaten with clubs, stoned, and then beheaded. So, the best Valentine’s Day card ever has a picture of St. Valentine with the words, “I’ve lost my head over you.” It is unfortunate that amidst all the cards, chocolates, and flowers, we forget about this martyr who teaches us about the same kind of love Dylan sang about—love that is embodied as peaceful resistance to the death-dealing forces of the empire.

I thought it might be interesting to talk about what St. Valentine and Bob Dylan thought about love, because people don’t really want to hear about what Jesus said about love anymore. I’m not sure we ever did, but at least we used to pretend. Nowadays, we blatantly reject what he said. At the National Prayer Breakfast a few days ago, a man named Arthur Brooks was the keynote speaker. Brooks is a Harvard professor, a self-professed conservative, and author of a new book called Love Your Enemies, which draws inspiration from the words we heard today in Matthew 5. In his speech, Brooks said, “as Americans we increasingly view people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided, but as worthless. Some people say we need more civility and tolerance. I say, nonsense, Why? Because civility and tolerance are a low standard. Jesus didn't say, ‘tolerate your enemies.’ He said, ‘love your enemies.’ So, we must answer hatred with love.”i Brooks said he hoped his remarks would be a moment of healing for the country after the divisive House impeachment and Senate acquittal of the President.

However, immediately after Brooks spoke, the President took the podium and said, “Arthur, I don't know if I agree with you.”ii and then he proceeded to criticize his opponents as “dishonest and corrupt people” who “badly hurt our nation” and blasted two of his “enemies” by denigrating their faith and dismissing their prayers. Later in his speech, the President seemed to sense that many in the room disagreed with him about loving enemies, and said, “I'm sorry, I apologize, I am trying to learn. It’s not easy when they impeach you for nothing, and you're supposed to like them. It’s not easy folks. I do my best.” As desensitized as we are to the Presidents’ rantings; it was still quite startling to hear him directly reject one of Christianity's core teachings. He wasn’t disagreeing with Arthur Brooks; he was disagreeing with Jesus! Yet, shocking as it was, we shouldn’t be surprised. Back during the campaign, the President said his favorite Bible verse is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”iii

Jesus’ addressed that too, “You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.” It is not important to me whether the President disagrees with Jesus. What is important is what his comments reveal about all of us. When I heard about his remarks at the Prayer Breakfast, the first thing I thought was, “Well, at least he was honest.” Most Christians don’t agree with Jesus’ teaching to love their enemies—we’re just better at pretending. Instead of focusing so much on the President’s comments, I wish more people had considered the words of Arthur Brooks.

The subtitle of his book Love Your Enemies is “How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.” In his speech Brooks also said, “We don’t have an anger problem in American politics. We have a contempt problem. Psychologists consider it one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in relationships—a sign that doom and destruction are on the horizon. Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer defined contempt as ‘the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.’ In America today we treat each other as worthless, which is why our fights are so bitter and cooperation feels impossible. Contempt is a habit that has torn our society apart, and it can only be overcome by loving our enemies.”iv

Brooks told a story of the time asked the Dalai Lama, “Your Holiness, what do I do when I feel contempt?” and the Dalai Lama responded, “Practice warm-heartedness.”v At the end of his speech Brooks offered three charges to the audience. “First, ask God to remove contempt from your heart and give you the strength to do this hard thing, to go against human nature, to follow Jesus teaching and love your enemies. Second, make a commitment to another person to reject contempt and ask them to hold you accountable to love your enemies. Third, go out looking for contempt, and answer it with love.”vi

Contempt is not a partisan disease—it is fully present in Democrat and Republican, Liberal and Conservative. I know because I feel it in my own heart every day when I read the news. I’m willing to bet you feel it too. But freeing ourselves from contempt is just the beginning of what Jesus meant when he taught his followers to love our enemies. Unlike the Dalai Lama, Jesus did not simply call us to “practice warm heartedness.” Above and beyond the charges Brooks gave, Jesus offered four practices his followers could employ to love their enemies.

Some call them practices of non-resistance, but the phrase, “do not resist an evildoer” is a mistranslation. The word there for “resist,” anthistemi, only appears in this text and it’s a military term that means violent resistance. Scholars are clear Jesus wasn’t saying, “do not resist,” he was saying, “do not violently resist.” The absence of that one word changes the entire meaning. The issue isn’t whether to resist, but how. Evil must be countered for justice to be established, but Jesus’ approach was different from the law of retribution. He wanted to break the cycle of violence and offered the deep wisdom that you cannot destroy evil with violence—because violence itself is evil, yet he did not command submission. Jesus offered a third way of active loving non-violent resistance.

Jesus offered four specific creative examples of how to practice non-violent resistance for people living under first century Roman subjugation. During the Roman occupation a soldier could strike a Jewish person without consequence, demand that they give them their cloak, and force them to carry their pack for one mile. As scholar Walter Winkvii has identified; it is impossible to hit someone on the left cheek with your right hand. The only way to do it is with a backhanded slap, which is the way a Roman would admonish an inferior subject. The intent was not to injure but to humiliate a person. Turning the other cheek was a way to refuse to be humiliated, to deny a soldier the power to demean you, to assert your humanity, to claim agency in the situation, and to dare the oppressor to hit you on the left cheek like an equal.

Imagine you are so poor you have nothing but the shirt on your back and someone with more power and authority demands your clothes. Jesus said if that happens, strip off all your clothing and hand them your underwear—then march away naked! There’s nothing that would shame and lampoon an oppressor more! The same is true of going a second mile when pressed into service. Imagine a Roman soldier’s surprise when, at the mile marker, he reaches to take his pack back and you say, “Oh no, I’m carrying it another mile.” The scene of a Roman soldier pleading with a Jewish person to give him back his pack is absolutely hilarious!

The fourth example of loving non-violent resistance was economic: “give to everyone who begs and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” Wouldn’t that be a great tagline for a bank? “Giving to every beggar and lending to every borrower since 1852.” Jesus assumed there would be poverty and exploitative practices of taxation and debt, but he offered a counter cultural way of giving.

Instead of giving to benefit your reputation or social position, Jesus called his followers to give in order to alleviate one another person’s suffering. Giving to anyone who begs and lending to anyone who asks to borrow is the vision of a totally new economic system that is not about creating wealth but ensuring economic justice and equality for all. Jesus demanded that loving our enemies requires us to use our economic resources to alleviate suffering to our neighbors and even to our enemies, because everyone—absolutely everyone deserves economic security.

Jesus did not offer these four practices so his followers could develop a superhuman piety or to “kill” their enemies with kindness. By stimulating their creativity and empowering hope, Jesus offered people living under constant domination a way to lovingly and non-violently resist oppression, recover their humanity, reassert their dignity, and liberate themselves from a servile mentality. Daring a perpetrator to punch you like an equal, shaming an oppressor with your nakedness, defiantly carrying off a soldier’s pack, giving and lending without discretion—Jesus gave these crazy examples of creative resistance, and he didn’t call it non-violence or non-retaliation, he called it love. Love of enemies—the hardest and most difficult part of following Jesus. It is so radical and alarming to associate the word ‘love’ with the word ‘enemy’ that we are not only forced to reckon with those who have hurt us, but to redefine what we mean by love.

Love is not an emotion, or a feeling, and it doesn’t mean being nice. Love is not free from conflict. Love involves challenge, with no guarantee it will be returned or that it will be understood as love. Challenge injustice and oppression with or without love will incite conflict and suffering. We are called to resist evil, but without hatred, contempt or violence. The number one rule of loving your enemies is “don’t hurt them.” The one thing we absolutely cannot do if we love our enemies is kill them, because you cannot kill someone and love them at the same time. But we cannot allow ourselves or others to be beaten, victimized, and oppressed either. That’s why Jesus taught us “tough love” or what the church calls agape—a self-sacrificial love toward our neighbors and enemies. Some will say, “Ben, if you love your enemies, they will become your friends and you will have no enemies.” Jesus was not that optimistic. Instead he said if we really follow him, then we will have enemies—no doubt about it; so love them. One of my theology professors used to say, “If there are no enemies, there is no Christianity, because how can you love something you don’t have?”

As followers of Jesus we have been called to seize the moral initiative, find a creative alternatives to violence, assert our humanity and dignity, meet force with humor, break the cycle of humiliation, refuse the inferior position, shame the oppressor, and be willing to suffer.” These actions will create different relationships and manifest the destabilizing and transforming reign of God. In order to do this, we may have to throw all our sentimental notions of love out the window. As the songs of Bob Dylan teach us, there is no love without peace—no love without justice. Peace and justice are what love looks like in public.

True love asks questions like “How many roads must a human walk down before you call them a human being?” And “How many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned?” And “How many years can some people exist before they’re allowed to be free?” And “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” And “How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?” And “How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?” And “How does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?”

But the answer my friends is not blowing in the wind—it is sitting in these chairs, it is standing on this stage, it is stirring in our hearts, it is resting in our hands, it is tingling in our feet, it is folded neatly in our back pockets and bank accounts, it is glistening in our eyes. We are the answer to those haunting questions and answering them will require us to resist to the death dealing power of evil, not with hatred, contempt or violence, but with the holy and awesome power of non-violent love. It will require us to call upon our ancestors and stand on the shoulders of all the courageous practitioners of non- violence who came before us: St. Valentine, St. Francis, the early Baptists, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King. It will require marching, demonstrating, protesting, and advocating for peace and justice with our voices, vocations, and votes. It will require us to break the cycle of contempt and violence with creative actions of loving resistance to the empire and our enemies. Loving our enemies will require us to be brave and counter cultural—to live differently than the rest of the world, but as Dylan sings “What good am I if I’m like all the rest, if I turn away when I see how your dressed, if I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry, if I know and don’t do, if I see and don’t say, if I look right through you, if I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky, what good am I?” Don’t be like the rest, don’t turn away, don’t shut yourself off, don’t look right through, don’t turn a deaf ear—see and know, say and do—be peace, be justice, be love.

i https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/06/politics/trump-love-enemies-prayer-breakfast/index.html ii Ibid. iii https://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/trump-favorite-bible- verse-221954 iv Arthur C. Brooks, remarks, as prepared, for the National Prayer Breakfast keynote address on Thursday, February 13, 2020 at the Washington Hilton. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/07/arthur-brooks- national-prayer-breakfast-speech/?arc404=true v Arthur Brooks, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from a Culture of Contempt, (Broadside Books, 2019). vi Brooks, Prayer Breakfast address. vii Walter Wink, The Powers That Be.