Another listener in the crowd is honest and inspired:

I’m sorry, but if someone slaps me in the face, the only way I’m going to offer them to do it again is as a come on – ‘Go on, I dare you! Try that one more time and see what happens!’ 

I just know I would react. Instantly. Automatically. Angrily.  I can feel my temper rising now, just thinking about it.  That’s how I’m wired – to strike back.   It’s in my nature.  It’s human nature.  Surely most people would say the same?

But not Jesus, apparently.

And that’s the difficulty.  He’s asking too much, isn’t he?  If not impossible, what he is asking certainly goes against the grain!  How does he possibly think we can do that?  It’s crazy!

Surely, he understands that you can only push people so far?   He must know that we are a nation on the edge; our fury simmering away and just about ready to boil over.  The occupiers have been here too long and almost daily they reinforce their grip with power-plays and abuses. Not that we need Romans to push our buttons; our family, our neighbours, anyone can do it.  The anger is here inside us: beware the explosions!

So how can he ask this of us … not just that we turn the other cheek, but that we actually love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and pray for those who steal from us, mistreat us and abuse us?  What kind of cloud cuckoo land is he living in?  Again, I say it’s crazy!  Absolutely 100% crazy!

But then again, there’s a part of me that wonders if his plan is crazy enough to actually work?

I’ve never heard it put the way he put it before.  Oh yes, ‘Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you!’, that I have heard many times.  It makes sense.  It’s common sense.  ‘If you don’t want trouble, don’t go provoking it!’  Even my old Dad used to teach me that!

But Jesus put it differently. He put it on an active footing. He urged us to take the initiative. Not ‘don’t do’ but ‘Do!’  ‘Go and do to others what you would like them to do to you’.  Now, that might be off the wall, but it’s not a bad idea, actually!  In fact, it’s quite appealing.  Think what the world would be like if we all followed that golden rule?  And, even if not everyone did it, think how much better my life would be – how much happier I would be with myself – if only I could live up to that high ideal.  It may be crazy, but it’s compelling too, don’t you think?

Somehow, whenever Jesus speaks, I find myself wanting to be better.  His words seem to be like a mirror held up to show me everything I am not, and yet everything I want to be all at the same time.  I fall way short of the impossible ideal, but find myself dreaming of a world – dreaming of a me – in which the impossible becomes the possible… in fact, it becomes the norm. Is that such a bad thing to hope for? 

Oh, I know I will fail.  I will react badly. I will rant and rave. I will judge others and condemn them.   But I will also hope to do better.  Jesus shows us a God who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked – a God who is kind to me.  He tells of a generous God who gives and forgives in good measure; his gift like flour from a generous market trader, pressed down into the bag, shaken together, running over in to my lap!  Isn’t that amazing?!   

And, ‘Be merciful, just as God your Father is merciful’ he appeals to us.   Let me say that again; ‘Be merciful as God your Father is merciful’.   In as much as God is our Father, and we are his children, then this is not an impossible and unreachable ideal, it is actually in us to do this.   It’s what we are born to do.  Our true nature, found in God’s true nature.  God’s life and love flowing in us and through us.  We can and we must at least try to be like him!