[AI translation] Jesus' words bring us to the most difficult part of the Sermon on the Mount. Here is expressed the most typically Jesus-like aspect of the Christian believer's moral conduct. Jesus himself almost emphasises this when he says: "If you greet your father's sons only, what more do you do than others?"(Mt 5,47) Yes, it is here that the Christian surplus is to be found: the second milestone, the love of the other orca, the enemy. It is precisely this ethical surplus that the Christian man is called to bring into the life of the world. It is such an immense task that even many believers shy away from it and say: impossible, unfeasible, nonsense! And the general opinion in the world about this passage is that it is not only impossible to live as Jesus wishes, but that it is not advisable. This is not a way of life. Here we see most clearly how Jesus is not a practical but a dreaming spirit. What would it lead to if a man really gave himself up to the wickedness of another man, if he gave the cheek of the one who beat him, if he gave the upper garment to the one who demanded it, if he treated the most vile evildoer with the tenderness of love? Would not this lead to anarchy, to an unscrupulous orgy of coarse and vulgar passions? Is this not the ethic of the cowardly, the weak, the foolish? There are so many questions about this word that it is impossible to address them all. Let's just take the most important ones.Is it really such a passive, cowardly weakness to behave towards one's enemy in the way Jesus says: not hitting back, not repaying the insult, doing two miles instead of the obligatory one, responding to a blow on one cheek by turning the other cheek? Take a very simple, everyday example. Two people or families live in a shared flat. They agree on the house rules, who cleans the common areas, how to use the kitchen, bathroom, when to shake out the carpet. And it's the right thing to do, the necessary thing to do. But then one person's mess upsets the order. He leaves the kitchen messy, throws the dishes around, fails to clean the staircase, and annoys the other person with lots of little things like that. Finally the other one loses patience and says to himself: if you do it, I'll do it! I'm not going to be so stupid as to always do it for him! If it's my turn, I'll do what he does: let him see how annoying it is what he does to me!
It's called the echo law. If the other person is good and polite to me, I am good and polite to him, but if he is mean and hostile, he will provoke the same behaviour in me. The other day, someone told me a similar story and ended his story by saying. And he gave him a good telling off. - That's how it goes. Don't you see that this is the weakness? Were you forced to tell him your side of the story? Were you forced to annoy him in return, so that he might for once experience for himself the annoyance he had caused you? Did you have to? Don't you realize that it was the other - say your enemy - who determined your behavior towards him? You were not free in your dealings with him, but compelled by his evil! You were under the influence of his mood, his nervousness, his malice. You were compelled to be nervous, to be mean. What are you? A slave who is forced? Whose behaviour, whose words are controlled, dictated by the actions and behaviour of others? Because then that other is the stronger and you are the weaker. You obey him: you do exactly what his evil dictates to you. This is weakness.
Jesus is saying: don't let that other person force you to do what you do. Be free from his behaviour! Don't let him put the gun in your hand! If he comes against you with the weapon of evil, you point the weapon of love at him. If he insults and abuses you, attack him with good will; his self-righteous demands, with more than obligatory kindness. This is truly not passive resistance, but the most active resistance against all evil! Jesus does not say that if someone strikes you on the right side, let him strike you on the left side, but: turn the other cheek towards him. This is a bold attack of love, which will crush the other person sooner than the blow back. He attacks your face, you attack his heart. By turning your face to the other, you become the aggressor, and morally you have already won! You then choose the battlefield and the weapons, forcing the fight onto ground he is unfamiliar with, and attacking with weapons he cannot defend against. If a man forces you a mile, he demands of you what you are bound to do: you are his slave, his servant, you can do no more; - but if you go willingly to him two, you have risen above him, you have become his benefactor, his master! The one mile, the one orca, is weakness; the other orca, the second mile, is strength. One is cowardice, the other is courage.
Jesus also triumphed by not striking back when he had every right and reason to do so. He had the power. But then we wouldn't be here! If He had struck back when He was struck, one of His blows would have struck at our faith, crushing all our hopes. But He refused that weapon, He used His own, and that is how He defeated us. That is true power, that is true strength! He did not win with His muscles, but with His love. So with new weapons, Jesus calls us to a new struggle: to overcome evil with good. To crush hatred with love. To repel offence and hurt and all wickedness with good will, with good deeds. To drive out darkness with light. This is truly not the gospel of the weak, but of the strongest! Everyone is capable of returning a blow with a blow. It does not take much strength. But it's much more when I think: I have the strength to return the blow, I could finish the person, but I also have the strength to give it up. Yes, that is the greater power! The greatest strength is when I overcome the feeling of hostility within myself.
This is why Jesus says: "Love your enemies" (Mt 5,44) Without this, all that has been said so far is worthless. Because one can turn the other person's face to you and still feel inside: 'I hate you, but my time will come! The method Jesus recommends is only true in love. What distinguishes the death of Jesus from other martyrdoms is precisely the fact that he showed active love for those who tortured him. Therefore His death was not a defeat, but a victory. He was not defeated, He was defeated forever. "Love your enemies" - to elaborate, this means to try to see that other person before God and to think that Jesus died for him too, he too is immeasurably precious to God. Try to think about why that other person became the way he is. Perhaps the shadow of some great pain and suffering has fallen over his life, and that is what made him so unbearable, what broke his humanity. Or perhaps some unfortunate inheritance had burdened his character. Perhaps he was so affected in childhood that he lost all confidence in people. Try to understand him, to take him seriously with all his faults, his crookedness, his strangeness, because that is why Jesus had to die for him, because that is what he is: evil, corrupt, lost. Try to think about what you can do so that the redemptive death Jesus suffered for you is not in vain. If you react to his evil deeds in a purely legal way, that is, if you treat him in the same way he treats you - which no one could possibly resent from you, by the way, because that is usually the natural thing to do - you will harden him, you will harden him in his own evil, mistrust, misanthropy, wickedness. So you sin against him.
And when Jesus asks you about him at the last judgment, you may want to say: but I have treated him quite fairly, Lord! Everyone has done right by me, I have done nothing to him that he has not done to me: he deserved nothing else! Then the word will come to your lips, because you will remember that Jesus did not limit himself to being fair to you. If he had treated you according to the principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, woe betide you! But He called you His brother, He gave His blood for you, and you were His enemy. And if you truly believe this, you can only look on your enemy with such compassionate love, and do your best to make him feel: brother, I do not want you to fall further into your own hostile tempers, your own complexes. I am responsible for you before God: for this reason, and this reason only, I do not strike back, although I have the right to do so. For this reason, for this reason only, I turn the other cheek towards you. It is not the most important thing to assert my right, my justice, against the other. There is something more important: to help that other person so that the redeeming cross of Jesus is not in vain for him. This is what it means to "love your enemies" (Mt 5,44).
How can a person come to love his enemy? How did Jesus get there? Do you remember how he prayed for the people who mocked, cursed and tortured him to death? "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Lk 23,34). Jesus saw something else in them: not only a sadistic, angry mob, a rude multitude of human beasts, but He saw in these angry and cruel people the lost and lost children of God. His gaze penetrated through the layer of filth and saw behind it what these people were really meant to do. These people's eyes, flashing with hatred, are actually crying out for redemption, but they don't know it. These human monsters are not just animals, they are pitiful, horribly lost children, only they have no idea that they are. They do not know what they are doing! But Jesus knows. Jesus sees. Their every curse, their every insulting, hurtful word, their every gesture is actually the crying plea of a lost child crying out for redemption. And that is why Jesus could love them.
Try to see in the same way the one who has caused you so much trouble, who has made your life so miserable, who has done you so much harm, who has got on your nerves, who has got in your way, who has disappointed you so much! Try to see them that way, through Jesus' eyes. And see Jesus himself standing among them, eating and drinking with them, pleading for them in the last, most painful hour of his life. And if Jesus is standing among those who hurt you, hate you, bitter you, where can you stand if you want to be with Jesus?! Yes, Jesus is calling you among them, among your enemies, and asking you to help them out of their misery! They don't know what they are doing, but you already know: they are actually waiting for you to see in them what Jesus saw in them, and what gave Him the strength to die for them. For they too - our enemies - are beloved, lost and much sought after children of our heavenly Father! Who else would see in them the child of God, and who else could have compassion on them with love, but you, who have been overcome and raised up by this love?
"If ye love them that love you, what reward have ye?" (Mt 5,46) Well, this is the more that is entrusted to us, Christians. This surplus is the second milestone where Christianity begins. It is to this victory of love that Jesus called us. He, who has conquered with love, gives himself, his life force, so that going out from here, we too can conquer in the greatest struggle: the struggle over ourselves.
Amen
Date: 28 September 1964.
Lesson
Fil 2,5-11