How often in the past week have you felt wronged or hurt? Was it when someone cut you off in traffic? Was it when someone said something careless that actually hit a nerve in you? Was it when a loved one missed an opportunity that you saw was right there? Was it…? And what is the initial reaction or thought? So often we feel angry or feel that we need to ‘make things right’.

We are raised to stand up for ourselves and to do things on our own, to be independent. But in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus calls us to a radical love. He turns the old law of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” upside down. Jesus points out that it is not about revenge (which the old law was limiting) or even about evening the score.

Jesus calls us to love our neighbor. Here Jesus is extending it. He advises that when another strikes our right cheek to then offer the left as well. He advises that when someone asks for your coat to give them your sweater as well. He advises that when someone asks you to walk a mile, to go ahead and walk two miles with them. Jesus is calling us to respond with love – and lots of it!!

This all brings me to the question of why? Why respond to these things with such lavish love? Wouldn’t it simply be enough to not strike back, to just give our coat, to just walk alongside someone for the mile? But isn’t that what the world expects? Most won’t even notice if we as Christians just do what we are supposed to do. It is when we go beyond the minimal and step past what others would do, that people begin to see the love of Christ being lived out in our lives. It is then that they take notice and begin to wonder why as well. It is then that we are living as Christ calls us to live.