The scriptures referred to are Ephesians 1:11-23 and Luke 6:20-31.
You know what Halloween and Christmas Eve have in common? Besides being grossly over-commercialized? (I just got back from a trip to Colorado where I saw a house with a dozen of those 12-foot skeletons, some with lights inside!) Anyway, they both celebrate the evening before a holy day. Halloween is a contraction of All Hallow's Eve, hallows being an old way of saying hallowed persons, or saints. It begins Allhallowtide: the vigil of All Hallow's Eve, followed by All Saint's Day, and All Souls Day. They fall on October 31st, November 1st and November 2nd, respectively.
What does this have to do with the spooky trappings of Halloween? Well, all of these days are about the dead. Trick or treating came from the custom of poor children going around offering to pray for the dead in exchange for food called soul cakes. They were marked with a cross, like the hot cross buns of Lent, showing they were baked as alms for the poor. Those going souling would carry lanterns made of hollowed out turnips. When the Scots and Irish came to America, they used the native pumpkins instead.
Various pagan ideas came to be connected to Halloween over time. Candles were lit in homes to guide the departed souls back home. Food was left out for them. People wore costumes to hide them from any vengeful spirits about and homes and barns were blessed to protect them from witches. Halloween also fell at the time of Samhain, the Celtic festival that commemorated the end of fall and the beginning of winter. It was a time when the boundary between this world and the other world thinned and fairies could enter this world. They were mischievous at best and food was left out to appease them. As the world became more secular, and all of these customs got mixed up and monetized, we got today's version of Halloween, which is far from the original Christian vigil before a day remembering holy people. But folks like spooks more than saints.
In the New Testament all believers are called saints. (Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1) Why did that apply to all Christians? Because they were called by God and sanctified in Christ Jesus. (1 Corinthians 1:2) That is, they were cleansed, purified, made different and set apart by God for his purposes. That is what is meant by holy.
Of course, there were some people who went above and beyond what the average Christian did, saints with a capital S. During times of persecution, some Christians were executed for continuing to be witnesses to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We call them martyrs, from the Greek word for witness. The early church honored their sacrifices and held them up as examples of how Christians should act. After Christianity was legalized, Christians who were extraordinary in their faith and behavior, who gave self-sacrificially to the poor, who helped and healed the sick, who were so dedicated to following Jesus that they gave up worldly pleasures despite temptations and obstacles, were called saints. Those are the people who have days dedicated to their commemoration and have churches named after them. Though other controversial uses are made of them, they are fundamentally supposed to be used as examples for us.
Sadly, we can all think of people who are called Christians by others or even by themselves who are examples of not following Jesus. And they have discredited Christianity in the eyes of the world by not showing love towards others but hatred, by not showing compassion towards the unfortunate but contempt, by not helping the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, or the immigrant but harming them instead. (Matthew 25:31-46) These people are devilish perversions of what a Christian should be. They are in fact monstrous.
The original meaning of the word "monster" was a "divine omen" and an "abomination." It came from the Latin verb meaning “to warn.” Such false Christians are a warning that, as Jesus said, not all who call him Lord will enter God's kingdom, despite their impressive credentials. Only those who do God's will, the thing they were set apart to do, know Jesus and are known by him. (Matthew 5:21)
True Christians are those who trust Jesus so much that they actually do what he says we should do. And that is not just to be nice and help out when it is convenient for us. As we see in today's gospel passage, being a follower of Jesus means doing things that are not merely inconvenient but sometimes painful.
Jesus starts out by saying, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” That is hard! Who can do that? Parents, for one thing. There are times when your kids are acting so badly, choosing to do things that are so harmful to themselves or others, that you don't like them. But you still love them. And there are times when you don't like your siblings or your parents or your spouse for the same reasons. But you make sure they eat and get to bed and get them help. It is hard. It is heartbreaking at times. But you do it because you want what's best for them. You want them to get better and to be better people. You do it because you love them.
Jesus is not saying that you have to like your enemies. He is not saying to have to endorse or enable the harmful things they do. He is saying that you must do good to them. That includes doing what you can to stop them from harming themselves or others. It means sometimes standing up to them or standing between them and those they wish to harm, as Jesus did with the woman caught in adultery. (John 8:1-11) It can mean arranging an intervention. It means listening to them and leading them away from harmful ways of thinking or speaking or acting through persuasion. When people do harm they are not generally using the rational part of their brain. Sometimes just getting the person to stop reacting and start thinking can keep them from acting irrationally.
Next Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” This is very hard. Not only is our natural instinct to strike back, but sometimes the person being struck is someone physically weaker than the attacker or even the frequent victim of abuse. But Jesus seems to be speaking of two equal opponents. If a man strikes another man as big or bigger than him, and the other guy turns the cheek, he will rethink what he is doing. It shows that the other guy is not afraid of what he can do. Bullies usually pick on those weaker than them. They have no desire to get in a fair fight.
If we look at the parallel verse in Matthew 5:39 Jesus says, “...whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also.” In that time, someone striking you on the right cheek with the back of their right hand was an insult and they could be taken to court. Turning the other cheek was both a dare and a mercy. It said to the person doing the backhanded slap, “Think again. I haven't retaliated against you, either physically or legally. You can stop now. I am giving you the chance that you haven't given me.”
And notice that Jesus is not saying “Let someone strike you;” He is saying “If someone strikes you.” He is not saying that you should do nothing to defend yourself if you see it coming. When his opponents intended to stone Jesus, we are told, “Then they attempted again to seize him but he escaped their clutches.” (John 10:39) When the townspeople of Nazareth went to throw him off the cliff on which the town was built, we read, “But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” (Luke 4:30) I don't know if it was a look Jesus gave them or whether, as in my novel, he reminded them of all the things he had done for them when he lived there and shamed them for trying to pay him back that way. But he did not just passively let them harm him. Nor did he meet violence with violence.
I did something not totally dissimilar one time. I was not a big kid and I wore glasses. I was called “four eyes” and “brainiac.” On the school bus, I heard a bully loudly telling his friend how he was going to beat me up when we got off the bus at our stop. There was no way I could beat this kid. So I said to him, “You're going to beat me up? Of course you can. You're bigger and stronger than me. And what will that prove? How does that make you a tough guy, a big man? Because you can beat up someone smaller? Are you going to brag to your friends that you beat up a smaller kid?” When we got off the bus, he merely shoved me into the bushes and walked away. I got off easy because I had taken all the fun out of what he intended to do. I had drained him of all the joy of being a big, tough guy by flipping the script he had in his head. Jesus often flipped the script. He did the unexpected, which was not to use his fists but his words. He repaid evil not with evil but with good. And so should we. (Romans 12:17-21)
We are also to be generous to the needy. Jesus says, “ Give to everyone who begs from you.” Jesus doesn't mean to answer every spam call or every appeal asking you for money but to give to those who are really in need. Most people have too much pride to beg or ask for help. When they manage to overcome that, you should help them.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who think that most of those asking for help are just trying to scam them. Ronald Reagan kept repeating one story about a woman who had cheated to get more welfare and got folks thinking that the majority of people on government assistance were what he called “welfare queens.” Anyone who has really been on welfare knows that it doesn't pay much and there are lots of strings attached. If you do work and make just a little more than you're supposed to, the government starts slashing your benefits. Being kept in poverty by rules made by wealthy and powerful people who assume you are lazy or lying is the reality most folks on welfare live with. Getting rich on welfare is rare. Even rarer is hearing the same amount of outrage being expressed at rich people who cheat the government by tax evasion or who make contributions to politicians for special legislation favoring their businesses or who get the government to pay them for building low income housing while discriminating against people of color. I don't think Jesus wants us to worry about rich people asking for more money they don't need.
The main takeaway is the last verse in our reading: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” It's called the Golden Rule because it is such a basic moral principle that almost every religion in the world has some version of it. Usually they are stated negatively, as in “Don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you.” We could call that the silver rule because it just refrains you from doing harm, which is a start. But by stating it positively Jesus enjoins us to go the extra mile. In the parable of the good Samaritan, the priest and Levite who pass by the man beaten and left for dead don't actively make him worse. But the Samaritan goes out of his way to make the man better. He gives him first aid, takes the man to a safe place and takes care of him all night. When he has to leave, he gives the innkeeper money enough to nurse him back to health. And he promises to pay more should this care cost more than he initially left for it. If you were in as bad a shape as that man who was robbed and left for dead, isn't that what you'd want someone to do for you? Jesus says, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:30-37)
Treating others the same way you'd want to be treated is basic but the person who lives that way is not as common as they should be. Most people don't want to go too far out of their way to help someone. In fact they won't at all if they don't see other people do so first. When I took a Red Cross first aid class, they emphasized that if we see someone injured or sick, we need to immediately go and help. They discovered that only if someone takes the first step will others join in and help. Nobody wants to be the first to do something out of the ordinary. As Christians we must be Jesus' first responders.
In a way, supernatural monsters are comforting. They're not human. They are sources of evil external to ourselves. In real life, when we do encounter monsters they are all human. Not just Hitler and serial killers but all who cruelly exploit others for their own benefit. They are human but they have so distorted the image of God in which they were created that it has become horrific parody of what they were meant to be and what they could be. And as Nietzsche said, those who fight monsters can become just like them.
Jesus did not fight his enemies by using their methods: violence, rage, or deception. In fact he didn't fight them at all; he flipped the script, offering them love and good reasons to change from bad guys to good guys. He went way beyond what an ordinary good man would do to help sinners. As his followers we should too. The world needs extraordinary examples of goodness and love. We have enough monsters; we need saints.
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