"Not Extra Credit"--March 5, 2020

Not Extra Credit--March 5, 2020

"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 really is this simple: the followers of Jesus are always--and "always" means always--called to do good... to everybody. Including the ones whose politics are different from yours, whose skin color is different from yours, whose language is different from yours, and even whose faith is different from yours. And, while we are on the subject, yes, also including people who have been mean first... or the people who have acted with malice toward us... or the ones who we would like to smack upside the head. 

This is not optional.  This is not Extra Credit Christianity for Gold-Star Saints.  This is basic, elemental, core Jesus here.  We answer rottenness with goodness, because that is how Jesus brings us all to life. Love for enemies is a sure sign of resurrection.

In short, even when folks act rotten toward us, our response is to speak and act in ways that will bring them to life.  And we will do that for no other reason than that Jesus has taught us by his own example to answer hatred with compassion, to answer deception with truth-telling, to answer selfishness with selflessness, to answer proud and pompous posturing with humble service, and to answer evil with good.  We are never called to any response other than Jesus' own way of responding to the rottenness of others, and Jesus was consistent in answering evil with good and hatred with love.  This is part of how Jesus continues his work of bringing a dead-end world to life: he works through us in actions of goodness for stinkers, for enemies, for those we don't think deserve it.

Because--and here's the part we often don't realize--Jesus really is intent on dismantling the whole system the world is run on, the system that divides everybody into categories of "good enough" or "not good enough," and into groups of "like-me-and-therefore-worthy" or "unlike-me-and-therefore-should-not-get-good-things." Jesus has that whole system (a system we have invented, mind you) in his target sights.  And he really is going to burn the whole thing down--it's just that Jesus' way of destroying evil is not to use evil against it.  Jesus' subverts the power of evil by insisting on answering it with good.  Even for the ones crucifying him.  Even for the ones who rejected him.  Even for the ones who abandoned and denied him.  Jesus answer every one of those with goodness rather than rottenness.  That's how he burns down the deathly transactional logic of the world. He does it with the fire of love, not the bitter flames of anger or envy or fear.

I lament that we have to say it, but it seems we keep having this problem.  Not a day goes by anymore that I see someone who names the name of Jesus also spewing spite rather than substance at folks they disagree with--assuming the worst of the people they don't like, assuming their opponents must not believe in Jesus, and advocating answering evil with evil or hatred with hatred. Not a day goes by that I don't see some church-going, supposedly "God-believing" person proudly displaying symbols of hatred (on their cars, on their clothes, on their flagpoles, on their social media), while they see no issue or disconnect between their smiling church faces and the messages they send everywhere else in their lives.  Not a day goes by that I don't see Respectable Religious people talking a big talk about how the world needs to follow Jesus more... but then carefully editing out all this business of loving your enemy, laying down your life even for people who have done you wrong, and answering evil with good. And it irks me--no, more than that, it disappoints me--to no end.  Every day, there is a new reminder of how we church folks so selectively cling to the cross of Jesus as a symbol, but empty it of its meaning as the place where God loved God's enemies and Christ answered the evil of a powerful empire with his own goodness.

And it is at that point that I wish the Respectable Religious folks who are so hot and bothered that "the world should read the Bible more" would actually take their own advice and read theirs, because here it is as plain as day: the followers of Jesus are called, without exception, to answer evil with good, and to show that goodness in our actions, not only to other Christians but to all.  That has to include folks who don't share our faith, or Paul's "and to all" means nothing.  So here we have it, right in the earliest writing and thinking of the early church (many scholars believe that First Thessalonians is the earliest written document of the New Testament) that followers of Jesus are expected, as our regular daily practice, to answer meanness with kindness, spitefulness with thoughtfulness, hatred with acceptance, and evil with good.

So, like I say, it really is this simple: Jesus says that answering evil with evil is simply incompatible with his way of living in the world.  He says and teaches quite plainly that his way of dealing with hostility from others is to answer it with goodness, and yet lots of church-folk I know seem to have edited out Jesus' actual words on the subject. So let's hear them again, and listen in on the earliest writings to the nascent church: we are to answer evil with goodness, because that is how Jesus keeps bringing people to life out of death.

Now... what if we did what we have heard?

Lord Jesus, bring us to life as you bring us beyond our childish ways.  Bring us beyond the petty need for revenge to love like you.