March 2, 2014
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
In the fictitious universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive is the guiding principle of the United Federation of Planets. The Prime Directive prohibits Starfleet personnel from interfering with the internal development of alien civilizations. This conceptual law applies particularly to civilizations which are below a certain threshold of development, preventing starship crews from using their superior technology to impose their own values or ideals on them. I always like this concept because what it means is that Captains Kirk or Picard would do no harm to the worlds they encounter.
But there are times when we wish that we could interfere and take quick action in situations where we can make a difference, don’t we?
In today’s lesson from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches us to turn the other cheek, give to everyone who begs from you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, go the second mile with the one who forces you to go the first mile, and to the one who wants to take your sweater, well, give your coat as well. It’s like Captain Picard encountering a strange new world and not giving everything the new life form wants. Picard doesn’t want to cause any harm.
But in our world where people love to watch action movies, Marvel superheroes, Fast & Furious, Breaking Bad and Sudden Impact, where’s the thrill in doing what Jesus taught us to do?
Jesus is teaching us to do no harm. When someone bad-mouths you or does you wrong, you have to decide how you’re going to react. You can hit back, which may well make matters worse, or you can turn the other cheek, refusing to add to the problem. When someone takes your sweater and does you wrong, you have to decide how you’re going to react. You can hit back and hold tight to your coat or give your coat away too, refusing to add to the problem.
If you choose to strike back, you can find plenty of ideas online. Like www.getrevenge.com or www.thepayback.com or www.getrevengeonyourex.com. These websites and others like them, will help you learn how to send nasty e-mails, anonymous letters, dead fish, noxious flowers and how to, in general, make someone miserable. You could do that. But if you do, you’re not only not following Jesus, you’re pretty much stepping outside socially accepted mores and constraints.
Our nation has faced recent tragedies that have caused us to examine our social behaviors. Consider the murder of Trayvon Martin who was a young black youth who happens to be in a largely white neighborhood or Jordan Davis who had his music on too loud with his friends. These actions taken by the perpetrators are downright criminal—fatal and tragic harm was done to these families and communities because people didn’t stop to think about do no harm.
When we live in a world that likes decisiveness and action, doing no harm seems passive and ineffective. Don’t get me wrong here because I like to watch these action-packed movies myself. But we wonder why did these men who killed Trayvon Martin or Jordan Davis just didn’t walk away since they were adults and Trayvon and Jordan were just youth. We wonder why they had this need to take out their guns and then to shoot.
In Genesis, we have the story of Cain and Abel. We would all agree that Cain was the bad guy but let’s be honest, Cain is the more interesting character. Abel, who does all the right things and is approved by God, doesn’t generate the kind of interests as Cain does for us. We know that if it weren’t for Cain, we wouldn’t have the conflict necessary for creating a good story.
We remember the classic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Dr. Jekyll was around our nerves are calm but when he becomes Mr. Hyde, our heart races, the hair on the back of our necks stand up and the exciting part of the story begins.
You see, that’s the problem with not doing harm; it’s not something active like doing harm, or even like doing good. In many circumstances, not making matters worse is the right thing, but it’s hard to generate much enthusiasm about it.
But let’s asks ourselves: when was the excitement quotient the primary measure on how we should serve God?
Historical Context
We can trace do no harm back to religious history and other biblical references. In 1739, a small group of people in London approached John Wesley asking for his guidance for living spiritually upright lives. He organized them into a group to meet weekly for the purpose of spiritual growth and moral examination, and he gave them three general rules to guide their behavior.
The second and third of these were, respectively, do good and practice the spiritual disciplines (attend worship, pray, study the Scriptures, etc.). Those two might well have been expected advice for spiritual development. But before mentioning those two, Wesley stated his first principle: “It is therefore expected of all who continue (in the group meetings) that they should continue to evidence their desire of salvation, First: By doing no harm, by avoiding evil of every kind…”
This is the bedrock of Christian behavior when Jesus teaches us about turning the other cheek, going the second-mile, and giving up your coat too. And the Sermon on the Mount is not the only place in the New Testament where such do-no-harm teaching shows up. In Peter’s first epistle, the apostle made this observation about Jesus: “When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten…” (2:23). Doing no harm is not just something Jesus talked about, but also something he practiced.
And from the Old Testament in Leviticus 19, which is the holiness code of ancient Israel, we can also see the perspective of do-no-harm. At the beginning of the chapter, God commands the people to be holy and then goes into details. Most of the chapter is about doing no harm:
Do not steal
Do not deal falsely
Do not lie
Do not defraud your workers
Do not create problems for the handicapped
Do not render false judgments
Do not slander
Do not take vengeance
In fact, it’s only after the list of how to avoid doing harm that God gives them a command about something to do: Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18).
In other words, part of loving our neighbors, which is a command that Jesus also said in beginning with verse 43 in our passage today was critical, is: First, do no harm!
Going back to John Wesley, one of the ways he explained his general rule to do no harm was also from the “do not” category. He said that we should not do to others as we would not want them to do to us. That’s obviously the flip side of the Golden Rule, but fully in keeping with the intention of the Golden Rule.
From Jesus’ teaching, we know not to cause more harm but almost every day we’re in situations or have problems that we have no idea how to make them better. But do you know how to make them not to be worse? Do you know how to not add fuel to the fire? We can do what we just talked about in Leviticus but in addition to that, you do not:
Interfere (as a rule, this is good advice)
Tell tales, spread rumors, gossip, etc.
Blame others for your mistakes
Tell your problems when someone is trying to tell theirs
Transfer your anger on others who are not involved in your situation
Disparage others to make yourself look good
Bear false witness—don’t lie
Essentially, do no harm.
Submission
When we do no harm, we also need to understand the spiritual discipline of submission. Submission is a spirit with which we view others and the way we relate to them and treat them. It’s the willingness not to get our own way, and the ability to lay down the burden on needing to come up on top.
In other words, in some situations, submission is the freedom to drop the matter, to forget it and to move on. This is not a nonchalant or a “whatever” attitude but a genuine willingness to let the other person have his say or her say.
The best way to handle most matters of submission is to say nothing. This is the kind of grace that we give to each other and sets people free. When we practice submission, we put aside our own need to be the center of attention and frees us to actually value others.
Submission has its limits. When a situation becomes destructive, not to take a positive action is not acceptable. We would need active love for one’s neighbor needs to take over. When Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida and George Zimmerman was acquitted because Florida has “stand your ground” laws like 17 other states do, we as American Baptists were in a conundrum because we had the EMERGE conference scheduled there. This is the event that Pastor Visal attended as a new pastor. When we decided to remain in Florida, we as conference leaders took action to change the program to include two additional speakers to address this issue. We showed a movie trailer of the Jordan Davis case and took an offering to help raise funds for this new movie to be finished. We hope that our positive action would make a difference.
It’s like in the medical world, with its do-no-harm ethic. There’s a point in treatment where we must stop treatment and put it aside. For example, in treating cancer, there is this goal:
The goal of cancer treatment is first to eradicate the cancer…The dictum (first do no harm) is not necessarily the guiding principle of cancer therapy. When cure of cancer is possible, cancer treatments may be undertaken despite the certainty of severe and perhaps life-threatening toxicities. Every cancer treatment has the potential to cause harm, and treatment may be given that produces toxicity with no benefit—and most treatments are given to the point of toxicity…Irrespective of the clinical scenario, the guiding principle of cancer treatment should be…’first hasten to help.’”
In our daily lives, however, most of the situations we deal with are not cancerous. They’re not extreme evil, but rather differences of opinion or merely somebody’s self-centeredness or hang-ups showing. And often the way we love that neighbor or relative or spouse or friend with whom we’re not seeing eye-to-eye is by first doing no harm. We must not add fuel to the fire.
This may just be saying nothing, not passing along gossip, giving room for that person to work things out, seeking a form of compromise and seeking a common good, don’t take out your gun and finally thinking about doing no harm.
Earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his audience, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5:20). Since the Pharisees were known for their zealous keeping of the Law of Moses, this statement must have stunned Jesus’ hearers. Unless their righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees they won’t enter the kingdom of heaven? They couldn’t even match the righteousness of Pharisees, let alone exceed it!
But then, Jesus explains: It is not enough, for example, not to murder someone (the Pharisees abstained from murder), but they also needed to not hate others (do that, and they’d exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees). The problem was that the Pharisees were settling for keeping the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it. To exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, his hearers needed to actively live out the Scriptures.
And in the examples from our text today, actively living out the Scriptures meant that doing no harm exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees. Instead of hitting back, turn the other cheek. Instead of making a big fuss about being forced to go one mile, volunteer to go the second mile. And instead of seeking to hurt your enemies, pray for them.
Do No Harm
Intentionally doing no harm is a vital practice in living a holy life. It is a way of loving our neighbor. And Jesus gives us examples of how it is done—turning the other cheek, giving away your coat, going not just one mile—go the second mile, loving our enemies, and so on. Jesus models in his own life of doing no harm by returning good for evil. This is the new ethic of God’s world. This is the way people believe in God’s world.
However, there are times when we are dealing with a cancerous thing, where we must hasten to help. And we should help. But for most of the time, we are not to make matters worse. This is a Christian thing to do.
First, “do no harm” may sound unexciting, but it is an aspect of the ethics of God’s new world and it has the power to change the world in a positive way.
Let us pray.
Forgive us and free us, O God. Help us to recognize the signs of your reign by first beginning to do no harm to others and to ourselves. Balance our lives according to your priorities, and to serve you wherever we are. We pray in the name of Jesus, who shows us the way. Amen.