19 February 2017

Matthew 5:38-48

v.38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ but I say to you, do not resist an evildoer

v.44 “Love your enemies”

 

1.

We hear yet more of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  He, like a new Moses, proclaims a new moral vision—but one which is, it seems, unattainably high.  We are to love even our enemies, not seeking retribution.

Isn’t this just too difficult for us? Yes, indeed so; but maybe that is the point.  We cannot force ourselves to love.  All we can do is become ever more open and available to God—by clearing a Holy Place within, something like an interior Temple, where God can dwell.   We must remain open to God’s righteousness—remembering that righteousness is not ours, but God’s.

So it is in the matter of justice: let God act; let God pass sentence; let God restore order.

Only then God’s will (and not ours) will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

 

2.

Recently I was lead to some old and strange poems.   Their theme is love—not any soppy, romantic love, but the hard, testing love of Jesus’ proclamation.  These are thirteenth century poems by Hadewijch, originally written in Middle Dutch; needless to say, I found them in translation.

We know very little about Hadewijch. She lived somewhere around what is now Belgium and the Netherlands.  She seems to have been a Beguine—a member of a lay women’s order whose members took no vows.  The Beguines were to remain single but were free to leave the community at any time; they were not required to renounce property.

She was a prophetess of sorts, a woman drunk with Love. So in these interpretations she is called “love-sot.”  She was besotted.  And she—herself a person who didn’t fit in, who was, we might say, different—had many enemies.  Though she loved, she was reviled by some.

I realise it is a risky thing to read these musty and esoteric things from the pulpit; but don’t worry too much about getting every word. I will try to explain what it means, as I see it.  And another warning: don’t worry about the Latin lines in this one I’m about to read;  it is just the chorus of a folk song woven in, meaning something like farewell, farewell a thousand times if I have not spoken aright! [really: if I shall not have spoken enough]

 

To Love I gave my troth, alas,

     When first I heard her title

And stretching out on her bed of flame,

     Was decried, O love-sot!

By friends, by strangers, young and old,

     By them I’d nursed, I’d fed,

Letting the deeper blood of my heart

     For water upon Love’s Way

–Ay, vale, vale, millies–

     Don’t hold back! I say

–Si dixero non satis est–

     wounded though I be!

 

Don’t hold back!, she says, do your worst—for these persecutions bring me closer to the God who is Love. In a strange way, even her brokenness was a channel for God.  And even her enemies were, to this holy eccentric, an occasion to love.

In another of these poems she pleads that her detractors just leave her alone: why don’t they leave justice to God? Let God act!

 

Love-sot! I cannot make

      Myself to live or die!

O sweet God, why

      Should I be so reviled?

Why cannot they leave You to knock,

      O You who see clear-eyed

Whatever it is I’ve done for ill;

      Theirs would be no loss!

–Ay, vale, vale, millies–

       They don’t let You act

–Si dixero non satis est—

       Who do not love, but rack

 

And I want to repeat these prophetic words: they don’t let You act, who do not love, but rack. They don’t let God act, who hate, who insult, who take it upon themselves to execute the justice which belongs to of God.

But, she sees, it is they who actually suffer loss.  They do not love, and the light goes out for them.  They lose that quality of openness, of soft-heartedness, of pliancy. God cannot act. Their hearts grow cold and hard; they grow anxious; perhaps they do not achieve their purposes.  It is a secret wound, but it is deep.  And this is the hidden judgment of God: God withdraws from us.

They don’t let You act, who do not love, but rack.

Therefore we need not “resist an evildoer.” Leave retribution to God, who alone delivers justice.  As Hadewijch will say,

He who strikes shall himself be struck,

In the law of Love, it is written.

 

3.

And more than this, let us love our enemies!

It is a hard saying, especially in our translations: the love we are to show them is the social-minded love of agape.  We must stay open to them, try to see it from their point of view, seek reconciliation and, in any case, do not close the door.

We must never lose this quality of openness to the other, for then we will shut out the action of God.   It is easy to grow cold and hard.   We can become terribly narrow, cagey people.  But then we ourselves are impoverished: and God withdraws in judgment.

What does our prophetess Hadewijch say about this? She says, essentially, that though our enemies try us, trials can be the needlings of Love; they can be, in other words, occasions for growth.

 

As the incandescent rose

Opens in dew between the thorns,

So blooms the lover despite, despite,

The needling of Love, untorn;

       Free and assured

       He opens amid the thorns;

       And that is why the loveless quit

       These trials quick enough,

       But lovers, they, they grow up.

 

The loveless quit, but lovers grow up—they grow up to the sun, unfolding like a fiery rose.  Through suffering they develop a depth and strength; they grow in their spiritual maturity.

No doubt many in the contemporary world would find all this disempowering, improper. And I also think there is a point where sufferings ought not be endured.  But let us remember: spiritual growth is often attended by suffering.  When we suffer, we must try to keep that quality of openness and soft-heartedness—though, of course, it would be easier to become defensive and hard and invulnerable.

Only in that way can we “grow up,” becoming something more, something greater.   Only then can become “great-souled people,” who can regard the world without bitterness.  Then, even after all the pain of life, we shall be thankful.

Our so-called enemy presents us with a challenge. We can maintain the rage, or we can take the hard spiritual path of integrating them within ourselves, weighing them in our hearts until their burden becomes light.  And that seems to be what Jesus is proposing in his Sermon on the Mount.

Indeed, maybe our enemies will, in the end, have something to teach us. And very often that will be that we ourselves had not been a “pure victim” but were ourselves complicit, to some extent, in the problem.  Maybe, with time, we will find that we weren’t right to declare them enemies quite so soon.

If we keep our openness, our soft-heartedness in trials, we let God act.

And the way will be open for growth .

 

4.

So we shall make some advance on the way towards what this translation of the scriptures calls “perfection”. Actually, that word is better translated “wholeness,” or “completion” (whole/compelete: teleos).

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Be whole, therefore, as your heavenly Father is whole.”

 Just as God embraces every contrary thing within Godself, bringing them together by some unimaginable law, so this will be the end of our journey too–if we remain open, if we let God act.

And think of Christ: he whose humanity is absolutely open, who communicates the divine life to a community of totally contrary people–each of them different one from another. He incorporates them all in himself, overcoming every human division.  Christ is the human fully open to the other.

So, let us bear in mind Hadewijch’s prophetic words: “They dont let You act, who do not love, but rack”

May we stay open to Love—keeping the door open to reconciliation.  May we stay open to growth, and to wholeness.

Amen

 

C Tyack