Questioning the System

Questioning the System--March 8, 2017

"See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all." [1 Thessalonians 5:15]

It's about refusing to play by someone else's rules--and instead, playing only by Christ's. 

The mindset in this verse from Paul's first letter to the Christians in Thessalonica is some of the most potent, and most revolutionary, thinking around.  When the world tries to lure us into seeing life its way, or baiting us into reacting with wrong in response to wrongs done to us, Christians from the very beginning have been taught not to return evil for evil done to us.  It is a way, not of rolling over for evil, or letting evil walk all over us, but of refusing to play by evil's own rules.  We have been called to defy the very undergirding system that the world accepts, in which you are supposed to hate your enemies and make their lives as miserable as possible and do as much evil to them as you can.  This is our revolution--this is our different kind of victory.  This is what it looks like to live as if the cross really is God's way of saving and ruling creation.

Think about how truly revolutionary this one sentence is--Christians are called, not to target other people as our enemies, but rather to subvert the whole way of thinking that accepts returning evil for evil as a way of solving our problems.  We are called to bring about change, not by wiping out one set of violent crooks to replace them with a new set of violent crooks (the way so many revolutions end up doing, and becoming the very thing they were trying to bring down), but by living now as though the rightful Ruler of the universe really is in charge of things, and refusing to use violent, crooked ways to get what we want.  As Walter Wink says in Jesus and Nonviolence, "Violence is not radical enough, since it generally changes only the rulers but not the rules."

So when the first followers of Jesus were taught to refuse to repay evil for evil (and consider that 1 Thessalonians could quite possibly be the first of Paul's letters and therefore the oldest and first of the New Testament writings!), they were not being told just to keep their heads down and not to rock the boat--they were being told to question the way the world was being run by the powers around them, powers which accepted repaying evil for evil as the best way to solve your problems.  And by questioning that order of things, the followers of Jesus pointed to a very different kind of Kingdom altogether, with a very different kind of King.  The followers of Jesus were witnesses to their King, Jesus, by using the same tactics that Jesus used to bring about his Reign, his Movement--suffering love that breaks the cycle of revenge.  You can say that Jesus' death on the cross "paid" whatever debts stood against us on God's books, you could also say that the cross is the sign of God's refusal to repay evil for evil to us for our sin!  Christians are only doing what Jesus taught us to do and did for us by following suit in response to the little evils committed against us.

And making the revolution even greater--Paul not only rules out returning evil for evil, he insists that we are called to do good not just for other Christians, but for all!  I cannot stress enough how radical and critical that insight from the New Testament is, because we religious folks have a way of reading the Bible in ways that reinforce our comfort zones.  We have an easier time with, "Be nice to folks who are already nice to you," or even "Be nice to other Christians--they're on the same team!"  But Paul makes the point that we are called, not only to "one another" (that is, to other disciples of Jesus, other church folk, other people "like us"), but "to all."  That means here is quite possibly the earliest written piece of the New Testament commanding the followers of Jesus to deliberately seek to do good to the folks who seem the most "other"--the ones who don't sit next to you in church, who maybe don't go to any church, who may or may not believe in God, or who may or may not practice the same faith at all.  Paul doesn't let us off the hook with just keeping our heads down and not retaliating if we are provoked--he insists our calling, because of Jesus' radical victory, is to actively go out and do good to people who will never stop at your front door with a pot of soup because they heard you were feeling sick, or who will never drop you a note in the mail to say that they are praying for you. 

Today, then, you and I have the opportunity to be truly revolutionary--to question the system that so many people around us are still living in--by our willingness to live by Paul's words and to refuse to return evil for evil.  We will do good, not only to other Christians, but as Paul says, "to all," whether they are insiders or outsiders, whether we consider them to be friends, strangers, or enemies.  And in doing that, we will point to a different sort of King who governs a different sort of Kingdom.  We will break the cycle of wrongs to repay wrongs that sets up a never-ending, self-feeding chain of revenge.  And we will be living signs of the cross of Jesus, where no less than God in the flesh did the same for us and refused to pay evil for evil to a sinful humanity, but did good for us by giving us his own life.  That is our victory.

Lord Jesus, help us to see the chances we have in this day to return good when we are shown evil, and do to it, not as a sign of defeat or apathy, but as your revolutionary way of rejecting the rules by which the world plays.