A Meditation on Matthew 5:38-48: "I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven."
District 9
So I’m gonna take a bit of a gamble here and use a 21st century sci-fi story – replete with bug-eyed aliens, genetic mutation and colossal spaceships – 21st century sci-fi to set up a very first century teaching on nonviolence and human maturity. It’s a stretch, I know, but I take heart from Jesus’ own skill and style. He used all kinds of examples, from all kinds of cultural contexts, to inspire and agitate and humble his friends. Nothing was off limits, nothing, out of bounds. His passion was the kingdom of God, the gospel of grace; and if it took bug-eyed aliens and genetic mutation to make the point, so be it.
So some of you have seen “District 9” – a feature-length sci-fi picture that opens with a huge alien spaceship settling over Johannesburg, South Africa. And I’ll bet you didn’t think you’d hear about it here on Sunday morning! And some of you, well the last thing in the world you’ll do is see a feature-length sci-fi picture that opens with a huge alien spaceship settling over Johannesburg. But, before I tell you something about the film, I want to warn you, just the same, about seeing it. There’s a good bit of blood, gore and exploding body parts in this one; and if you’re squeamish about these things, and you have every right to be, you’ll want to think twice. It’s not for the faint of heart. And I don’t want to hear anyone saying that the minister up at First Congregational Church endorses exploding body parts. But, that said, that caveat, it’s a provocative tale, “District 9”, a contemporary parable of sorts; and it’ll get you thinking. Jesus might have liked it. Because it’ll get you thinking.
For starters, it’s a South African film, and it has the feel of social commentary. How do cultures divide black and white, immigrant and native, privileged and poor? What happens to cultures in which these divisions are allowed to deepen and calcify? Why do we so often resist unity and reconciliation? These are hugely important questions – for South Africa in the 80s and America in the early 2000s, for first century Palestine too. They’re Jesus’ questions, to be sure. And what’s the role, the obligation, the vocation of an individual, a person of faith, conscience, in overcoming division and prejudice and fear, and opening the way for something better? What can one person do? Big questions. In South Africa. In North America. And in “District 9.”
So – here’s what happens. In the 1980s, this huge alien spaceship arrives and settles in the airspace above Johannesburg. While the world watches, anxiously, absolutely nothing happens. No aliens emerge. No attacks ensue. Nothing. At long last, impatient government brigades force their way into the ship – to discover, not a raging enemy poised to attack, but a hungry, impoverished throng of thousands. These aliens are on the edge of complete collapse, and sadly desperate. The South African government settles this teeming society of thousands in District 9. A new underclass, if you will. In a new ghetto.
But the temporary settlement becomes permanent, human attitudes harden and misperceptions deepen. District 9 becomes a loathsome place upon which the human community projects its darkest fears. Its inhabitants are called ‘prawns’ by their human overlords, a derogatory description of their unimaginable anatomy and unintelligible habits. Paranoia sets in; and South Africa’s bureaucrats become convinced that these ‘prawns’ are plotting some kind of revolution. A decision is made to relocate the aliens to a more distant camp – out of the way, far from human community and social contact. Fear becomes social policy.
So it falls to the film’s protagonist, an unimpressive bureaucrat named Wikus, to implement this massive relocation and evict the aliens from their homes in District 9. He goes door to door, shack to shack; and he confronts alien families. Sometimes he’s abrasive and rude, sometimes condescending and gentle. It’s a terrible assignment – but Wikus seems almost suited for it.
Empathy is a Miracle
So are you with me? Do you have a hunch where this is heading? Remember how Jesus reminds his friends of conventional wisdom and then flips that conventional wisdom on its ear. “You’ve heard it said,” he offers, “‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” Jesus experiences conventional wisdom as oppressive and divisive and destructive. He sees it happening: how immigrants in his time are blamed for social ills; how the sick are ostracized as unclean and unworthy; how Romans are feared and hated. “You’ve heard it said,” he says, “‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” It’s almost like you’re wired that way: to love and protect your own kin, to fear and resist the other, the stranger, the outsider. But against the odds, against the evidence, Jesus believes that something else is possible. He believes in us.
But first, back to the future, “District 9.” In one alien shack, the bureaucrat Wikus discovers a back-room cache of sorts, maybe some kind of weapons project or alien conspiracy. He’s convinced that something terrible is in the works. When he unscrews an odd-looking thermos to check its contents, a strange slimy goo is suddenly and dangerously released. (Hey, I told you this stuff is sci-fi. 100%!) Well, Wikus inhales the goo, unwittingly, and sets in motion the second half, the stunning half, of the movie.
Because what happens is this: Wikus, the human protagonist, patronizing and bigoted as the rest, slowly morphs into one of the ‘prawns’, one of the very aliens he’s set out to evict and ostracize. His human teeth fall out. His arm morphs into an alien flipper. But, as he slowly comes to realize what’s happening, and as his human colleagues slowly recognize what’s happening, Wikus changes in more ways than these. He begins to identify, oddly, with the plight of his alien adversaries: with their confinement in District 9, with their poverty and anger, with their longing for home. As he himself goes through this awful metamorphosis, from human to alien, he becomes – paradoxically – much more human, much more compassionate, much more capable of tenderness and empathy and courage. Empathy is this miracle. It’s this gift. And it changes his life and the lives of those around him.
So in the end, it’s Wikus who makes it possible for alien leaders to escape their human captors and blast off for home. He’s left behind, fully changed, a prawn, an alien, exiled from his human family and community. But we get the sense that he’s discovered something crucial, something within, something of his capacity for love and beauty and generosity.
It’s an unsettling film in some gruesome ways. But it’s strangely provocative too. A parable perhaps.
If one of the film’s questions has to do with the role of a single human being in overcoming division and prejudice and fear, Wikus makes us wonder, cogitate, dig deep. Maybe it’s our capacity for empathy that offers us a way out. Maybe it’s our compassion for the other, even for the alien, that begins to dismantle systems of inequity and animosity. Maybe. If you can stomach the rough stuff, I hope you’ll see the movie.
Talk About Revolution!
Jesus knows how cruel we can be. He’s seen good rabbis belittle vulnerable women and his own disciples scold enthusiastic children. He’s encountered humanity’s fear / of the stranger and the immigrant and the alien. And violence: Jesus has watched us hurt one another, for no other reason than your skin’s the wrong color or you love the wrong kind or you’re poor and you don’t speak English.
Jesus has seen all of that. But don’t you see how Jesus is most interested in our ability, all of us, to understand and befriend and even love the other. He knows how cruel we can be. But still, he believes in another way, in a better way, in a generous, human spirit. “You’ve heard people say that you should love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” he says, “but I’m saying to you: Love your enemies, every one of them, and pray for those who persecute you.”
This Jesus is no cynic, no dour moralist, no bitter prude. This Jesus believes that we can be changed, we can be transformed, we can be humanized by the very folks we fear, by the strangers we distrust, by the aliens we misunderstand. At the heart, at the core of the Sermon on the Mount is this robust hope. And if this isn’t the hope we need, the healing our planet longs for, I don’t know where else to find it. We are saved, Jesus says, by our enemies.
Talk about revolution! What an amazing idea! What an unconventional belief! That children of Iran and children of America can humanize one another, can call out the best in one another. Talk about revolution! That Conservative Republicans in Congress and Progressive Democrats can humanize one another, call out the best in one another, and resolve to work together toward the common good. Talk about revolution! That evangelical Christians and radically inclusive progressives can pray together, some day, somewhere, learning to love one another, resolving to embody Christ’s ethic of hospitality together, calling out the best in one another.
This is the Sermon on the Mount. This is the radically theological ethic of Jesus. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” BECAUSE! Don’t forget the ‘because clause’. We remember so easily the love your enemies part – but there’s a ‘because clause’ too. And it’s so, so important. . “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”…BECAUSE that’s how you become children of your Father in heaven. BECAUSE that’s the only way you become children of your Father in heaven. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you – because that’s the nature, the character, the personality of God. God – who makes the sun shine on the evil and the good. God – who sends the sweet rains on the righteous and the unrighteous.
Be Womb-Like
Now I’m gonna assume you get the ethical part of all this: the love your enemies and pray for those who piss you off part. But let me urge you, urge you, to pay attention to the theological part, the radical vision of grace embedded in the Sermon on the Mount. Because this is where Jesus is at his spirit-expanding, mind-bending, world-flipping best. This is where hope finds its heart.
Check out the last couple of verses in this morning’s reading: “If you love those who love you,” Jesus says, stirring the pot, flipping conventional wisdom on its ear, “if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t the hucksters and gangsters do the same? And if you hang out with your own kind, what more are you doing than others? Isn’t that the way of the world, the way business is done? But be compassionate, be compassionate,” Jesus says, “as your heavenly Father is compassionate.”
That word compassionate or merciful traces back through the New Testament Greek to an Aramaic word that translates more literally as womb-like. The one who is compassionate or merciful is the one who feels a radically meaningful kinship with the other. The same kind of kinship a mother feels for the children of her womb, the flesh of her flesh. When you hear Jesus this way, when you get a feel for his playfulness with the language, you begin to appreciate the wonderfully surprising teacher he truly is. “Be womb-like,” he laughs! “Be womb-like,” he smiles! “Be womb-like,” he weeps! “Even as your heavenly Father is womb-like!” God is beyond gender, beyond the limits of our linguistic and social worlds. But try this out: God is Daddy with a womb. God is the One, the mystery, the grace in which every life and all life is conceived. God is Daddy with a womb. And you should be just like him. Be womb-like. Love your neighbors and your enemies as your own flesh, as your own kin, as your own beloved.
Because, in the end, Jesus seems to say, we are conceived together. We are loved together. We are wounded and healed and saved together. And we are God’s together. So when the officer strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other and remind him of that. And when the soldier forces you to carry his pack for one mile, go a second mile and dare him to see you for who you are. We are changed, humanized, transformed by the very folks we fear, by the very enemies we’re taught to hate. Wounded and healed and saved together. Jesus at his spirit-expanding, mind-bending, world-flipping best! How’s that for gospel? How’s that for grace? Amen.
