7th Sunday Year A - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2020

I believe that today’s short Gospel passage with its “Love your enemies” gets to the very core of Jesus’ insight into life in the Kingdom, the central message to guide our lives if ever we want to make of our world a place to live peaceably. When Jesus used the word “enemies”, he was referring to everyone — from the one who might want to kill us, to the one who disagrees with us, towards whom we automatically sense even the least hostility or whom we simply do not like.

If we find ourselves saying to ourselves, “Yes!”, or “Of course!”, let’s be deeply grateful and rejoice. If we look around seeking somehow to soften the message or find some way out, then we need to try some more “deep listening”.

However, we need to listen to Jesus carefully, particularly his comment, “Offer the wrongdoer no resistance”. We need to read it in the context of its time. Jesus went on to offer three examples. A “slap on the right cheek” involved a backhander, a spontaneous gesture of superiority, the contemptuous gesture of a slave owner to the slave. Jesus said effectively to the slave, “Stand up straight, run the risk, and without a word challenge your owner to realise what he or she has done”. Giving up “the cloak as well” carried a similar message. It meant to stand up naked, risk the stupidity, and unmask the crude injustice of the other. Roman law allowed a Roman soldier to demand that a Jew carry the soldier’s load for a mile, but forbade him requiring anyone to carry it further. To go "two miles" would have the soldier disciplined by his commanding officer. All three examples chosen by Jesus were instances of non-violent resistance. To love does not necessitate passivity in the face of injustice — but it clearly rules out violence and supposes respect always for the human dignity of the wrongdoer.

I am still impressed by the response of Leila Abdallah, the mother of the three children who were killed recently by a drunken [or drugged] car-driver in Sydney. When interviewed soon after the accident, she said, ““I think in my heart I forgive him, but I want the court to be fair, right? It’s all about fairness. So I’m not going to hate him because that’s not who we are. And that’s not what our religion tells us. I forgive him, but I want it to be fair.”

When insisting on the non-negotiability of the need always to act from genuine love, even for enemies, Jesus was not setting up a moral obstacle course, with prizes for those who complete the course. The way of constant respect for human dignity, for care, for non-violence is simply unavoidable if we want to live in peace and harmony with fallible human persons.

However, we need clearly to differentiate feelings from responses. Feelings happen; responses are chosen. The habit we need to develop through regular practice is to notice our feelings and to step back from them before they sweep us up in some automatic hostile response. We do not have to get rid of the feeling — simply notice it, perhaps even draw on its energy.

With time and practice, we may even succeed in modifying our automatic reactions, allowing a certain benevolence to replace the usual hostility. We can cultivate, with God’s help, a steady response of joy in the midst of whatever happens to us. I am reminded of the breath-taking freedom of a twenty-nine year old Jewish woman named Esther Hillesum, an eventual victim of the gas-chambers of Auschwitz. She wrote: “The misery here is quite terrible; and yet, late at night … I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed-wire. And then time and again, the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent soars straight from my heart — I can’t help it … Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness”.