Neighbor, oh neighbor, we must go beyond.
My friends, today Jesus is going beyond. You have heard it said, and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is a huge step in the judicial system at the time. If someone took something or injured you some way, it’s a very human thing to escalate the violence. If you take my eye, I take your life. If you knock out a tooth, I break your bones. An eye for an eye is the Jewish tradition calling for restraint and opposing revenge.
A measured response was radical at the time. The idea caught on. It was codified in law. People got used to it. Then Jesus goes beyond it. Don’t resist.
This goes against our reactive nature. They hit, we hit back or we flinch or we go into fight or flight mode. Jesus is commanding his folks to be more strategic and thoughtful in their resistance.
Each of these examples Jesus gives are about aggression and pressure from other people in their own selfish pursuits. If someone hits you, offer the other cheek. It is a way to try to remind the aggressor of the shared humanity.
Same with when someone sues you, give your coat and cloak as well… meaning that you’d be naked in front of your aggressor. Seeing someone naked would make them unclean and the cloak could not be legally taken away.[1]
The third example reflects the Roman practice taken over from the Persians, by which soldiers and government officials could compel citizens of the occupied country to give them directions or carry their equipment.[2] We see this where Simon is compelled to carry Jesus’ cross on the way to the crucifixion. Scholar Douglas Hare points out that a “Mile” is the foreign Roman measure of distance, never used anywhere else in the New Testament.[3] It’d be like if I said, “If someone asks you to go the kilometer, go the extra kilometer.” Context matters.
In going that extra mile, maybe you’ll strike up a conversation. Maybe you’ll humanize yourself to the occupying force. Rather than plotting how to get even, Jesus commands the disciple to do more than the law requires.
It is about the humanity. Jesus is about reminding people of their covenant with God and their neighbor. It is not a matter of insider-outsider either. Jesus goes beyond his own people and brings the Good News to the Gentiles. He includes the sinners. The poor. The lame. The blind. He goes beyond even to the enemies. These sayings express the inherent rule of the kingdom of God exhibited in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus who went to the cross and survived it.
Jesus’ harshest words were for the religious of his day who would dehumanize entire groups of people. He’s trying to wake them up to their neighbor. Their neighbor whom God loves. Even their enemy whom God loves.
As I look back on our 200 years, I see this exact thing in the congregational church. The United Church of Christ has picked it up. We have been out in front of so many social issues, leading the charge. And we have paid the price for it. We have gone beyond in the past.
Our ancestors longed to use their gifts to support their local church. They longed to have control over who could preach, teach, marry and bury. They longed to read the bible in their own language. They wanted freedom from a corrupt king who was seeking his own way, so they passively resisted in the face of being watched. Being ridiculed. Instead of insisting on their own way, they turned the other cheek and went to the Netherlands. When the persecution followed, they went to the New World. The Massachusetts Bay.
They went beyond borders. They went beyond the common conception of organizing church. They believed the church was not the hierarchy or the dogma or the pope or king or even the building. For Jesus gave his teachings and parables not to any of these, but to the people. He told his disciples that they would be his body, his church, and he sent the Holy Spirit not to a budget or building but to the church. This was radical at the time! It still is.
A group came here to the untamed wilderness of Medina in the early 1800s. With the Episcopalians (those who ran them out of England BTW) they built a cabin for worship in a day. Eliza Northrop is the first teacher in Medina county as well as the first wedding to take place here. And she is our ancestor in faith. A congregationalist.
H.G. Blake is our ancestor in faith. He was elected to congress. He served in the Civil War. He went beyond. He was a merchant here in town. When fire struck, he helped lead the charge to rebuild. When that burned down, he founded the Phoenix block. Normal people would have given up. He went beyond.
He served in the Civil War. But he went beyond that as well. He was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He must have been told that black folk were worth less. They weren’t like white people. Not as smart. He must have heard all the stereotypes and lies, and he chose to go beyond and see the humanity in black folk and fight for their freedom. He brought hope to so many people.
A.I. Root, another of our ancestors in faith, went beyond. Inspired by a hive of bees, his curiosity led him to redefine the practice of beekeeping. He made candles from the wax. You would think that a candlemaker would be fearful of what the new technology of electricity would do, but he wasn’t. He electrified his factory. He electrified his church. He drove an electric car. He even made sure his dentist had an electric drill. He corresponded with the Wright Brothers and wrote the account of their flight that is in the Smithsonian.
All of this was not guaranteed. All of this did not happen in a vacuum. There were struggles. Fears. Protests. Threats. Before we moved to this corner of the square, we worshiped in the Courthouse, which is now Courthouse Pizzeria. Towns folk would come in and interrupt worship. Mock the teachings. Yet our dream propelled us. The dream of folks reading the bible in their own language and discovering God in their life. Of offering their gift and entering into covenant with God and one another for mutual healing and wholeness. To help bring justice to the earth. Justice by erasing domestic violence. They marched for Temperance and for women’s suffrage. They marched for abolition. They went beyond. And we are their heirs.
We too, must go beyond. We hear all this talk in our day of the church declining. I do not believe that this is because we have dreamed too big and failed, but that we have dreamed too small. We have not stepped out in faith and showed the radical love of God.
Last Sunday, I told you that I am angry. I am. Yet there is a difference between destructive anger and constructive anger. A difference between the destructive anger of escalating violence and wanting your pound of flesh in revenge vs. the prophetic anger at injustice and discrimination. Destructive anger only views its own slights. It dehumanizes anything in its path to fill the hole in its soul. That is a hole that will never be filled.
Constructive anger never dehumanizes. It can be mad. It can flip tables. It can call people out and remind them of the better angels of their nature. Yet it never dehumanizes. It goes beyond the real need to retaliate, it goes beyond an eye for an eye, it goes the extra mile that risks vulnerability and showing humanity. This anger is sometimes what’s need to get things started and bring ideas into existence.
I pray for my enemies. I pray for the pain that they must carry that makes them lash out. I pray for the pain and grief we all carry. Yet I also have hope that we can unite. That we can see our common humanity. That we can go beyond. We can risk. We can include and dream and speak about the causes that we are passionate about.
I have been with you almost three years. The need I see is emergency shelter. There is not a week that goes by in the winter where someone isn’t stopping into our church and asking for a night’s stay in a hotel. I regularly see at least 3 homeless men walking around our square and spending their days in the library. I see the Community Services Center sitting empty and I dream of putting a shelter there. A shelter that will have some sort of social services. That will have vocational training. That will lead them to our resources and ministries that already exist like CUPS Café and Operation Homes and The Recovery Center and Cathy’s House and so many more.
It’s a big dream. There are so many reasons not to do it. It’ll be like pushing water uphill. So many doctrinal and denominational differences that would keep us from partnering with other churches. We must go beyond.
And if this isn’t your bag, then go beyond this vision. Cast your own vision. Feed the hungry. March for equality. March to fund cancer or Alzheimer research. Gather here to beat back loneliness and risk reaching out to someone else to make them aware of your isolation. Or grief. Or whatever it is that you are carrying.
It doesn’t have to be a big scary vision. It can be just showing up. 90% of this life is showing up. You could be doing something else. But you’re here. You are already going beyond what you know. You could be at your home with the paper and coffee, but you’re here. I take that to mean that you’re looking to contribute. As the late Ralph Waite is famous for saying, “Community Service is the rent we owe for the space we occupy on earth.”[4]
Our tradition propels us and Jesus teaches us to go beyond. We must go beyond. Go beyond so that in 40 years when that reliquary/time capsule is opened, they will know the names. Your name. You who showed up and looked for where God was calling you, and stepped out in faith. Trusting the call of God on your life. Trusting your belovedness. Trusting who you are in Christ.
And seeing what we have done. It’s weird to think that the people who will open our reliquary already know what we have done… It is we who don’t know. Just like those folks in our sacred stories and our ancestors over our 200-year history didn’t know what they would do… they had to go beyond and step out in faith. May they see the tradition that propels them. May they see our lives tied up in theirs. Our common humanity and our unity in Christ.
For we have felt that during our bicentennial year. Our ancestors lives are caught up in our own. We are because they were. And each of our acts here will go beyond our life and bless the lives of others. It is so. And may it be so. Trusting in the grace of God, the way of Christ, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Works Cited
[1][1] Exodus 22:25-26 and Deut 24:12-13
[2][2] M. Eugene Boring, The Gospel of Matthew, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII, page 194
[3][3] Ibid, footnote 144 page 194
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