Matthew 5.38-48
Cold Porridge.
The Reverend Tiffany Sparks
Let me start with a story, it is a pretend story so don’t worry.
There was this young couple, who tried desperately hard to have children. After years of no success finally the young woman got pregnant and the couple were blessed with a son. They loved their little boy and did everything they could for him. However, as the young boy aged, he didn’t speak. They tried everything to make him talk, cajoling, asking him questions, surprising him. Eventually they were so worried that they took their son to the doctor and specialists who could find nothing wrong with the boy, he just didn’t talk. This greatly affected the couple, who longed to have a conversation with their son. After years, of trying, the boy was 5. The mother, woke up tired and served her son breakfast......it was cold porridge. After one mouthful, the boy said ‘Yuk’. The mother was shocked! She asked her son, why now? Why did you choose to speak? He said, ‘Well up until now, everything was satisfactory’.
This is called, a ‘cold porridge moment’. Have you ever had one of these moments? Where you suddenly felt you had to use your voice? When you reflect on what was and realise that life now has to change? That dissatisfaction has caused you to use your voice?
In Matthew we have Jesus saying ‘enough is enough’ this system has to change! I know you are all very good at an eye for an eye........aren’t we all? But to be followers of Jesus means something more. To follow a different path that isn’t about vengeance and ‘tit for tat’. Instead, live smart and live love. Now just say that I punch you in the nose........and then you punch me in the nose............what do you think that I want to do now? Yeah, I’m probably going to escalate this puppy to the next level. Rarely does an eye for an eye work out, it quite often starts a cycle. Some of these cycles can go on for so long that even the two factions aren’t even sure why they are doing it any more. However, by living this cycle, we make a bigger cycle, because we co-opt people onto our side - one look at the media and politics these days proves this point. We like to get our army together to make the other side pay for what they have done. You can see this in interpersonal relationships, families, neighbourhoods, in wider society and in how we conduct ourselves globally - forming enemies with entire nations of people. So if this is how we live........what do we expect the next generation to learn? And the next generation becomes indoctrinated into the cycle, into our anger and prejudices - but what is worse. The next generation doesn't even know why.....
Jesus is calling out this way of living. Exposing it to the light and telling us to break out of this cycle and stop looking for ways to ‘get our own back’. To live a different way in the world that isn’t entering into or creating cycles of violence.
Richard Rohr says: The whole problem is in the inner attitude. Jesus’ great transforming initiative is, “Turn the other cheek: Let him have your clothes as well. Why even play the game? If he asks you to go one mile with him, go two with him.” In Jesus’ time, a conscripted soldier was allowed to ask any person to carry his armor for one mile. That’s the image Jesus is building on. He’s saying, “Just don’t get into the tit-for-tat game; carry it two. Create your own loving set of rules, which will blow the system apart. You take the initiative and change the rules, the expectations and the outcome.” (Jesus’ new plan for the world: the sermon on the mount)
Personally that is one of the things I like to do, change the rules of the game and Jesus is asking us to change the world with how you live your life. This doesn’t mean being a pushover, it means being savvy, justice minded and above all compassionate and merciful.
We find ourselves wanting to play the game of tit for tat so badly. It is cathartic when we get our own back isn’t it? We intellectually know it isn’t the right thing to do but we still do it. Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that this is not the way of God. The way of God is exposing injustice for what it is by using a different set of rules. Matthew goes on to show us what this new way of living for God might look like - and it looks like loving everyone - not just the people who love you - because whoop de do - anyone can do that. Your challenge and Jesus followers is much harder. You are called to loving perfection.
As followers of Christ, we are called into a higher way of living, that isn’t just about loving those who love us, it is about loving those who are hard to love, who probably even hate us. This is the example that Jesus gives us, it is the way of the Kingdom. Jesus shows us a compassionate perfected love that compels us to transcend old boundaries of us and them, the in and the out, friend and foe.
In the words of theologian Brian McLaren (The Secret Message of Jesus):
If there is a point in this book where readers might be tempted to slam the cover shut and say, “This is ridiculous. This is unrealistic. This is a pipe dream. Nothing like this could ever happen,” this would be that point. Perhaps they would be right in doing so. But what do they have to look forward to if they’re right? Simply more of the same in human history, on the level of individuals, families, and nations — more of the cycle of offense and revenge, undertaken with more and more powerful weapons, with more and more at stake in each confrontation.
What would it mean if, at this moment, many readers actually began to believe that another world is possible, that Jesus may in fact have been right, that the secret message of the kingdom of God — though radical, though unprecedented in its vision, though requiring immense faith to believe it is possible — may in fact be the only authentically saving message we have? (pp. 127-28)
What if we all shared that moment? When we all looked at how we live our lives as individuals, as a society and as global citizens... Where we realised that what we have isn’t OK, and together we dreamed...........dared............risked another way to live. If we can’t dream it, how can we do it? But if we all dared and risked together, it might actually be possible. We are called to live our lives in a different way, to break down the cycles that have been passed on to us that keep people living in poverty, in social exclusion and oppression. We are called to have that porridge moment when we say....’Yuk’. This isn’t satisfactory. And how can it be when our brothers and sisters around the globe...all of them.........are not safe, fed, welcomed. And how can we get to this Kingdom world of freedom and abundance for all without daring, risking and following our shared dream.