or Meekness Isn’t Weakness
Sean C. Capparuccia
February 23, 2025 – sermon delivered at Trinity Methodist, Magnolia, NC
Gospel Lesson: Luke 6:27-38 (Mt 5:38ff)
I was 15 years old; my father was a Chaplain in the Navy and half-way through the school year we were sent to Okinawa, Japan. I had lived in Okinawa before, in elementary school, and so I was both excited to move back but also pretty bummed about leaving my high school friends in Virginia. I settled into the school well enough, made some new friends, and even reconnected with a few friends that I had had in years past at other duty stations. It also didn’t take long for the “new kid” to get labeled and picked on. Because a new acquaintance of mine bore false witness against me, the biggest, meanest guy in school, (one who thought he was part of the Crips gang,) decided he was going to kill me – because I was new, white, and quiet. (This is one of those guys who is 19 years old but still in 10th grade; yeah, that guy.) Monday morning at my locker, unaware that anything was going on, he threw me into my locker then picked me up, turned me upside down, and threw me into the floor. He was that big. This split my head open. Then he sat on my chest and pounded my face, breaking every bone on the left side of my skull until a teacher finally got him off. That teacher saved my life; although for many years I wished he hadn’t.
Willie – that was the kid’s name – was punished by being banished from the island; while I suffered through the rest of high school as “the guy that got beat up.” I hated Willie. I wanted to kill Willie. I wanted him to suffer the most terrible tortures I could devise. In fact, I spent many nights unable to sleep because all I could think about was how to find Willie; how to make him feel pain. This went on for years. And it wasn’t just Willie; I hated all black people. All black people needed to pay for what Willie had done to me.
Now, I had never been a violent person, but my mind was overtaken with violence and revenge. After the incident in high school, I turned to narcotics to try to numb the constant thoughts, which only made things worse, I’m sure. It wasn’t until a couple of years after Lara and I had been married that I was able to forgive Willie. We were working in church, and I was drawing closer to the Lord. I truly was tired of carrying around the hatred I had in my heart – my soul, even. I don’t remember the exact date that I decided to forgive him, but I began to be able to sleep easier. I no longer lay awake fantasizing about Willie’s demise. This was about the time that the Internet was getting popular, and I made a few attempts to find him, but “Willie Choice” is a fairly common name, and I had no idea where he went. I wanted to tell him that I forgave him and why. I wanted to tell him that Christ can – and does – set you free from hatred. Hatred of others for they’ve done to us; and hatred for ourselves for we do to others. I wanted to tell him that…
In the OT lesson we see Joseph revealing himself to his brothers: the brothers who were jealous of him; the brothers who were going to kill him; the brothers who sold him into slavery to a faraway place; the brothers who considered him dead as far as they were concerned. (And later this afternoon, as you read the whole story beginning in chapter 37, you will see that Joseph had lots of time to devise how he was going to get back at his brothers someday!) We often hear this story in connection with Joseph’s wonderful mercy and his heart of forgiveness for those who didn’t merely slap him on the right cheek but utterly betrayed him and left him for dead! And he was merciful; he did have a heart of forgiveness, but you can see throughout these chapters how intricately he devised his plan to get back at them – and he did… Again, I invite you to read it all later.
The Mosaic Law, often viewed as rather harsh, was a Law based on justice and not injustice. In particular, the rules concerning retaliation, were common even among the pagan nations: In Exodus we read: “Life for life,” “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, burn for burn, wound for wound, and bruise for bruise” (Ex 21:[12]23, 24.[1] God’s intention in these laws, though, was to limit the degree to which retaliation could be carried out; you couldn’t kill a man for breaking your arm, for example.
Even so, regarding the Mosaic Law, there is no real evidence that these laws were carried out, except in the case of capital punishment for murder, but were written as a means to limit punishment. “An eye for an eye” was generally used as an analogy and monetary payments were usually enacted. Famed teacher of the Torah and political commentator, Dennis Prager points out, “Perfect justice would dictate that what I deliberately did to an innocent person be done to me. Except for taking a murderer’s life, this is not possible… no eye or foot can ever be damaged in precisely the same way one damaged the eye or foot of another.” So, these laws represent an “ideal, though impracticable, justice.”[2]
Throughout His ministry, Jesus was explaining to the people the dynamics of inter-personal relationships; how to treat your brother, your neighbor… but now, how do we treat our enemies? Jews had many enemies. In fact, anyone who wasn’t Jewish was considered an enemy; even more so in the first century under Roman occupation. By Jewish reckoning the world was divided into two camps: Jew and Not Jew. And the long-awaited Messiah, when He comes, will “tread down the enemy” (Ps 60:12). When Messiah comes, the Romans will be vanquished.
But even the Mosaic law had a view toward proper justice, tempered with mercy, even toward enemies. “If you see your enemy’s ox or donkey wandering off, return it to him” (Dt 23:4); “If you see the donkey of someone who hates you lying helpless under a heavy load, lighten its load” (Dt 23:5); “You shall not oppress a stranger (or foreigner), since you know what it is like to be a stranger” (Dt 23:9); “Don’t rejoice when your enemy falls; don’t let yourself be glad when he stumbles” (Pro 24:17); “If your enemy hungers, give him food to eat; and if he thirsts, give him water to drink” (Pro 25:21). So even the OT had provision for mercy toward strangers and enemies.
Now enter the Pharisees and the Pharisaic tradition. Leviticus taught, “You shall not take vengeance, nor bear a grudge against the children of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This is love over vengeance. But the Pharisees interpreted it this way: “You shall love the children of your people and hate all others.” Considering their oppression by Rome, it was easy for the people to accept this as God’s law, but it clearly was not.
Another influential group at this time were the Essenes of the Qumran community. Believing themselves to be the chosen of God, even out of the Jews, their teaching was that all Essenes were to “love all whom God has chosen [themselves], and hate all that He has rejected [non-Essenes].”
So, when Jesus said, “Love your enemies, [and] do good to those who hate you,” it did not strike a very harmonious chord with many of His listeners.
He was contradicting the Pharisees and also making it clear that he wasn’t part of this other sect, the Essenes, which some accused him of being. And not only that, but it went against the very heart of man – the carnal heart, the heart born in sin under Adam’s curse. It was a hard saying. And friends, it is still a hard saying!
Generally speaking, we categorize others into one of three groups[3]: one is the group for which we care nothing; we are indifferent to them. The next group are those for whom we have a positive inclination. We are not indifferent to them but hope for their well-being to one degree or another. We may love them; they may be just friends or even only slightly-known acquaintances; maybe we just know “of” them; but it is a positive feeling. The third group, of course, are those who have risen above the level of indifference, but we have negative feelings toward them. A general dislike; perhaps fear; maybe a loathing, resentment, or enmity; even hatred. Perhaps they have injured us or someone we care about. Perhaps they have a reputation of being mean; the kid that killed a kitten in middle school and then laughed about it; the girl that overcharged you $2.75 at the grocery store and you didn’t catch it until you got home. For whatever reason, these people are on the bad list in our minds. They are the thieves; the perverse; the liars; the usurers; the cheaters; whiners; abusers; litterers; even the gossipers (when they gossip about you, anyway.) (I don’t know which list is longer in your mind.)
But Jesus. God; the Creator of all; the One Who gave the Law; now in the flesh; here on earth said: “Love your enemies, [and] do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” We could add, “those who cheat you, those who denigrate you, those who seem to go out of their way to make your life harder.”
Remember last week’s Gospel? The passage just before this one… “Blessed are you poor, hungry, mourning, weeping; blessed are you when men hate you and call you names…” That was at least somewhat in the abstract. And we can consider this abstract too …. abstract enough anyway… We can perhaps pray for that enemy… over there… far away. But what about this enemy? The one who is standing directly across from you who hits you on the cheek? I have read some commentators describe this as when someone removes their glove and smacks someone across the face; or even back-handing someone in the face, rapízo. An act of humiliation at best. But the Greek phrase used by Luke is túpto su epi o siagón, literally, “beats your jaw.” This is a blow that knocks teeth out. So, after spitting out your teeth, do you politely turn your head so he can beat the other side of your face?
And if someone steals $20 out of my pocket, should I offer him the $10 from my other pocket?
The list of ways to be wronged is quite endless. Wronged by people we love; wronged by people we like; wronged by people we dislike; wronged by people we don’t even know.
There is evil in this world. This is because Adam, the first man, sinned against God and placed his own will above God’s will. Ever since then the curse of the heart of humanity is to exalt themselves over God – even you and me. Some have tried to use the excuse, “I was born this way” as a means to justify their sinfulness. Beloved, we were all born this way. There are those who seek to kill, steal, and destroy, just as their father, the devil does. There are enemies of God in this world. And there are those who believe they are doing the right thing by their actions. Even in the church, some use the Scriptures to support un-Biblical behavior; but usually it’s a verse, out of context, and not in keeping with the whole counsel of God. The murder of infants in the womb? Denying God-given identities in favor of deception? Etc., etc.
Some people will teach that we should have no enemies; that God has no enemies except for Satan. But, Paul writes in Ephesians 3:17, “Brothers, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.” And James tells us “…do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (4:4).
And what of the enemies of God? From the rest of the Psalm we read this morning (Ps. 37)! “The wicked man will be no more”; “the sword of the wicked will enter his own heart”; “the wicked will perish; the transgressors will be altogether destroyed.”
We cannot erase the fact that there are enemies of God and that there are enemies of our own. Jesus wasn’t trying to say that we don’t have enemies. He wasn’t even telling us that we had to like our enemies. What He was teaching us is that if we are to love our enemies, as He taught us to, then we must rise above them.
Carnal man seeks revenge; he avenges wrongs or perceived wrongs.
Disciples of Jesus seek reconciliation. We want to see others reconciled to God; and we’d like to be reconciled to others, in Christ.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all these things are from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ, and who has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (II Cor 5:17-18). Jesus was taking people back to the Law as He had written it, not as the religious leaders were interpreting it, and then teaching us how to live in fulfillment of the Law.
I watched a couple of gangster movies this past week; you know, some good ‘ol American mafia movies that I probably shouldn’t watch but they went so well with the sermon that I was going to write that I felt I needed to watch them. The Mafia, and gangs, in general, are all about vengeance. The Mafia loved each other, they were family, unless someone crossed someone else. But they did wonderful things for each other, like hide stuff and share stolen money and help bury bodies and things. And as long as you loved the Family, you were loved by the Family. When someone hurt the family, you helped avenge the family. But Jesus says we must go beyond that: love even when you aren’t loved, for the sake of witness.
God knows who will be saved and who won’t be; He does not share that information with us. We are not God. Though we are to be discerning, we are not to stand in judgement, and we have no business condemning. No person, no church, no denomination has the power to condemn. We can only say what Scripture teaches us and warn others accordingly. We have no idea who will come to faith in Christ at some point in their lives, so our only concern is witness.
Now, as a final point, and this is really the one that I have had the most trouble with: are we to simply take whatever some hostile malefactor dishes out? And not just the robbers and the violent. Are we to take the demoralizing words of a spouse day after day? Are we to perpetually endure psychological abuse from an overbearing employer? Are we to simply be doormats, weak-willed and soft, to be walked on and used and abused by those around us? In other words, where does “Self-defense” and “self-preservation” come in? This is difficult, (because it really comes down to a matter of conscience; I don’t think there is a black and white answer to what is best in any given situation.)
In the Confession of Faith of the Mennonite Church, (and I cite this because Mennonites, like the Amish, are well-known for their pacifist stance) it states this, in part:
“We believe that peace is the will of God… Led by the Holy Spirit, we follow Christ in the way of peace, doing justice, bringing reconciliation, and practicing nonresistance even in the face of violence and warfare… We do not prepare for war or participate in military service… [we are empowered by the Spirit] to forgive rather than seek revenge… and to resist evil without violence.”[4]
The prevailing idea of today is “Love.” Love everyone; don’t be a hater. “Live and let live.” It’s wrong to tell anyone they are wrong. It’s wrong to be bully (but you’re a bully if you stand up to a bully.) All opinions are equal and well, if someone is wrong, we’re only human. And to misquote the ancient saying, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” In actuality, the original quote is, “To err is human, to correct is divine.” Imagine that! To correct someone is divine! And I would add, to correct someone who is in error is usually the loving to do.
So, back to self-defense. When Jesus says, “Give to everyone who asks of you” there is implied a measure of good judgement. Alfred Plummer, a Wesleyan scholar and commentator writes, “When love resists or refuses, it is because compliance would be a violation of love, not because it would involve loss or suffering.”[5] In other words, for example, when an inebriated fellow comes up to me while I’m pumping gas and asks for “just five dollars” I usually feel the loving thing to do is not to give it to him because I’m pretty sure he’s going to buy more alcohol. Indeed, we must ask ourselves in every situation, “What is the loving thing to do? What will best show the love and the Truth of Christ to this person?”
Sometimes, and here’s where I’ll part ways with the pacifist, the loving thing to do is protect innocent life by removing the threat. Jesus was certainly not against the use of weapons as we see in Luke 22:36: “…let him who has no sword sell his robe and buy one.” It is no stretch to say that today that would be akin to a handgun. My son, Gabriel, is a deputy. The depravity he sees every day is mind-blowing; the hurt that people cause one another every single day is depressing. But a gun on the hip of a law-abiding citizen deters a lot of crimes. That’s just the truth.
I’ll leave you with this: I had a conversation with a Mennonite friend of mine a while back and the subject of self-defense came up. Trying to understand his non-resistance stance I asked him, “What if someone broke into your house with a gun and tried to have his way with your wife or daughter?” He answered, “I wouldn’t do anything because if he killed any of us, I know we’ll go to heaven. He probably wouldn’t, so if I killed him, he’d go to hell.”
Now, I may be wrong, and I may come to some supernatural change of mind later in my life but right now I’ll say this: God knows those who are His; He knows those that will be His because He is omniscient. There is not a person in this world who dies, and God Almighty does not know if that person would have accepted Christ if only they had lived another day. But to prevent wrong-doing is not the same thing as avenging it, and vengeance is what Christ was preaching against.
God is sovereign over all of His creation. Toward the end of the Joseph story, he said to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve the lives of many people” (Gen 50:20). We don’t know how God will use these situations in our lives. I can tell you this: after ruminating on my hatred of Willie and by extension, Black people for so many years, I gained a better appreciation and trust in God’s Word concerning creation. As Genesis teaches us, we are all from one blood; there is no such thing as races in this world; there’s only one race: the human race. And all humanity needs to hear the Gospel!
Christ did not come to change the Law, He taught again what the ancient Israelites already knew, but that centuries of time and the Pharisees and other religious leaders had distorted. Christ was teaching us to think more with our hearts and less with our flesh. To seek perfection even as our Heavenly Father is perfect. We are not to seek revenge against someone who wrongs us, or to avenge ourselves or stay up night after night with anxiety over the actions of an evil-doer. God says that He will avenge in His own time. It may be now; it may be at the final Judgement. We are simply to trust Him, to obey Him, and to love enough to share the Truth of God with any and all who come into our lives. We must (– we must –) seek the best way to show love and forgiveness to others.
And maybe, just maybe, “a gentle answer will turn away wrath” (Prov. 15:1).
Yes, this is a hard teaching; but meekness isn’t weakness. We need to open our heart and mind and truly listen to the Holy Spirit in matters like these.
Lord Jesus, some of your teachings are difficult, maybe harder for some than others. But You created us; You redeemed us by Your precious blood willingly shed by the hands of those who hated You; and You continue to instruct us by Your Holy Word. Give us ears to hear, minds to understand, and hearts to be more and more conformed to Yours, O Lord. For it is in Your Name we pray, Amen.
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[1] Noahic law – “Whoever sheds a man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For in the image of God He made man” (Gen 9:6).
[2] Dennis Prager, Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom The Rational Bible (Washington D.C.: Regnery Faith, 2018), 302.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective (Scottsdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1995), Article 22 “Peace, Justice, and Nonresistance.”
[5] Wesleyan Bible Commentary, vol. IV “Matthew-Acts” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 246.
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