Going to Extremes

The scriptures referred to are 2 Samuel 11:1-15, Ephesians 3:14-21, and John 6:1-21.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “It seems to me that one can say hardly anything either good enough or bad enough about life.” And indeed we live with that paradox. This is a world where a small political party took over a nation and managed to murder 6 million Jews as well as a world in which over 26,000 Gentiles saved hundreds of thousands of Jews during that same period. And at least 4 of those Gentile rescuers were German officers, according to the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel. We have a world with police officers who shoot unarmed men and with police officers who give their lives to protect others. We have a world where people do horrible things to children and where people dedicate their lives to rescuing and helping those children. We have a world where evil people sometimes escape justice and where good people suffer.

We see examples of the two extremes in today's lectionary. David uses his power as king to take advantage of the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his military officers. We know that Uriah was a member of David's royal guard. Though a Hittite, it looks as if he converted to the Hebrew faith because his name, Uriah, means “Yahweh is my light.” When David gets Uriah's wife pregnant, to cover up his adultery, he calls Uriah home, gets him drunk and tries to get him to go home and sleep with his wife. But because of the man's nobility and solidarity with his fellow soldiers, that deception doesn't work. So David plots the perfect murder: death on the battlefield. He actually has Uriah deliver the sealed orders for his death. He has Uriah put on the front line and then has the troops withdraw and leave him to die. It is a betrayal of a loyal soldier, a betrayal of his position as king of Israel and a betrayal of his status as God's chosen.

On the other end, we see David's descendant, Jesus, looking at a crowd of at least 5000 hungry people with compassion, and using his power to feed them. The contrast between the king and the Messiah could not be more pronounced. One man decrees death, the other gives life. One acts out of selfishness and the other out of altruism. One goes against God's law and one fulfills God's will. And we see examples of similar behavior all the time.

But a more disturbing thing happens when a person deals in deceit and doles out death in the name of God. What are we to make of that?

Dr. Jason Bivins, in his Great Courses lectures entitled Thinking About Religion and Violence, points out that often when we see religious violence it is during a time of rapid social change. Cultures and world views are colliding. Remember that religion includes beliefs, behaviors and belonging. During such a societal upheaval, some fervent believers feel their world, their group and their identity are being attacked, if not physically, then ideologically. Truth and purity are being compromised. As theologian Paul Tillich pointed out religion is about ultimate values. You don't get worked up about attacks on something you don't value much. But when you see an attack on something important or even essential to who you are, you rush to defend it. So perpetrators of religious violence see their actions as defensive, not as unprovoked aggression.

All religions have in their sacred texts some passages that can be used to justify violence in certain circumstances. Scholars can tell which passages in the Quran were written when Mohammed had the support of Christians and Jews (he was promoting monotheism in a polytheistic culture) and when he was running into their opposition (Christians and Jews were not, however, going to convert to Islam). The passages in the Bible describing the Israelites conquering and establishing themselves in the land of Canaan and the passages describing them fighting for their existence when threatened by the more powerful empires surrounding them are chilling in their invocation of holy war and wholesale slaughter. These passages are usually those that Christians cited in calling European princes to go on crusades against Muslims and in cleansing the new world of Native Americans.

And that is wrong, not just morally but also theologically. We do not live under the Old Covenant enacted for Iron Age theocratic Israel. We live under the New Covenant, inaugurated by Jesus, who told his followers to put up the sword, turn the other cheek and to love their enemies. (Matthew 26:52; 5:38-48) How can any Christian go against Jesus' explicit commands to love and not to harm others?

Well, as moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt points out, people tend to be most irrational about the things they value the most. Thus hard core gun rights advocates tend to act as if the 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms is unique in that there should be no serious restrictions on it. Yet our 1^st Amendment right to free speech does not allow me to incite people to riot, to falsely shout “Fire!” in crowded places such as this church, nor to engage in libel or slander. Gun advocates oppose the kind of common sense restrictions we put on the dangerous activity of driving a several thousand pound vehicle through public streets, though cars and trucks were not designed to kill and maim, and guns intentionally are. Similarly certain abortion rights advocates oppose things like parental notification when a minor gets an abortion, though it is an invasive procedure. Like all such medical procedures even legal abortions can have complications which parents may want to know about lest they find their daughter bleeding out and can't tell the folks in the ER why. And pro-choice advocates rarely confront the fact that, yeah, if you don't terminate the fetus it will naturally become a human being with rights of its own. There is a legitimate question here with no easy answers but which needs to be discussed. I'm not for abolishing guns or abortions but both of these issues are a lot more complicated than their advocates will admit. Remember what Dr. Bivins said about purity? The flaws in these positions are a refusal to compromise and to acknowledge that these rights are not and should not be absolute.

As we have recently pointed out in these sermons, there is a hierarchy of moral values. Just as breaking the law against littering is not legally as serious as murder, so violations of certain moral laws are not as severe as violations of more primary commands. And Jesus put at the center the commandments to love God and to love other human beings. He said no other commandment superseded these two. And they are connected. Humans are created in the image of God. That's why, God tells Noah, that murder is wrong. (Genesis 9:6) And logically proceeding from that principle, mistreatment of anyone is wrong. Jesus says what we do or fail to do for those in distress we do or neglect to do to him. Loving your neighbor is a way of showing God your love for him.

But what if the two conflict? What if loving God means opposing something your neighbor is doing? What if your neighbor is unequivocally demonstrating hatred for God or for persons created in his image? If he is breaking the law, report it. If it's legal but a moral and personal transgression, Jesus gives us ways of handling that. In Matthew, Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that 'every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17)

Note a few things. First, Jesus says this applies if the person sins against you. He doesn't say, “if the person's speech, behavior or lifestyle upsets you.” Jesus is not talking about taking offense nor is he giving the bystander an excuse to act if outraged. He is speaking to the person who was actually injured by the sin. The person who is sinned against should be proactive in seeking reconciliation. (We are talking about equals here. This doesn't apply if the victim is a child and the offender an adult or if the offender has all the power in the relationship.)

Ideally the first move should be to settle the matter one on one. Rather than going online or gossiping to friends, see if you can't work things out and get him to admit his misstep. Because the purpose, according to Jesus, is to win the person back and repair the relationship. Only if the person won't listen do you involve others and then just 1 or 2 at most. Jesus cites Deuteronomy 19:15, which requires at least two witnesses to verify something. They can see to it that both people are acting in good faith and approaching things in the right spirit. If the person who has sinned will not listen even to the extra witness or two, only then do you bring things up to the congregation. If the person still will not come around, then he is to be excommunicated. Not harassed, not attacked, just left out of the community. There is no justification here for dealing violently with those who are seen as violating the truth or purity of the community.

In Luke, we read this exchange: “'Master,' said John, 'we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.'

'Do not stop him,' Jesus said, 'for whoever is not against you is for you.'” (Luke 9:49-50)

What if this were the attitude during the Reformation? It could have prevented the Thirty Years War. What if our denominations used this principle in dealing with each other? What if we recognized the good work others were doing in Jesus' name despite disagreeing with them on key matters? Jesus didn't say that the world would know us to be his disciples because we agreed on everything. He said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35) Getting along with someone even when we don't always agree with them is a sign we genuinely love them.

Ok, so we are to love other Christians, despite our disagreements; what about non-Christians? Is there anything that tells us we must love them as well?

After discussing the two great commandments, Jesus is asked, “And who is my neighbor?” And he tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. His audience was Jewish and they thought the Samaritans were half-breed heretics. But Jesus made one the hero of his story. (Luke 10:25-37) His point is your neighbor is whomever you encounter, whether they are of your faith or not, or of your race or not, or of your country or not. And indeed Jesus offers salvation to Samaritans (John 4:1-42) and heals Gentiles (Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 7:1-10). He tells the apostles to be his witnesses “in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8) He commissions them to go and make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28:19-20) And in the most famous verse in the New Testament, and arguably in the Bible, John 3:16, we are told that “God so loved the world...” Not just some parts of the world or a few people in it but the world. If God loves the people of the world, who are we to hate any of them or use violence on any of them?

In fact it bothers me when people speak of violence as the result of religious extremism. Violence is not the result of being extremely religious. It is the result of filtering out every bit of a religion that forbids you from being violent and concentrating on the few parts that you can use to justify your behavior. Did you know the Quran forbids terrorism? The word used is hirabah, which means “unlawful warfare” and encompasses robbery, rape and terrorism. (Surah al-Ma'ida 5:33-34) Did you know Islam forbids killing non-combatants? 'Abu Bakr al-Siddig, the first Caliph or successor to Mohammad, told his army, “Do not kill women, children, the old or the infirm...do not destroy any town...” Sneak attacks are forbidden as is doing anything other than fighting a war in self-defense. Also the Quran says, “There is no compulsion in religion.” (The Cow 2:256) You can't force conversions. Terrorists who say they are Muslims have to disobey those parts of Islam.

Why don't we instead refer to people who actually do what Jesus told them to do as “religious extremists?” You know, people who feed the hungry and clothe the threadbare and welcome the alien and take care of the sick and and give self-sacrificially and turn the other cheek and forgive their enemies and make peace and show mercy and do those things that most people, including most so-called Christians, don't do. Why are they not as newsworthy as those who do the opposite of what Jesus said to do? If the news is what is unusual, what doesn't  happen all the time, then Christians who are trying to be truly Christlike in their thoughts, words and deeds should be in the headlines. People disobeying Jesus and twisting his words to justify what they would do anyway are everyday phenomena, not news.

So, too, what David did was evil but sadly, not unprecedented. The (non-magical) awful things that happen in Game of Thrones were often based on historical events. Kings and emperors frequently killed those who got in their way and just as often were killed by people wanting their thrones. Humans have spent way too much brain power coming up with ways to torture and kill their fellow humans. Unwanted populations have been discriminated against, persecuted, put in camps or just killed, even in this country. And governments and criminals have been co-opting religion to rally people to causes whose ends have nothing to do with God's will. I have yet to see a religious war that ended with the change of an article of belief. In the end it is all about power and territory. But politicians and cult leaders know that by somehow tying their cause to God, they can get the support of uncritical folks whose religion is more a matter of culture and identity.

Recently we talked about disordered loves. I doubt David was in love with Bathsheba at this point, just in lust. But his love of his reputation and his position and his life (remember the penalty for adultery then was being stoned to death) overrode his love for his friend and for God. In contrast Jesus' love for the world outweighed his love for his own life. And those who, like David, loved their position and popularity and safety more than God or any human being, decided Jesus was a threat to all that and killed him. In the name of God. So Jesus was the victim of religious violence. Never forget that.

The world is full of people who do a lot of harm and people who do a lot of good, as well as a bunch of people who don't do much either way. That last group is the one who lets those who do great harm get away with it and who keeps them in power. So they are also part of the problem. Jesus calls us to be part of the solution. We need to go the second mile, to repay evil with good, to do more than the bare minimum of just being nice. As Paul writes in today's reading from Ephesians, “I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ...” Everything we do should be grounded in love. And not just love for ourselves and ours. It is to be as wide and long and high and deep as Jesus' love. When you have come to know this love, you will understand that there can be no justification to harm anyone. Jesus gives us no choice but to love each other, no matter how unlovable, and help one another, no matter how hard. Because that's what he does for us.