Over the course of the human community we have a finely honed system of ‘justice’ that is, in fact, a system of retribution based on who holds power and how they see the world. Penal Codes may posture themselves as the keepers of public order and fairness, but the application of these codes is another matter entirely. One need only look at the application of the death penalty in this country to see the truth. The question that we must wrestle with is whether or not retributive justice is actually justice. Certainly, as compared to Jesus’ teaching, the answer to the question is a definite no.

The vision of justice that Jesus teaches is more about restoration than retribution. As we have worked our way through the Sermon on the Mount these last few weeks, we recognize Jesus’ emphasis on the establishing of a community that values the basic humanity and dignity of each person. No one is pushed to the side. In our text for this week, Jesus pushes the teaching into areas that challenge us. To love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, as a spiritual mandate, requires something of us. It calls us to give up our hurts, slights, and dreams of revenge in favor of a new vision of the community…it is a vision of a beloved community established and maintained by the ethic of self-giving love.

Making sense of the holy can be a daunting task. By definition, an encounter with the holy challenges our perceptions and can shake our sense of self to the very core. With this, it is little wonder that these experiences tend to come in high on our terror meter. When we speak of God showing up, it is natural for us to use phrases like “when God shows up”. Theologically speaking, statements like this fundamentally miss the point. God is with us. Period. The sense that God comes and goes has more to do with our perceptions of seeing/experiencing God than with where God is actually present.

The reality that God is with us is the bedrock of our faith. When everything/anything else disappears, God is still present. And yet, because of the limitation of our humanity, it is all too easy to become separated from or untethered from God’s presence and feel like we are alone. Thankfully because God is always present, our sense of isolation can be and often is pierced by God’s presence. In these glorious moments, when our awareness is transformed, we can see new possibilities of life and faith. In these moments, our perceptions of God, ourselves, and one another can be changed.

We live in a time when there is a rising tide of anger and frustration in many of our spaces. We see injustices against marginalized people that have been ramped up, seemingly with impunity. It is difficult to try and boil down this reality to a simple talking point because there are so many examples. There is the current environmental disaster perpetrated on a small NE Ohio town. The ongoing water crises in Flint, MI and Jackson, MS are assaults on communities that are majority people of color. As the anger rises, there are leaders within the community of Christ-followers that misinterpret our text for this week, and they tell us we shouldn’t be angry. Yet, when you look closely at Matthew 5, Jesus isn’t instructing us not to be angry.

The deeper question that Jesus raises is what we do with our anger. When anger turns to dehumanizing our neighbor, we are going down the wrong path. Anger that expresses itself in dehumanizing behavior can often turn to violence and ongoing degradation of the human community. In this early text from the sermon on the mount, Jesus is calling us to resist the temptation to let our anger lead to the interactions that diminish the humanity of our neighbor. In a day such as this, it seems a tall order, but the Gospel continues to remind us that the new community that results from making this choice is within our reach.

One of the critical pieces of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is the idea of purposeful living. Jesus’ ethical teaching is more than a simple intellectual framework, even though generations of the church have reflected Jesus’ teaching as if that is all it was. The modern church, in some of its iterations has lost its urgency to live salty and lighted filled lives. Jesus’ teaching is transformative for people’s lives. It reframes and restores our relationship with God and our relationships with our neighbors. This transformed life, however, is intended to be liberated from the shackles of an individualized, overly spiritualized inertia. The transformed life that Jesus brings is meant to propel us out into the world. We are to live intentional lives that reflect the love, grace, and mercy of God to a world in need.

The Gospel call to live salty and lit lives today comes to us in a particularly fraught time. In a time when the effects of hate and division are increasingly intractable, doubling down on our call to live purposefully is critical.

A common perception about our faith and discipleship in the modern church is the idea that when we experience smooth sailing in our life, it means we are ‘blessed’. This notion that God’s favor is somehow inextricably linked to the state of our life is a misconception that people of faith have held for millennia…Unfortunately, it inevitably led to the marginalization of and othering of people who experienced all manner of challenges to their lives. Jesus’ work of healing and restoration of persons who through illness or disability were pushed out of the community to keep their ‘sin’ at a distance. Through the healing work, he restored these persons.

We need to revisit this important distinction as we consider Jesus’ teaching piece we refer to as the Beatitudes. This teaching is a series of statements that begin with the statement “Blessed are the…” In common interpretation we default to making them conditional statements: We will have good lives if we live like Jesus teaches. In fact, this teaching doesn’t really concern itself with the ‘happiness’ of our life. Jesus, instead, is making a statement about geography. It is a statement about where we are, physically and spiritually, in relationship to God and one another. The Beatitudes are all about the character of our relationships. What Jesus is saying is more along the lines of “you’re in the right place if you choose to…”

The call of Jesus, to Andrew and Peter, James and John, is a critical moment in Matthew’s Gospel. In this act, Jesus begins his ministry in earnest. It is his ministry, but by calling others to participate, he shares it willingly with others. This one of the most extraordinary parts of the Gospel. It is more than just the fact that the ministry is shared. Over the generations, God’s work has been shared with many…priests, prophets, kings, and occasionally ‘normal’ folks. But Jesus’ call of the fishermen, as well as the other disciples who were not priests, prophets and kings, is a game changer. In an act that was rare in Israel, the work of the Messiah was being shared with people who lacked the pedigree that many would have expected.

We often marvel at what seems to be their immediate response to Jesus’ cold call of them. While it may have happened that way, I think that it is more helpful for us to dig a little deeper. Because Jesus had moved into Capernaum and began teaching, it is safe to assume that he wouldn’t have been completely unknown. When you combine whatever level of knowledge, they had with the fact that Jesus gave a particular and tailored invitation to them, their quick response to the call makes more sense. To consider these things together, I think it makes Jesus call of us all the more accessible.

We are not the first people to live in difficult and divided times. While there is much anxiety about our future, as Christ followers there is a reality that can anchor us in this time. Our calling in Christ, to be the Beloved Community, has specific implication for the time in which we live. Even though there are strains of Christianity that would seek to impose theocracy, this impulse to use faith to control politics and the public square are antithetical to the core of the Gospel. Our call in Christ is to use the power of our witness to build, to restore, to heal, and to include persons within the community.  This community that we build today, is meant to be a means of grace to our broader, broken community as part of an eternal community. Even though our forebearers in faith have had the same call, they struggled, as we do, to bear a faithful witness to the love of Christ. Just as the Spirit worked through their witness to heal and grow their ministry, so the Spirit does that work in and through us. While it is true that the world in which we live necessitates new models of ministry, beyond anything we’ve previously practiced, the Spirit will guide us to new expressions of faithfulness that will bear witness to the hope we hold in Christ.

What if you were emotionally and spiritually set free from all the limitations that you, the world and other people have placed upon you…All of those comments made to you over the years that had the intention of limiting you. What if all those comments about being too much of one thing or not enough of another thing were finally exorcised from your life? Can you imagine the feeling of liberation? Can you imagine what it would be like to finally see yourself fully as God sees you?

This is what the psalmist paints for us in this beautiful, poetic image of creation. The psalmist believes in the intimacy and immanent presence of God. His view of God speaks of a gentle care and creation that are ultimately a great expression of God’s love for us. This undercuts the notion that God is with us to keep an eye on us, to keep us in line. God’s ongoing work of creation in our life is an extension of God’s love in creation. Instead of God trying to keep us in line, God seeks to liberate us from the experiences in life that would shackle us to inauthentic living. Set free from the limitations we or others would place upon us, we are able to fully reflect and express the grace and love we have received.

Our world is full of examples of how our interactions with one another have become transactional. From algorithms that identify and commoditize our likes and dislikes on Social Media to organizations that would weaponize our fears and anxieties to enhance their own power and privilege, we are being bought and sold. In this reality we are engaging with one another with an eye to what someone else might be able to do with us. The outcome of this pattern is ultimately dehumanizing. It is increasingly difficult to hold on to and value each other’s humanity when we are constantly reduced to a commodity.

The community of faith has always pushed back against these efforts. People who seek to accumulate and hold power over others have engaged in this pattern. In our text from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus makes clear that the goal of building a beloved community, where we make space especially for people at the margins, will always stand in opposition to any effort to rob someone of their humanity.

A truth about the human experience, albeit an easily overlooked truth, is that context matters. This is particularly important to grasp when we talk about rules or laws. Whenever rules or laws are written, it is often the case that they are written in a specific context. There is a reality in a given community, or a need to be addressed, which the proposed rule or law addresses. There is no rule that we recognize that was written in a vacuum. This is true for the Ten Commandments. This oft used piece of Scripture was a gift to a formerly enslaved people who had been stripped of their community identity in favor of their enslavers. Upon being liberated by God, these simple rules created the context for a new community that would reflect their relationship with God, one another, and eventually the nations with whom they shared the world. They were meant to be the basis by which a beloved community could be built.

Unfortunately, the ways that this code was often interpreted by the leaders of Israel led to a pattern of abusing power.  Nowhere was this more on display than with Jesus’ ongoing dispute with the Pharisees over Sabbath law. The Sabbath, intended to be a space for people to grow in their relationship with God, became a burdensome set of expectations that more or less missed the whole point of Sabbath. To help his followers regain the intention of Sabbath, Jesus was not afraid to teach or even heal on the Sabbath. It was in these moments that he was able to demonstrate the deeper meaning of God’s reign…Liberation. This should be the intent of all of our theology and talk about God. All theology should be Liberation Theology.