:CCO's Cross-Culture Exchange:

Augustine wrote, “Disturbers are to be rebuked, the low-spirited to be encouraged, the infirm to be supported, objectors confuted, the treacherous guarded against, the unskilled taught, the lazy aroused, the contentious restrained, the haughty repressed, litigants pacified, the poor relieved, the oppressed liberated, the good approved, the evil borne with, and all are to be loved.

The apostle Paul taught that we are to pay all our debts except the debt of love for others and according to Jesus that would include our enemies.  But we don’t like to be indebted to anybody.  We want to pay back injuries from our enemies or even pay back favors from our friends.  We desperately want to keep things even with either revenge or recompense.

This is often the preferred method of the proud, a justice that we control ourselves so that no one can get the upper hand on us.  However it is a method that exalts ourselves above God rather than gives ourselves away like God.  Jesus’ wondrous works and wise words are not as much the focus of the gospel as is his life and death – his selfless love for us.  We can not claim the benefits of a crucified Christ and reject his way of self giving love.

So many of Jesus’ parables pointed to this self giving love: a lovesick father who runs to meet his prodigal son, a landlord who cancels a debt too large for anyone to pay, an employer who pays 11th hour workers the same as the first hour crew, a banquet giver who goes to the highways and byways in search of undeserving guests – all stories of an unnatural self-donation.  This self giving love steps over the need for gratitude and affirmation, it steps over the wounds and wrongs suffered at the hands of our enemies.

Jesus not only stepped over our sins, he paid for them while we were his enemies, donating his life in an unnatural act of love so that we might become sons and daughters of the God most high.  Jesus is simply asking us to show ourselves as his Father’s children by loving our enemies.

Carl Sandburg, the American poet and novelist once wrote, “Love your neighbor as yourself; but don’t take down the fence”.  That’s how the Jews had interpreted the law to love thy neighbor.  A law they believed had limits and which then gave them permission to hate their enemies.  Their understanding of love was driven by self-interest instead of God’s self-donating love.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount brings a new and deeper understanding of what it means to be a Kingdom Christian and it is unnatural.  It is much more natural to abide by the principles of the kingdom of this world which at best encourages us to ignore our enemies.  But God’s Kingdom calls us to an unnatural love – a love of enemies – a self-donating love.

Jesus points out that His heavenly Father loves His enemies everyday.  He gives sunlight and sends rain on the evil and the unjust.  He has every right to withhold that common grace to the unrighteous but instead He shows mercy and patience.  Anyone can love a lover, even corrupt tax collectors do that much.  It’s natural.  So Jesus asks us, what more are you doing than that?  How are you different than the pagans who are kind to their friends?

The one thing that sets Christianity apart from all other religions is the love of Jesus Christ who went patiently and obediently to the cross.  The cross is the peculiar, extraordinary, unnatural hallmark of the Christian religion.  A distinction that is displayed in the self-donating love of enemies.  A love that prays for  those who persecute us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God….so long as we pray for them, we are doing vicariously for them what they can not do for themselves”.  Can we imagine how things might be different if the politicians who claim to be followers of Christ prayed for their opponents, if pro-lifers prayed for Planned Parenthood, if our soldiers prayed for the Taliban, if Blacks and Whites prayed for each other?  It would be unnatural but this self-donating love, this acting like true children of our Father in heaven, just might allow the world to see more of God’s coming Kingdom.

Author and speaker Tony Campolo often asks students at secular universities what they know about Jesus.  He asks if they can recall anything Jesus said.  The clear reply, time and time again, is “love your enemies”.  More than any other teaching of Jesus, that one stands out to unbelievers.  Maybe the most unnatural act of any of Jesus’ commands.

Most people would prefer to agree with the philosopher Immanuel Kant who argued that a person should only be loved and forgiven if they deserve it. Let’s be honest it is hard enough to love our brothers and sisters in Christ never the less someone who is an enemy.  Love the thugs and drug dealers poisoning our neighborhoods, love that neighbor who parties too loud and too late, love the Islamic terrorist who kills innocent people, and love that political ideologist on the other side of the aisle – it’s just too unnatural.

We all have our enemies, someone who has hurt us, hates us, persecutes us or just disagrees with us.  Someone we have walled off for protection or excluded for convenience.  These are the people Jesus requires us to love – an unnatural act that goes against our primal instincts.  So what makes loving our enemies such a priority that it becomes central to our faith?  Jesus gives a simple theological answer to why we are to love our enemies: “In that way you will be a acting as true children of your Father in heaven.”  A simple answer but an unnatural act.  Yet in my lifetime there has never been a more needful time for children of the Kingdom to act like our heavenly Father.  For that reason I want to take us a little deeper into this unnatural act of loving our enemies over the next few weeks.

In the words of that famous jazz singer and theologian Billy Holiday, “Sometimes it is worse to win a fight than to lose”.  That is the way I feel about our present political discourse and public debates.  Everyone is claiming to be a winner but they are worse off for it, especially those of us who want to attach a Christian perspective to our view points.  Jesus taught that there is something not quite right about praising God on Sunday and then cursing our brother on Monday. Our Sunday morning worship should lead us to Monday morning mercy for those who disagree with us.

After learning God’s word on the Lord’s Day, Monday is for doing God’s word – loving people and repairing our relationships.  In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the command “do not murder” and intensifies it, deepens it, and clarifies it.  The root of killing is anger.  This kind of anger is not like a flame that burns dried straw – it flames up and burns out quickly – like my anger in the Squirrel Hill tunnel at rush hour.  The anger that commits murder is like a burning coal that continues to produce heat.  It attacks the mental intelligence and moral character of a person calling them an idiot and a liar.  This carried anger not only hurts others but it diminishes us.

God’s surgical method of dealing with this source of murder is to scare the hell out of us.  He confronts our bitter pool of anger with a more bitter pool of divine judgement – the fires of hell that burn longer and hotter than our little lump of coal.  Even cloaked as a humorous hand grenade, our murderous anger that hurts others is liable for God’s judgement.

The good news is that while every command of Jesus first humbles us it then lifts us up.  We learn the full extent of not murdering and then we learn how we can keep the command.  We seek reconciliation with those we have hurt, with those we disagree and with those who are disagreeable.  Jesus even instructs us to be reconciled first before bringing our gift to him, show Monday morning mercy before retuning to Sunday morning worship.  We learn that when we put Jesus first, He instructs us is to put others first.  It may seem impossible to never carry a grudge but it is possible to make amends, to heal a relationship, and to win a friend by losing a fight.

The big coffee-colored hands of my brother ruffled my dark brown hair, pulled back into a knot of a ponytail, the best a girl of six could do.  I smiled up at them, jumping as the chain rattled when the ball smacked the faded  backboard.

My blue basketball shorts matched Carl’s and swished around my legs as I dodged Flay dribbling a basketball out of his reach.  They let me win.  I patted their warm backs, not noticing how my hand seemed whiter than a seashell tossed about rough waves, sanded down and drained of color, against their coca skin.

Gilbert grinned, his teeth white as snow against his mocha skin.  I leaned against the stone wall with blue paint peeling, and I screamed his name. Sweat dripped from his face, soaking his shirt as he was gasping for breath.  My brothers play hard.

We ate greens and fried chicken; they let the grease stain my white T-shirt that hung down to my knees.  We laughed and talked loud, smashed next to each other on an old sagging couch like mashed potatoes, as the football game played like thunder into the night.  Hot Cheetos were dipped in ranch along with pizza, as fries found hot sauce again and again.

Duct tape held our sneakers together that were piled at the door and tripped on every time someone entered.  No one moved them, it wasn’t something to get rid of, but something to add to.

As my Dad added to the pile of shoes, someone laughed, “Pastor Matt, you the blackest white man”.  He laughed and slapped skin with them all.  It was said in love, that I knew.  But what did it mean?

I am white.  My brothers are black.

(An award winning poem by our 15 year old granddaughter, a freshman at CAPA.  She doesn’t think it is her best but she doesn’t see it through the eyes of her proud Pap.  I share it in honor of Pastor Matt, who was my partner in ministry and Maddie’s Dad and brother Carl.  Both who have been with our Lord for the past several years.  Matt from cancer and Carl from bullets intended for another, a week before leaving for college.)

As I asked in my last post, what happens when Jesus ignores the politically powerful and the spiritual elite to intrude into the lives of the pagan outsiders, like you and me?  They worship this new born King and go home another way.  There was no special wisdom spoken, no sparkling halo seen, not even a spectacular Christmas pageant, just the presence of the incarnate word – a baby Christ.

In His infancy and simplicity, Jesus is worshipped and the Magi are changed.  The Magi had finally found the true meaning of life.  A life that begins by giving oneself to the honor of Christ.  To worship Christ is to desire to give Him our goods and services because worship takes us into God’s presence and God’s presence causes us to walk home a different way.  You see the Magi not only worshipped  Jesus they acknowledged His right to direct their lives.

When we read the Christmas story it calls for a response.  It calls for a fresh perspective on Christmas.  It not only challenges our prejudices and preferences, it changes them and changes us.  Truth and humility reveal that we all have a little Herod in us, looking to an earthly king for our help, and a little elitism, thinking we have an inside track on God.  Yet it is only by the same grace that invited the undeserving Magi to Jesus’ first birthday party that we have been made right and well in the presence of God.  The Christmas story calls us to worship the new born King and go home another way, all be it a narrow way.  As the psalmist writes, “May all kings fall down before Him and all nations serve Him.”  (Psalm 72:11)

Herod didn’t know where Jesus was to be born so he calls on the religious experts, the spiritual insiders, who immediately identify the place where the Messiah is to be born.  These leaders know but they don’t follow, they don’t join the Magi on their spiritual quest for the new born King.  They fail to act on their biblical knowledge.  Jesus is just a baby after all, too small to be taken seriously.  They take Jesus for granted.  Sure they didn’t want to kill him like Herod,  they would wait another 30 years for that.

There is a thin spiritual line between wanting Jesus out of the way and taking him for granted.  We hold onto Him when it is convenient and lay him aside when we have more important things to do.  We follow Him when is is practical and withdraw when it is more comfortable.  God has always allowed Himself to be taken for granted.  Adam took him for granted when he chose the forbidden tree, David took him for granted when he went to Bathsheba and we take him for granted every time we chose sin over righteousness.  We take Him for granted every time we have trouble finding a place for him in our busy world of human activity.  It is worth noting that the first and last human act toward the incarnate God was an act of wrapping Him up and laying Him aside.  The first in a feed trough and the last in a borrowed tomb.

However, despite our preferences for occupying ourselves with the politically powerful or the spiritual elite, God continues to intrude into our lives.  Jesus’ life is bracketed by two impossibilities – a virgin’s birth and an empty tomb.  He entered through a door marked no entrance and left through a door marked no exit.  So what happens when God ignores the politically powerful and the spiritual elite to intrude into the lives of the pagan outsider?  They worship and go home another way.

I wrote in my last post that Matthew’s gospel account of Jesus’ birth uses a literary device of contrasting characters – the faith seeking Magi in contrast to the faith rejecting Herod.  Matthew challenges our prejudice against pagan outsiders by using their idols to draw the Magi to the Christ child but he also challenges our prejudices that favor political power.

Even though he was Arab by birth , Herod had converted to Judaism and thus considered himself the King of the Jews.  But whereas the pagan outsiders act like God’s people, seeking and worshipping, the King of God’s people acts like the pagan King of Egypt, rebelling and killing. (Exodus 1:16).  When the Magi inquired about the location of the new born King, Herod began to realize that if Jesus was the new born King, then he was the dethroned king.  Even as he instructs the wise men to go to Bethlehem in search of the child, Herod can’t bring himself to call Jesus the King.  The Magi thought differently however and after encountering King Jesus they resist Herod’s bidding to return, going home another way.

Author and professor Craig Keener writes, “When we side with the political powerful to seek human help against common foes, we could actually find ourselves fighting God’s agenda.”  Jesus came to serve the most vulnerable amongst us while depending solely on His heavenly Father.  When “Bethlehem” was read in his hearing, Herod was given the opportunity to seek the new born King in His most embryonic form but he not only rejected it he sought to murder it. As we face the great challenges of our day, both personally and as a nation, which King will we look to for our help?  This season of the year is a good time to renew our decision to go to Bethlehem,  worship the new born King and go home a different way.

Matthew’s account of Jesus’s birth and the subsequent visit by some wise men is a microcosm of the entire gospel.  He employs a standard ancient literary device of contrasting characters.  The Magi come and worship Jesus while Herod seeks his death.  The Magi reveal God’s grace while Herod reveals man’s sin.  The faith seeking Magi in contrast to the faith rejecting Herod. And Matthew wants us to identify with these pagan wise men from the East not the reigning political leaders of the time, nor the spiritual elite of Jerusalem.   No, Matthew’s gospel wants us to identify with the outsiders – outsiders in both race and profession – Gentiles and astrologers.

Matthew challenges our prejudices against  pagan outsiders.  The Magi were not led to the Christ child through conventional church programs or evangelical methods.  They found Jesus while practicing their idolatry.  The stars, God’s natural revelation, led them to His saving revelation, the incarnate Word lying in a sheep shed.  To those of us who tend to put God in our theological box please note how He uses the Magi’s idol as a means of inviting them to the first Christmas party.  God has always gone to great measures to overcome racial and moral barriers to draw those who are considered outsiders and unworthy in order to make His church more interracial and merciful.

As we encounter the outsiders of our day, especially this Advent season, let us be reminded that like the Magi they may actually be walking illustrations of outsiders under grace.  Let’s invite them to the Christmas party and to God’s saving revelation.

Christians are often like porcupines in a snowstorm. We need each other to keep warm, but we prick each other if we get too close.  Our political ideologies, our racial mistrust, and even our theological differences keep us from forming deep friendships across such dividing lines.  Yet it is possible that these identified outsiders may be the very instrument God wants to use as his providential grace in our lives. 

It happened to Jeremiah.  He had already been put in prison but some government officials convinced King Zedikiah that Jeremiah’s continued preaching from his cell was seditious.  These princes had him lowered into an empty cistern with a layer of mud at the bottom and left him to die.  While Jeremiah was not exactly popular or successful at the time, he was not friendless.  A man named Ebedmelech, an Ethiopian, a Black man, an outsider who had no legal standing, goes against the crushing wave of opinion to confront the injustice done to Jeremiah.   He gets permission from the King to organize a rescue party.  He even got some rags to put under the prophet’s arms so the ropes wouldn’t burn as he pulled his friend up from the miry pit.

Life is hard and none of us are self sufficient, we are not meant to live a life of proud independence.  We often find it easier to give friendship than to receive it because it exposes our weaknesses, especially when the help comes from the margins, outsiders who differ from us.  “God chose those who are powerless to shame those who are powerful” (1 Corinthians 1:27).  When we fortify ourselves behind ideologies, race and dogmas and classify people into categories we cut ourselves off from a wide spectrum of friendships that may be God’s help and hope in our time of need.