Around seventy years ago, a psychiatrist named Murray Bowen began to articulate a theory of how emotions operate in family systems.  Bowen noted, as our own experience shows, that when upset emotions run high, it doesn’t take long or much for others to get drawn in.  Emotions, especially as stress reactions, cast a wide net.  One person is riled up; soon, many are upset.  This dynamic doesn’t help to calm the situation or provide a constructive alternative.

Bowen emphasized the importance of what he called self-differentiation: the ability each person has to resist being drawn into the turbulent emotions around him or her, to regulate oneself, not by what is happening among those around you, but by a durable principle, an anchor.  The ability to separate thinking from feeling is a measure of self-differentiation.  Self-differentiation isn’t being cold; it’s being calm.  Self-differentiation is not the denial of emotions but the work of keeping emotions, whether one’s own or those of others, from exercising tyrannical power over one’s life.  Being calm takes work.  And prayer.

It’s hard to be proactive when we are constantly reacting to what others are doing, saying, and feeling—you can see this on facebook all the time.  Why pause when you can plunge in?  Why hold back when you can tear in to someone?  We may have little control over what we feel, but we do have a measure of control, choice, over what we do, feeling as we do.  We do have a measure of choice and control over how we respond.  Yes, that takes work; often, it is difficult work, so we aren’t always keen on putting in the effort.  The alternative, however—if we don’t just cut ourselves off from everybody and become a hoarding hermit—the alternative is to remain ever just another cork bobbing around on whatever emotional swells happen to be heaving at the moment, helpless pawns at the no-mercy of fickle fate.  Let’s resolve not to be satisfied with that, not to surrender ourselves to that.  We all need help.  There is help.  Help is available; it’s real help.

With Bowen, I also believe there is a better, healthier, more constructive way.  Christ demonstrates it for us.  Jesus models self-differentiation for us because he knows, with the Spirit, we also can develop this skill, learn and grow and get better at practicing calm in tense situations in which we, and our faith, are put under stress, even tremendous stress.  This growth is possible because of the Spirit, who teaches us God’s own character as he shows us Christ in action.  The Spirit causes us really to listen to Christ’s words.  The Spirit continues to open our hellbent hearts to Christ’s healing.  The time-honored theological word for what I’m talking about is sanctification.  We need the Spirit for that.  We need each other for that.

Jesus already laid the groundwork for Bowen, who wanted to provide a way for people to work on a healthier self, for healing self and relationships.  In what we heard today, I hear Jesus saying we must not allow ourselves to be governed by how others treat us.  Instead, we are to seek to be governed according to a durable, stronger, healthier principle, I might say a holier principle.  Put like that, what Jesus is saying sounds like words of clearest, coolest sanity.  Looked at from the world as we’re used to it, as we’ve known it, what Jesus is saying sounds like foolish nonsense, weakness, and passivity.  Ah, the wisdom of this world.  You’ve got to fight!  Everybody is so ready to fight.  Obsessed with fighting.  All the while, Jesus is saying we’ve got to surrender to the Spirit, and that looks like something.

“But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who are abusive to you” (6:27-28).  Many were there with Jesus, that day; many heard Jesus saying similar things many times.  Jesus is talking “to you who hear.”  He knows there are those who can’t hear what he is saying—there’s too much background noise, they’re distracted, stretched thin with the stress around them and within them; their attention and thoughts are elsewhere—maybe their phones.  Jesus also knows there are those who don’t hear: he can talk and talk, and they’ll sit there and be polite if a little disengaged, but what he is saying just isn’t sinking in; it’s as if he were speaking another language entirely.  Then there are those who won’t hear—if Jesus said it, I’m not going to listen.  None of that Jesus stuff!  No.  It can’t be right.  It can’t be true.

And no wonder.  Listen again: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you.”  So the soldiers of the IDF are to love Hamas terrorists?  We’re to love the members of Al Qaeda, along with members of cartels and Venezuelan gangs, and do good to them?  I note a typo I often seem to make: it may be a Spirit-guided mistake.  I mean to type good, but it comes out g-o-d.  We’re to do God to our enemies and those who hate us.  Show them God’s nature, just as He shows it to us.  We were God’s enemies, too, before He claimed you and me.  Being an enemy does not mean your life mission is to destroy your enemy.  Being an enemy can also mean having no interest in or concern about another, not caring whether a person lives or dies because that person means nothing to you.  Their lives have no value in our sight.

How does God come to you?  What has God shown you of His nature?  Is He cruel, merciless, angry, vengeful, cold?  Some seem to think so!  What hurts are they carrying?  What heart wounds are bleeding away the lifeblood of their souls?  But we don’t want to show our wounds to anyone, much less have them probed.

“[B]less those who curse you, pray for those who are abusive to you.”  How could Jesus ask us, or anyone, to do so?  Isn’t that asking a bit much?  Treasure up in your heart Christ’s words as we draw nearer to Lent, and then to Maundy Thursday, and then to Good Friday.  Jesus never asks us to do anything he hasn’t already done.  He knows it will cost us something, something costly: it cost him something.  He knows that what we receive in return is worth the cost—we can’t fully know that, now; we must take it on faith.  We walk by faith, not by sight.

Jesus does not say allow yourself to be abused.  He does not say make yourself always available for abuse.  He says, when others hurt you, and they will, our response shall be to pray for them.  Though others may even seek our harm, even wish we were dead, we shall seek their welfare and what makes for a flourishing, wholesome, complete human life.  How they treat us is not to be the determining measure of how we treat them.  We are to live proactively, not reactively.  As God reminds His people, many a time, we are to be holy.  Why?  Because our living will reflect our god.  What fills our heart will show.  What god shall we serve?  Day by day, what god are you, and I, reflecting?

Jesus knows that the way he teaches, God’s way, feels so contrary to the turbulent emotions inside: fear, anger, resentment, bitterness, hurt.  We may not be dominated by these at all times, but they’re there.  There are also hope, and faith, and love.  When these three are conscientiously, prayerfully, faithfully applied to everyday living, and applied to the hurts that come, the result is patience and endurance, self-differentiation, healing for self and relationships, including our relationship with God.  It’s not as if Jesus finds people neat and orderly, organized and clean.  Jesus finds no one who doesn’t really need Jesus.  He finds broken, beat-up messes: those left for dead by the world, passed by by those whom you’d have thought would at least have stopped to ask what happened, at least call for help.  Without a real Christ really alive in them, apart from a genuine faith walk with Jesus, people are roving in wretchedness.  Some even sense it.

This plain teaching we hear from Jesus is for living another way: God’s way, radiant blessing, true life, and real hope.  As the world is opposed to God, so those who attempt to live God’s way will encounter rejection, ridicule, provocation, and abuse.  Don’t be different!  Be like the rest of us!  It’s the old junior high mentality.  When someone looking to hurt whoever may be available finds someone who “won’t fight back,” you know what’s going to happen.  Oh, we could fight back, maybe we even want to, but unless you’re prepared to destroy, to kill, fighting always just seems to lead to more fighting.  Don’t let yourself be anybody’s punching bag, and pray for those who go through this life hellbent on hurting others.  Show them Christ, and trust God.

“Treat people the same way you want them to treat you” (6:31).  Well, we like that part; we teach our children that part.  They teach a lightly edited version of that at school.  But this saying isn’t really gentle as a lamb: it has teeth, and when we’re in the grip of this principle, this rule, we will be required to make difficult choices.  Jesus tells us as much even before he shares the principle we find so beautiful, good, and holy.  Just before, Jesus said this: “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back” (6:30).  If you appreciate generosity, unstinting generosity, generosity without grudge or resentment, treat others to that very generosity.  Now, no, we will not take what is not ours; we will not take by force.  But when we feel forced to give, when we don’t want to, or refuse to give, how is this reflecting God’s generosity?  Give to everyone who asks of you, just as our Father in heaven; give even if they’re rude about it, and ungrateful.  Does God not continue to provide?  Is grace an exhaustible resource?

But, give what?  Give how, and how often?  What are the rules, in all this, the guidelines, the limits?  Am I to be everybody’s ATM?  What are you to give?  Whatever is asked?  Give what you have to give.  There in the Temple, there at the Beautiful Gate, what did Peter or John have to give to the wretched beggar?  Let all Scripture illuminate and elaborate what Jesus is teaching.  Remember that it’s that supposedly barbaric Old Testament in which God, in His wisdom, teaches us to be kind even to those who do not act kindly towards us: “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.  In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you” (Prov 25:21-22).  The Lord knows; He knows what it is like.

But what if what is ours is taken by force?  What if they’re mean about it?  What is ours?  And what if they are?  Will you allow your conduct to be governed by their behavior, or will you choose instead to regulate your behavior by God’s golden rule?  What is in control of our lives?  What principle shall we choose?  May I restate it this way: no matter what others do unto you, treat others the way you would like them to treat you.  Is this just for suckers and patsies?  I can feel the resistance swelling up in me, the objections and protest, examples and my outraged sense of justice unto me: how dare anyone treat Me that way?!  Would we have God feel the same way?  He does, but what He does about it, beloved, is remarkably different from what you or I do.

Jesus puts this principle into action in a very strong, difficult example: “Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic from him either” (6:29).  Don’t let their conduct towards you rule your conduct towards them.  Live God’s way.  Show them.  Show them all.  Show us poor, hungry, wretched, stressed saints, too.

The rest of what Jesus says in what we heard today makes perfect sense in light of this principle of life lived God’s way, of governing ourselves by God’s golden rule.  We know about gold—not common, costly, precious.  A wise investment in unstable, uncertain times.  “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners love those who love them.  And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?  For even sinners do the same.  And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you?  Even sinners lend to sinners in order to receive back the same amount” (6:32-34).  This is reactive living.  There is no initiative-taking, here.  This is wait and see rather than go and share.  People came to John at the Jordan.  Jesus is always going to people.

Take the initiative of self-differentiation: don’t continue to permit your life to be governed by what others do or say but by what God is doing and saying in Christ.  Turn your eyes upon Jesus: there’s the true spiritual gold.  What makes a Christian life admirable and brings credit to the Christian (but really to God), is that the Christian takes God at His Word, even if all available worldly evidence contradicts what God is saying.  Treat each person the way that person treats you: treat them as they deserve.  Yes, that makes sense, we know.  God does not treat us as we deserve.  What do any of us deserve from God?  Better!  More!  And how have any of us earned better or more from God?  By our perfect behavior, our admirable choices, commendable thoughts?  Our exemplary faithfulness?

Now, Christ is offering us better, and more: the better and more that come with following him—surrendering to him—trusting in him, enduring for him, living for him.  On this side of the veil, to live for Christ can seem terribly inconvenient and mostly a waste of time.  From God’s side, it is the way of blessedness, joy, peace . . . salvation.