By Douglas Morgan
A Commentary on Sabbath School Lesson for August 28–September 3, 2004
In the introduction to the paperback edition of his book, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, Philip Hallie tells of a woman who spoke from the audience following a lecture he gave to fundraisers for the United Jewish Appeal. It turned out that three of the nearly five thousand refugees saved from Nazi occupiers in the French village decades before were her children. "The Holocaust," she said, "was storm, lightning, thunder, wind, rain, yes. And Le Chambon was the rainbow." Hope helped motivate the people of Le Chambon to welcome everyone—even those in Gestapo uniform—into the reach of their loving initiatives. This hope was not merely "sentimental," Hallie points out, but a hope symbolized by the rainbow of God’s post-Flood "never again" pledge, the "promise that living will have the last word, not killing."1
Their pastor and leader, Andre Trocme, later explained the basis of that hope in the new order launched into human history by Jesus’ "nonviolent revolution":
From a Hindu perspective time is illusory; everything is already accomplished in God. From a Christian perspective, however, time is real. There was a period before redemption, a time of struggle between God’s love and justice. Then there was an hour of decision when God’s justice and love were reconciled by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. And now we live in an "in-between time" conditioned by Christ’s redemptive act and placed under the responsibility of those who obey God’s call until the coming of the Messiah’s reign.
y deriving nonviolence not from a philosophy of the universe (which may be utopian), but from his sacrifice on the cross, Jesus gives it historical precision and a much greater impact. Repentance is necessary, forgiveness is real. Through redemption, nonviolence thrusts itself on all Jesus’ disciples. It becomes an article of faith, a mark of obedience, a sign of the kingdom to come.2
Hallie also describes being surprised when a mathematician friend, "a cool-headed, circumspect thinker," could only account for the stunning success of the Le Chambon villagers in saving lives right under the noses—and apparently winks—of the Gestapo by calling it "a miracle."3 That "miraculous" power that enabled the community to such courageous love came not from random divine interventions or even the mystical communion with the divine of isolated individuals, but from the good news of the kingdom—the story of redemption unfolding in human history, pivoting on the messianic order announced by Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ command to love our enemies can seem like a crushing demand on weak, sinful would-be followers. If that’s not enough, he goes on to tell us that we have to be as perfect as God (Matt. 5:43–48). And, particularly as Matthew portrays him, Jesus means his commands to be obeyed. He sends out his disciples to teach people the world over "to obey everything that I have commanded you" (Matt. 28:20).4
But what if the gospel is true? What if it’s true that in and through this man "the kingdom of God has come to you" (Matt. 11:28). And that the authenticity of his claim to sovereign "authority on heaven and on earth (28:18)," and the meaningfulness of his promise to be with us to the end are certified by his resurrection (v. 20)? Then, encompassing everyone, even enemies, in our love, would simply be saying, Yes, to God’s transforming initiative in Jesus Christ. It would mean allowing ourselves to be carried along and guided by the Spirit of the new kingdom established and brought to its future culmination by God’s grace and power alone.
John Howard Yoder comments that when Jesus calls his followers to something "more" than those who confine their love to their family, tribe, nation, or in-group (5:46–47), the point is:
Not merely that you ought to love your enemy. Nor merely that if you have had a "born-again experience," some of your hate feelings will go away and you maybe can love. Not merely that if you deal with your enemies lovingly enough, some of them will become friendly. All that is true, but it is not the gospel. The gospel is that everyone being loved by God must be my beloved too, even if they consider me their enemy, even if their interests clash with mine.…
It is not merely a higher moral demand. Churches are good at moral demands. This is not a matter of a greater demand, but a greater supply, a bigger gospel, a broader grasp of what grace wants to do and already has done by calling persons to be God’s children.5
In their recently published Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Glen Stassen and David Gushee put it this way: "The Beatitudes are not about high ideals, but about God’s gracious deliverance and our joyous participation."6 Stassen and Gushee demonstrate at length that a triadic structure runs throughout the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus: (1) quotes a formulation of "traditional righteousness"; (2) identifies a "vicious cycle"; and (3) sets forth a "transforming initiative" that breaks the cycle. In Matthew 5:38–42, for example, the "traditional righteousness" prescribes even-handed retaliation–an "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Application of that traditional righteousness, despite its surface fairness, leads to a vicious cycle of vengeance and violence. Jesus calls, instead, not for passive submission to evil, but for initiatives to, in the words of Paul, "overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:21). These initiatives, such as going a "second mile," were, in the culture and historical circumstances Jesus inhabited, nonviolent ways both to assert dignity and to surprise the oppressor in a way conducive to breaking the vicious cycle and opening the door to transformation.
In Matthew 5:43–48, the "vicious cycle" revolves around very laudable action: love for one’s family, friends, and nation. Such natural, human loves propel a vicious cycle when they become exclusive, when human lives outside certain boundaries are made expendable to the interests of our group.7
No one created in God’s image and for whom Christ died can be for me an enemy, whose life I am willing to threaten or to take, unless I am more devoted to something else—to a political theory, to a nation, to the defense of certain privileges, or to my own personal welfare—than I am to God’s cause: his loving invasion of this world in his prophets, his Son, and his church.8
In the light of the good news of the kingdom inaugurated by Messiah Jesus, love of enemies becomes a joyous privilege of participating in God’s transforming initiative. We get to join the fun of making vivid the rainbow of promise. We are motivated far more by confidence in the direction of history than by short-term measurements of effectiveness, or illusions that we will bring the kingdom in its fullness through our feeble efforts. In loving our enemies, we, to quote Yoder once more, lay aside violent means not "because those weapons are too strong, but because they are too weak." We direct our lives "toward the day when all creation will praise not kings and chancellors but the Lamb that was slain as worthy to receive blessing and honor and glory and power (Rev. 5:12–13)."9
1. Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened Theer (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), xvi-xvii.
2. Andre Trocme, Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003), 158.
3. Hallie, Innocent Blood, xxi.
4. All scriptural quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.
5. John Howard Yoder, He Came Preaching Peace (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1985), 55.
6. Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press), 35–36.
7. Ibid., 137–41.
8. Yoder, He Came Preaching Peace, 20–21.
9. Ibid., 28–29.
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