You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
You knock out my tooth I’ll knock out yours.
You take out my eye I’ll take out yours.
Reciprocity. This for that. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, the physics of human relationships.
The lex talionis, the law of retaliation, or limited and proportional retaliation, which is better than unlimited retaliation, you bump into me and I kill you.
Reciprocity. This for that.
Jesus is standing on the mountain like a new Moses, delving into the deep meaning of the Law, the Torah, the raw Utterance of God, the word.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, reciprocity misses the power of the deep things of God.
God relates in a different way, like rain and sunshine that are given to all regardless, without qualification. Grace.
The real problem with reciprocity is that it means that someone else controls my actions. My actions are merely a reaction to what someone else does or says to me.
We are held captive, enslaved, controlled by someone else. We become merely reactionary, merely retaliatory, we are owned.
How do I relate to others? To the world? What determines my actions?
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is going deep into the law, about how to be free.
Do we want to be free? Or do we want to keep playing the game of reciprocity? Controlled by it?
Eyes and teeth? Or Sun and rain?
Two different ways of being in the world, of being in relationship.
The deep meaning of the Torah is that God is revealed as grace and love that really are grace and love, the kind of free that really is free. Nothing we do or say will change that. God is free, beyond our control, untamable.
The perfection of God is like sun and rain freely given to all.
Jesus challenges us to become truly free, that our words and actions are not predetermined by the words and actions of others.
What if our words and actions were free as the sun and the rain falling on all regardless, without qualification?
What does this law of love look like? How do I become free to live like that?
That is the long road of discipleship, it will take us to the cross, it will take us to resurrection.
The cross is the law of retaliation, eyes and teeth, the cost for insurrection, for relationships that are not controlled by reciprocity.
The resurrection is something else all together; it is a radical break from the way things are done.
For every action there is an unequal and unmerited blessing, the physics of grace.
Rather than responding with more death and violence, we are given life, forgiveness, freedom, love. Rain and the sunshine. There is nothing we can do about except say, “Thank you.”
God just keeps on scratching our back, regardless.