A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, you have heard the commandment, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But what I say to you is, offer no resistance to injury. When a person strikes you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left. If anyone wants to go to law over your shirt, hand him over your coat as well.
Should anyone press you into service to go a mile, go with him two miles. Give to the man who begs from you. Do not turn your back on the borrower. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
This text of our lord today is one that you hear, brewing abroad these days in regard to national defense, and the nuclear weapons, and peace, and war, and sundry other, items of interest of that sort. There are those today who very sincerely suggest that the way to meet a violent, lawless, offensive is to succumb to it, to give into it. And this text is used for that. Again, as I've said many times, perhaps ad nauseam. But I won't get ad nauseam because this is a situation that we have to be on our guard against constantly.
That is taking a statement out of context. And as I say, when people quote the bible, you can find in the bible something to justify anything you want to say, anything. I can quote you that the bible says there is no god. The bible says it. It's right in one of the psalms.
Except the very next sentence is says the fool in his heart. So this when you're dealing with a written word, it's worse than the spoken word. That's point number one. The spoken word's bad enough. The spoken word offers enough problems of interpretation.
You've often heard this said, if you call me that, you better say it with a smile. Well, you can't catch a smile in the written words, you know. You can't get the glint of an eye in the written word. And above all, the written word is part of something bigger. It's always part of something bigger.
And so it's and especially in regard to some sensitive issues of morality, and that's what we're talking about here, it's very easy to simply take a sentence or two or a paragraph or two or a statement or two and give that out as the doctrine of the person you want to attribute it to. And it you you say, did this person say that? You say, certainly said that. Does the bible say there's no god? The bible says there is no god.
It's right in there. It's in the Hebrew, and it's in the Latin, and it is in the Greek. Does it say it? It says it. But what do you conclude from this?
That the that the that the doctrine of the bible is that there is no god? Or do you continue reading and see the very next sentence which says, says the fool in his heart. Now this is a sensitive text of our blessed lord. Is our is Christ telling us here that if someone comes into your house to to take everything in it, to rape your wife, to to to murder your children, and to take you into captivity, you're supposed to say yes. And don't forget I have some nicely cool wine down in the cellar.
Go down and help yourself. I wouldn't want you to forget that. Is that is that what our blessed lord is telling us? Is he telling us to have no backbone at all? Is he telling us not to stand up for what is right?
Is he telling us that that there are no instances where I must resist evil? Because if I don't resist it, I am in a certain sense encouraging evil. Saint Augustine develops this argument at length, that I have a responsibility towards my neighbor of preventing him from committing sin. And if you admit there's such a thing as sin in the world, which, of course, plenty of people do not admit, But if you, as good, God fearing Christians, admit there's such a thing as sin, then it becomes a very grave and serious obligation to eliminate it in my own life and to help other people to eliminate it in their lives, and to keep them from committing sin. If your little child goes around slamming doors, breaking windows, destroying your furniture, Are you supposed to say, well, darling, don't forget that we have the upstairs furniture.
You haven't messed that up yet. Go up there now and work on that. Is that what Christ is telling us? It's absurd. And if there's one thing you can say about Jesus Christ, he was not absurd.
He never was absurd. Never. He's very consistent. But consistency means that you take things together, consistent. And to take this text alone and to use this as an argument for for pacifism, for for an argument for being an argument which goes better dead better read than dead, you cannot justify that.
Oh, you can justify it if you just take these few lines from Jesus Christ, but he had a few other things to say en route to the cross. Now what our blessed lord is saying here is very clear. It's the opening sentence. He's saying, in the old law, you were told to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. In other words, you the old law was a a law of strict justice, and even that's an overstatement.
But generally speaking, that was the attitude. If someone takes something from you, you go and get it from him. And many of the codes of the ancient world were based upon this idea that if someone damages you, you have a right to recover those damages or that he will suffer the same damage. After all, our hope, in a sense, our laws of libel are based upon this idea. If someone ruins my reputation or I I say he has ruined it, well, they'll say, how much is it worth?
And I say, well, a million dollars. That's a really conservative figure the way lawsuits are going today. So I sue him for a million dollars because he has hurt my reputation. Is Christ telling me here that I mustn't try to recover injuries? If someone bangs up my automobile with a great big, hole in the on the right side, tell them, look, friend, you forgot there's a left side.
Go out and put another hole in the left. Is that what Christ is telling us? You'd say that's crazy stuff. And, of course, it's crazy. And Christ isn't crazy.
It is god, and there's your choice. There's your choice. As C. S. Lewis has said, there's one thing you cannot say about Jesus Christ.
You cannot say that he was only a good man. That is one thing you can't say. Because if he is not what he claimed to be, God, then he was a fit patient for an insane asylum. This is what Lewis said, and Lewis is absolutely right. And that is the son of God speaking to us.
He's telling he's telling us something. He's giving us a message. He's telling us that the law of retribution cannot be exercised as it used to be, or as we see it, even stated at times in the old testament, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Our lord is saying that can't be the way you run your lives. There are other virtues.
Besides justice, there's prudence and there's charity. That's what Christ is saying, and this is what makes life difficult. Difficult. If only we could take one virtue and say, I am going to be a first class practitioner of that virtue, it would be so simple. And you know what would happen?
You will find yourself outside Christ Church because that's the kind of thing that separates people from Christ. We had it in the in the end of the twelfth century and above all in the beginning of the thirteenth century when Saint Francis of Assisi brought in that ideal of poverty. Some people got on that horse and rode it to death, saying that the only way you could follow Christ was to own nothing because Christ said that. When you go out, don't take anything. Don't even take a pair of shoes with you.
Have you tried to walk the hills of Palestine without shoes? Yet Christ said, when you go out did Christ say it? Yes. He said it. Of course he said it.
On one occasion. Does that mean he's saying it for everybody, in all times and in all places, or what does it mean? There's the rub. There's the rub. You just cannot take one statement.
You cannot take one virtue. You cannot take one particular religious practice and say this is what I'm going to give my all to. If you do, you will find yourself outside of Christ's church. Now notice I'm saying Christ's church because that's history backs this up completely, completely. Augustine had it in in in in Hippo with the Pelagians.
You had it with Gnosticism. You had it with men like Saint Jerome. You have oh, the instances of it are innumerable. And you come back to the rock. You come back to the church.
You come back to the living voice of Jesus Christ. I say again, Christ did not found found his church on a book. He founded his church to speak with his name, and he said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. Christ said that. And he said, I shall be with you all days even to the consummation of the world.
With whom? Upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And that voice is Peter's, and Peter speaks through his church, and that church gives us the truth of Jesus Christ, which is generally far from simple. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.