That Pretty Much Sums it Up…

I’ve been reading The Power of the Powerless, a collection of sermons written by German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, as a part of my daily devotions.  The sixth sermon, The Blessedness of the Peacemakers, is taken from Matthew 5:9 and hit me square in the face.  I’ve copied a rather lengthy quote from the sermon, which I believe, stands well on its own.  It’ll be worth your time to read.  I won’t make any comment except for one thing: I believe Moltmann’s words sum up rather nicely what I believe about what our call is as Christians in a world filled with hate and violence.  He says it far better than I ever could. 

  

”‘You are the children of your father in heaven.’  This reminder calls us out of the conflict.  Anyone who allows himself to be drawn into conflict, or carries on a conflict, is subject to the law of retaliation.  There is no other way of preserving an equilibrium in the struggle: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth –arm, rearm –rearm, arm.  But anyone who becomes involved in the law of retaliation towards his enemy is drawn into a vicious circle from which he can never escape.  He will become his enemy’s enemy, and a terror to the one who terrifies him.  He threatens what threatens him, and hates what hates him.  He increasingly takes his coloring from his enemy.  If evil is requited by evil, then the one evil takes its bearing from the other, and that is fatal.  We are only liberated from vicious circles like this if we cease to take or bearings from our enemy, and when another person is more important to us.

‘You are the children of your father in heaven.’  That is the new orientation.  It may sound like a childlike assurance of harmony and safe-keeping.  But here we have to take it quite literally.  If you are you heavenly Father’s children, then free yourselves from enmity, and take your bearings from the Father alone!  Do not debase yourselves any longer!  Do not lose yourselves in enmity!  You are intended for something different, and another is looking after you. 

If we want to know what it means to be ‘a child of God,’ we have to look at Jesus, the Son.  He called God his father and became the friend of enemies of his class and nation, a friend of sinners and tax-collectors.  He called God his father and went to his death without defending himself, praying for his murderers as he died.  The disciples who followed him were therefore right to call him ‘Son of God,’ for he was no one else’s son and belonged to no other party. 

In community with that Son of God from Nazareth we discover who God the Father is, and find out what it means to be his child on earth.  We have been enemies of our enemies long enough.  In the discipleship of Jesus we experience the liberating power of love, love that is quite literally disarming. 

The love which Jesus put in place of retaliation is love of our enemy.  Mutual love is nothing special.  It only means repaying good with good.  But love of enemy is not love as repayment; it is prevenient and creative love.  Anyone who repays evil with good is truly free.  He no longer merely reacts.  He creates something new.  He follows nothing but his own resolve, and no longer lets the rules of action be dictated by his opponent.  Jesus did not die cursing his enemies, but with prayer for them on his lips.  He gave his life for the people who condemned him and put him to death.  In his life, his suffering and his death, he revealed to us the perfection of God.  ‘Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.’ 

But in what does God’s perfection consist?  Certainly not in perfectionism in any sense.  It lies in the love which is long-suffering, patient and kind, which bears no grudge, which endures all things, believes all things, hopes all things (I Cor. 13).  God loves his enemies, blesses them, does good to them, and does not set evil against evil:  that is his perfection.  And it is from this that we all live.  From this the whole world lives, even if it does not know it.  God sustains and preserves everything, because he has hope for everyone.  His perfection is his limitless capacity for suffering.  He is all-powerful because he is all-enduring.  His uniqueness is the unfathomably creative power of his love. 

If this were not so, none of us would be able to talk about the love of God he or she has experience; for he loved us when we were still his enemies.  While we were godless, Christ died for us.  And his Spirit disarms us when we want to be the enemies of other people.  God’s children –that means the enemies whom God has overcome.  They are disarmed.  They become creative.  They can no longer repay evil with evil.  They must always discover some way of doing good in return for the evil done to them.  God gives life and the warmth of life to all of us –to the evil first of all, because they need it most.  We feel the rain which falls on the parched earth and makes it fruitful.  In the same way God lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, so that they too may live –here first of all on the just, because they need it.  These are the great images for the new orientation towards God which liberates us.

And there is something else behind this image too: the sun is there for everyone, the rain is there for everyone.  ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you.’  When this happens, the sun rises over the gloomy valley, and the rain falls on the parched ground.  Love of our enemies is the sunrise of life, and the realistic condition for the survival of humanity. 

Keep up with the arms race or live without armaments?  Up to now we have only asked: what is in the interest of our security, what is in the interests of our survival?  But the question is now: what is in the best interests of our enemy, and what helps him most?  How can we best bless those who curse us?  How can we do good to those who hate us?”

Jurgen Moltmann, The Power of the Powerless,  trans Margaret Kohl, (San Fransisco, Harper & Row Publishers Inc., 1983), 51-54.