Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany—February 20, 2011

Matthew 5:38-48

“Guided by Love” Rev. John C. Wohlrabe, Jr., Th.D.

Worship Report

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. The text for our message today is from the Gospel lesson read a bit ago.

Friends of and Friends of Mine: The text for today is one of those portions of Scripture that I suspect you read through, scratch your head, and say, “Well, that doesn’t make much sense;” then you go on to something else without really thinking about what Jesus intended by those words and what they mean for you.

Picture, if you will, a family who is facing a serious dilemma based on this command of Jesus! This is something that has been in the news a lot lately. The mom and dad have taught their son, Bobby, a strong, healthy fourth grader, that as a Christian he is always to turn the other cheek. Bobby does his best to practice this. Then, one day, the bully of the school finds out that he has someone here whom he can use as a punching bag. So day-after-day on the way home from school the bully picks on this Christian boy. And day-after-day, Bobby tries his best not to fight back. Day-after-day he comes home hurt because of what this bully has done. The mom and dad are perplexed. “Here are the words of Jesus; here is our son. What do we do?”

I think that if many of us, particularly if we are Bobby’s grandparents, were visiting when Bobby came home with a black eye, we might “him-and-haw” and then mumble something like, “Well, you have to defend yourself. Jesus didn’t intend that Bobby get hurt like that. Why don’t you as Bobby’s parents, just tell him to haul off and punch the bully? Even if Bobby loses the fight, the bully will probably leave him alone, because bullies are generally cowards anyway.”

But, afterward we would probably be unhappy with that answer. You and I as Christians are called by Christ to be different from the world; but that was the same kind of answer anyone else would have given.

As we read through the Gospel lesson for today, we see other potential dilemmas lurking there: such as not only giving your coat to someone who asks, but your cloak as well; and we are to go two miles for someone who forces us to go one mile; and we are not to refuse anyone who would borrow from us. On top of this, we are to love our enemy and pray for our persecutor! Those words are extremely difficult, and we need to look more closely at what Jesus is saying.

I suspect that we deal with “cheek turning” and all the other commands of Jesus listed here in his on the Mount in one of three ways. The first way is that we follow them when it is convenient, but when they become difficult, then we ignore them. If you are employed in a place where many people work closely with one another, you know that you need to turn your cheek many times. Marriages and family life require a lot of cheek turning, not from physical hitting hopefully, but from things that are said or done. Someone makes a thoughtless, insensitive statement and you let it go. A neighbor borrows something from you, and never returns the item. You may get angry, but you turn the other cheek; at least you do so for awhile. But eventually, resentment builds up, and like a pressure cooker that has no relief valve, suddenly, one day, you explode harshly because all that accumulated anger and bitterness finally has to get out. At that point, you ignore what Jesus says. And yet, the words of Jesus are still there: “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

A second option is that we try hard, and maybe even succeed outwardly, but we still fail inwardly. This is what is happening with this Christian family dealing with the bully. I’m sure they are extremely frustrated and angry. They are angry at the bully; and I suspect that they may even be angry at Jesus for having given this command. They live in a sinful world, and they know that. There are people who will take advantage of other people, particularly Christians, and Jesus knew that too, even as he spoke these words. Maybe Bobby and his parents thought the bully would reform, that he would see Bobby’s conduct and would say, “There is a Christian. I’m going to change my life.” But, that wasn’t happening. The Christian parents took this word, this law, to its conclusion, and the conclusion wasn’t working for them. Plus, as we saw last week when we talked about the section of the just before this, we can’t control the evil thoughts and sentiments in our hearts, even when we may control our actions. Anger and hatred in our hearts toward our neighbor are still forms of murder, even as is lashing out with our fists.

You and I can undoubtedly predict what would eventually happen in the story of the bully and the young Christian boy, Bobby. One day Bobby will get fed up with being hurt and will punch the bully. The bully will go away and leave him alone. The conclusion that Bobby will draw from this is really harmful for his Christian faith. He is going to say, “Well, the things in the Bible are fine, but they belong to a special, spiritual world. In the real world, they don’t work.” So on Sunday he will join his mom and dad and other fellow Christians and sing “Take my life and let it be, consecrated, Lord, to Thee;” but during the rest of the week he is going to live without the Word of God informing his daily actions. He may even conclude, “This is a dog-eat-dog world. I’ve got to look out for myself first. Do it to them before they do it to me.” Faith and life will then be totally separated in Bobby’s life. This happens – probably more often than we would like to think!

A third option in dealing with the command to turn the other cheek is to admit that we can’t keep this Word of Jesus. Our Lord concluded this section of the Sermon on the Mount with words that simply won’t let us dismiss his commands nor allow us to keep them only partially. After all of these hard sayings, Jesus concludes: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

These words of Jesus eliminate the first option, that of ignoring his command. They also eliminate the second option of putting religion into a compartment just for Sunday mornings. The will of God is unbending. It enters into every area of life. The Law’s function is to show us our sins. It can never provide a solution in and of itself because we are by nature sinful. It can only show us that there is no solution to be found in our keeping of the Law. The Law reveals our complete helplessness and our need for a Savior.

That is why Jesus came into our world. He came not to remove the Law, but to keep the Law for us. The Bible says that “While we were yet sinners,” while we weren’t turning the other cheek, God’s Son came for us sinners. He was reviled, but he did not revile back. Jesus is the greatest cheek turner that the world will ever know! His death on the cross was as our substitute, in our place, taking the full wrath of God over our sin. In Jesus Christ, God turns his cheek for us and our sins.

Yet, the family who had the problem with the bully is a Christian family. They are looking at the command of Jesus from this side of the cross. They weren’t saying, “if we keep this Law, then we will be saved.” They know they are saved only by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. They were saying rather, “Because we are Christians, therefore, out of love and gratitude for God’s love towards us, we should turn the other cheek.” Only Christians can say that! But, there is still something wrong here. This family is making the rule the final word. To live only by rules and laws in our lives as Christians is to say that nothing else matters, nothing else needs to be considered except for the keeping of these rules and laws. The other people who may be involved don’t matter, the bully doesn’t matter, even our faith in Christ as our Savior doesn’t matter, only the keeping of the rule matters. But, when we think like that, we become like scribes and the Pharisees.

Some time ago, a famous playwright and his wife were mugged on the streets of New York City. The wife was horribly beaten by the attackers. Afterward, she praised her husband who had done nothing to help her, because she claimed he had remained true to his pacifist beliefs. The rule that he lived by not only prevented him from doing something he considered to be wrong, but at the same time it prevented him from doing good for someone in need, namely his wife! There is definitely something wrong with that! We are to love our neighbor as ourselves, which can mean protecting our neighbor when he or she is being attacked. There is also something wrong with what those parents we have been discussing were doing to their son, Bobby. The dad and mom were breaking other rules in order to keep this one rule about cheek turning.

The Apostle Paul writes something in his letter to the Romans that is very instructive for us here: “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:9-10).

Love is the fulfillment of the Law. The command of Jesus about cheek turning is only part of the Law of Love. Love’s question is this: What good is my love doing to and for the other person? What is the goal of my cheek turning? Here we need to be careful, because the old sinful nature may want to take over: “I’m getting hurt by turning my cheek. The bully isn’t stopping. Therefore, I’ll “love” the bully by smashing his face in!” That’s the old sinful nature talking, not the new nature in Christ. We aren’t really showing love there, are we? Our love needs direction and power so that we love in the fullest sense, even as Christ loved us.

In the First Epistle of John, the Apostle writes of love: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:10-11). Love is found not in us, nor in a command, but in Jesus Christ. We love because of his love for us and through his love for us we love others. In other words, we love because we look to God’s love for us shown and given at the cross of Calvary. Because God loved us so much so as to send his only begotten Son, we can come to realize that God also loves those who want to do us harm. Jesus died for them too. Christian love, therefore, seeks to see other people as God sees them: from the cross!

This kind of love doesn’t ask, “When do I stop turning the other cheek?” That’s a Law or rule question. Rather, the question for the cheek turner is: How can I love this person all the way to the cross? How can I love this person and show Jesus’ love in my life? Sometimes, in fact most of the time, the most loving response is to turn the other cheek, so that the mark of the cross can be seen on your cheek. At other times, Christian love requires you to stop turning the cheek and to tell the person, in one way or another, “I have been turning my cheek because in Jesus Christ I love you. I have allowed you to do me harm or take my things so that you may hopefully see Christ’s love through me.” But, there may be times when we must in love hold the bully at arm’s length and say, “Enough! I love my Lord too much to let you go on doing this to yourself, to others, and to me.”

It was probably time for that dad and mom to have said that to Bobby. Fortunately, schools and even society as a whole are more aware of bullying. Because of deaths resulting from bullies, more people are attentive, not only to bullying at schools, but in the work place, and even in retirement and nursing homes. Perhaps the parents, together with Bobby, should have gone to visit the bully and his parents, or talked to teachers and school administrators. If those two options didn’t work, then they should have taken it to the local police or sheriff. For the protection of others, the God ordains authorities need to get involved.

Often times, when things like this happen – bullying or insults or other personal violations – we don’t always have time to think out our response: what the most loving action might be. What if we are wrong? What if we lose patience and “punch” the bully verbally or otherwise? What if we don’t turn the cheek at all? What if our anger builds against the neighbor who repeatedly borrows items and never returns them, and we blow up at him? If we live by the rule, we have no place to turn except the rule, and that condemns us. But, you and I live by the Gospel, and so we know where to go. We go to the source of all love, Jesus Christ. He comes to us through his Word and Sacraments to fill us anew with his love and forgiveness, so that we might live lives that are cross-shaped with his love. Then we pray. We talk to God about those difficult situations and we ask for guidance. We reflect on God’s Word and talk to God about those who persecute us and despitefully use us. We pray for them. Then, when love requires it, we turn the other cheek gladly and willingly so that they too may see God’s love in Jesus Christ through us. We do it out of gratitude for God’s love for us in Christ. His perfect love forgives us. His perfect love covers us. His perfect love fills us. His perfect love guides us. In Jesus’ name:Amen.