In our gospel reading for today, Jesus lays out some incredibly tough expectations on his followers - expectations that fly in the face of our notions of justice. When evil people do evil things to followers of Jesus, the followers are expected to respond not with force and retribution, but with forgiveness and the acceptance of suffering. And while we might make the claim that this strategy will never work to combat the evil in our world, we need to remember WHO ELSE uses this strategy, responding to OUR evil with forgiveness and the acceptance of suffering....
There are some aspects of our lives, in which it is easy to place our trust in God. We've all seen thousands of sunrises, so we trust that God will keep the earth spinning properly – in fact, we trust God so deeply, we call them laws of physics. We've all been through droughts and oilpatch downturns and unemployment before, so we USUALLY trust that God will keep us fed, somehow. We've all recovered from colds and flus and infections and injuries, so we MOSTLY trust that God will bring us back to health, eventually. We've all lost loved ones in the past, and have recovered, at least to the point of functioning again, so we trust that God will guide us through grief and tragedy to a new sense of normal, in time. And even though we HAVEN'T experienced death and resurrection before, we GENERALLY trust in God's promise of eternal life strongly enough to get past our lack of understanding of the resurrection details, as Paul tries to address in our second reading. We can USUALLY trust God with all of these things. But then, there is the aspect of JUSTICE...
How many of you are hearing Jesus' statement for the first time today: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”? Of course you've heard it before, EVERYBODY on the planet has heard it before, this is known as the GOLDEN RULE. Practically all of the world's religions and codes of conduct express something very similar, and even atheists don't have a problem with it.
But that's because WE usually present the virtuous version of it! I should be NICE to Jill, because I want Jill to be NICE to me. That sounds fair. That sounds right. But listen to what Jesus says RIGHT BEFORE summarizing all of his instructions with the Golden Rule. “If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.” Wait a minute! Is Jesus saying, “I should let Jill steal my stuff, because I want Jill to let me steal her stuff.”? That version of the Golden Rule does not sound fair OR right. But it is what Jesus said. Jesus presents here the Golden Rule for a SINFUL humanity: We should submit to other people's violence, because we want people to submit to our violence. We should forgive people unconditionally no matter what they have done, because we want people to forgive us unconditionally no matter what we have done. We should not IMPOSE justice and CONDEMN people, because we want to ESCAPE justice and not BE condemned. We should turn the other cheek when we get hit, because we want people to turn the other cheek when we hit them. Jesus' version of the golden rule for sinners sounds like a recipe for unmitigated disaster, doesn't it! How can we put our trust in THIS?
Think of all the examples where forgiveness and acceptance of suffering have worked so well! Think of the supervised drug consumption sites, where instead of prosecuting possession of illegal drugs, their use is made safer by providing trained supervision paid for by the community. Think of the great appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, forgiving Adolf Hitler for his aggression, and accepting the suffering of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. This can't be what Jesus had in mind! Were we supposed to turn the other cheek and give Hitler and his friends possession of three continents worth of human beings? Of course not!
But on the other hand, when we pursue justice for the “evil” people, how do we make sure we do not become “evil” ourselves? How do we ensure that in stopping the terrorists from terrorizing us, we are not terrorizing them? How do we justify the civilian deaths in the bombings of Dresdan and Hiroshima? At what point does the length of a jail term become revenge rather than reform?
And how can we be certain that what WE think is evil is truly evil? Are drug offenders truly evil when they put substances in their own bodies by their own free choice? Were covid anti-vaxers truly evil when they REFUSED to put substances in their own bodies by their own free choice? With the limitations we have, is it good for us to see it as OUR Christian duty, to bring evil people to justice?