Sermon on the Mount
“Humpty Dumpty Christianity”
This passage of scripture finishes this section of the Sermon on the Mount (5:21-48) - the whole series of "You have heard it said" passages. You might say that we could sum up this moment as "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall" That "wall" began to keep some people in - and some people out. The people of the day - and people today - still take on the persona of Humpty Dumpty. They/we build our walls to define who are neighbours and who are enemies and we sit on our wall. Just like Humpty Dumpty.
"You have heard it said 'Love your neighbour..." Correct. "…and hate your enemy". Wrong.
Scripture commands us time and again to "Love your neighbour". The whole "love your neighbour" thing dominates scripture. Sometimes it is simply expected. Other times it is commanded in chapter and verse. Jesus summed up scripture by saying "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."" (Matthew 22:37-40)
The Bible never commands us to "Hate your enemy." Never. Yet somehow - "Love your neighbour" had come to mean "Hate your enemy." Biblically speaking - they really had only ever heard God say "Love your neighbour." But over time people had expanded and explained that to "…and hate your enemy." How did "Love your neighbour" come to mean "hate your enemy"? How is it that by the time of Jesus the command "Love your neighbour" had come to also mean "Hate your enemy"? How did people come to believe that "Love your neighbour" meant "Hate your enemy"? It was a logical yet subtle progression it seems.
Sometimes the neighbour becomes the enemy. It seems. Adam and Eve start off very well - but in the presence of evil start blaming each other. Neighbours now enemies. Love now hate. Their children - Cain and Abel. Neighbours then enemies. Love then hate. Abel and Cain come before God with an offering to Him. Abel's offering to God is accepted and Cain's is rejected. Cain takes his anger and hate out on his brother, his neighbour if you will, and kills him. Funny that. The first two Biblical examples of the shift from neighbour to enemy, from love to hate takes place in paradise and then in worship. That's unnerving at best!
Throughout the rest of scripture, to the time of Jesus, there are examples after examples of love dissolving into hate. Jacob and Esau; Joseph and his brothers; King Saul and David; David and his son Absolum; Judas and Jesus. It's rampant. A Biblical command with an unbiblical application. A beautiful and loving command that has been mutated into a command to exclude and distance others. "Love your neighbour - but hate your enemy." It's still an issue.
Today Jesus's words still strike at the heart. "You have heard it said 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.'" We still have the ability to champion this theology. If we still our hearts and in humility reflect on our lives - I think we will find that we too say "It has been said 'Love your neighbour and hate your enemies." We live out of this mindset; this state of heart. We declare "Love your neighbour" and in a sophisticated way reserve the right to "hate our enemies." We learn of a policy change that the government wants to pass into law. It strikes at what we consider to be part of what it means to be a Christian and our response, conversations, our actions lack love.
We poke fun at politicians, and scruntise their apparent motives, and make fun at how they look, speak, act - we critise them in ways which are quite personal and have nothing to do with the issue. Not really. We play the man - not the ball. We encounter teasing or opposition from someone close about the fact that we believe in Jesus. And now that person becomes the enemy and we no longer consider them a neighbour. So the love stops and the hate begins. The anger begins.
Another way that "Love your neighbour" becomes "hate your enemy" is when we try to make sense of the Word of God without grace. When we read the Bible and try to live it without a spirit of grace - then it becomes cold. "You have heard it said "Love your neighbour"" - is grace. "You have heard it said "Love your neighbour and hate your enemy"" - is not grace. Whenever you interprete the Bible without grace - you will end up with the kind of formula that Jesus is correcting here. Something akin to the Valley of Dry Bones that Ezekiel talked about. It's funny what we come to believe when we forget grace. It's funny how when we engage with the Word of God without grace how it ends up. We end up with distortions about God; about ourselves; and most certainly about each other and the world in which we live.
So here in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes this motto of the day; this Word of God that has been mutated by a lack of grace and He restates it. He breathes new life into it again. He takes this invention of the day and collapses it into a shorter Word. A more powerful Word. He takes the "Love your neighbour" and "Hate your enemy" and marries them with grace - and says… "But I tell you - love your enemies." This is normal brilliance from Jesus.
Overtime - and probably because it is a lot more convenient - the whole "Love your neighbour" thing had become emptied of its power because "neighbour" came to mean "those we like and those who like us." "Neighbour" lost its Biblical meaning and intent. It's Humpty Dumpty with a happy ending. Our understanding of God and His ways has become Humpty Dumpty in our hands. And it's fallen off the wall and we don't recognise its shattered state much less aware that it needs to be put back together again. Not that we can put it back together again!!
But Christ does - only this time it does not read "Love your neighbour" or "Hate your enemy" - it reads "Love your enemy." As far as our theology goes - Humpty Dumpty is back together and in the best shape of his life. Here Jesus is saying - let's still talk about neighbours but to help you understand what I mean by that - I'll refer to neighbours as "enemies." Those you don't like and who most certainly don't like you. Love those ones. Pray for those ones.
One of the most famous stories Jesus told - the Good Samaritan was told because someone after Jesus had said to love God and love your neighbour - a lawyer asked Him to define "neighbour." Scripture said the lawyer who asked Jesus this (Lk 10) wanted to justify himself. Somehow excuse his way of life. So Jesus told a story whereby only one of three people acted like a neighbour. The hero of the story was a Samaritan who acted very neighbourly to the injured man. It was a difficult story to stomach. But he had his answer. We all do. Here Jesus takes graceless theology (love neighbour/hate enemy) and puts the case for grace very clearly. As Kingdom people we have a daily reminder about the character of our Father in heaven. Rain or shine (literally) - His grace is evident upon our neighbours (5:45). Be they friend or foe.
The sun and rain are examples of grace. It's in the very rythmn of life. Jesus lists some everyday examples that are as common as sun and rain. If we only love those who love others; if we only greet our brothers and sisters - how is that any different to those who do not follow God? How are we any different? This challenge of Jesus' is not simply about how we are acting in life. It goes deeper than that. This is not just about ethics. This is about the source of those ethics.
Here's the thing…
In the presence of our Father's acts of grace - the question is - are we showing a family likeness? As people of the Kingdom, as people who know and pray "Our Father in heaven…" there is a quality about us that should set us apart. Through Christ we have the revelation of our identity as human beings. How we live life ought to be of a quality that makes us distinctive and recognisable as children of God. As Kingdom people. People who are acutely aware that we are made in the image of God - and that our neighbours - our enemies - are too. And so when Jesus sums up this whole section with "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" - Jesus is like literally saying "Continue to grow up into the likeness of your Heavenly Father." The perfection spoken of here is not a present pristine life of moral perfection. It is the call to grow into the perfection of the Father, insofar as living according to the way He created us. In His image. It is about living according to the purpose for which He created us.
This humanity that God created are beings who "love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them." It is a people who do those kinds of things - not to try and be someone they're not. But they do that kind of thing because that's the way this "family of God" is. It's the way we do things around here. We get it from our Father. We are becoming like Him day by day.
Paul later put it like this:
First in 2 Cor:
"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18, NRSV)
"But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;" (2 Corinthians 4:7-9, NRSV)
" So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16, NRSV)
"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:10-14, NRSV)
Presented By: Rev. Geoff New