‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ wrote Charles Wesley in Hymns and Sacred Poems in 1742, a sentiment popular in many hymns and carols, especially those written for children.  I doubt if this would be a description recognized by Peter when he reflected on the events described in today’s Gospel.  Only days ago, as we heard in last week’s reading, Peter had identified Jesus as ‘the Messiah, the Son of the living God’.  Jesus had blessed him and described him as the rock on which he would build his church.  Even though Jesus had sworn him to secrecy, Peter now understood what was to happen, for every Jew of that time knew the role of the Messiah.  Somehow Jesus would ride into Jerusalem, overthrow the Romans and be crowned King, just like his ancestor David, and his people would once again be free.

It would have not been a surprise then, when Jesus started talking about the need to go to Jerusalem.  But imagine Peter’s shock when Jesus said that he must ‘undergo great suffering … and be killed, and on the third day be raised’.  I doubt he even heard that last phrase and, even if he did, he would not have understood it.  Here was the man he had identified as the Messiah talking about being put to death.  No wonder he took Jesus aside and said ‘Lord, this must never happen to you.’  Already in shock, how must he have felt when Jesus rounded on him saying ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block for me.’  Gentle Jesus, meek and mild?  I don’t think so.

In the course of this story, told by Matthew in just seven verses, Peter had his whole world turned upside down.  All that he had ever known about the role of the Messiah had been turned on its head.  He would certainly have understood what Paul later described as ‘puzzling reflections in a mirror’.  And the puzzle continued when Jesus went on to say: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’ 

This particular puzzling reflection is not, as it might at first sound, about martyrdom, but about giving up our old ways of thinking to follow the example and the teaching of Jesus, and doing so with total commitment.  Or, to put it another way, allowing Jesus to turn our world upside down.

Without doubt, the most important lesson that Jesus both taught and demonstrated was the centrality of love to God’s Kingdom.  In the chapters leading up to today’s Gospel Jesus took a blind man by the hand and restored his sight,  fed a crowd with loaves and fish,  helped a deaf and mute man find his voice again and acted when a Gentile woman begged him to heal her daughter of demons.

At the beginning of this month, in the reading from 1 Corinthians 13, we heard Paul’s masterful description of the unconditional, self-sacrificing love (agape in Greek) with which God loves us and with which we are commanded to love our neighbours.  Today we have heard his less-well-known treatise on the subject from his letter to the Romans.

Paul’s letter to the Romans is regarded by many as his supreme work.  Evidence from the text suggests it was written in Corinth during his final visit there in the mid 50s AD.  This makes it one of his final letters, possibly the very last, and, as such, it is a mature reflection of his theology following two decades of travelling, preaching, teaching and writing.  It had, and continues to have a profound influence on the Reformation vision of true religion as the reception of God’s grace through faith alone.

As with the Gospel, today’s reading from Romans contains a number of commands that turn our thoughts upside down although it starts simply enough with ‘Let love be genuine’.  The Greek word for love used by Paul in this verse is once again, agape, just as it is throughout 1 Corinthians 13.  However, in verse two he uses both philadelphia (brotherly love) and philostorgia (family love) which, being less demanding, I find quite reassuring.  He also talks later of philozenia (love of strangers) a word unfortunately less well known to us than its antonym, zenophobia or fear of strangers.

The challenging, upside down verses include the commands to ‘bless those who persecute you’, ‘associate with the lowly’, do not repay evil for evil’, ‘never avenge yourselves’, and ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink’.  Mankind has had 2000 years to contemplate those commands yet we are little if any better at obeying them than were Peter and the other disciples when they first heard them.  That is why, when it does happen, the results are so striking.

When I turned on the television for the news on 23^rd July, the morning following the dreadful mass shooting in Norway, it was part way through an interview with a man standing close to the site of the bomb blast in Oslo.  A chill went down my spine as I heard him say the words: “we want to punish the man who has done this.”  One verse from today’s reading came immediately to mind: ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil’.  Evil repaid is evil multiplied.  Surely this could not be happening.  I need not have worried.  Anders Breivik, the bomber and gunman, had stated that he wanted to punish indigenous Europeans, whom he accused of betraying their heritage.  The man in the interview had turned this statement, and Breivik’s hatred and intolerance, on their head.  His full statement was:  “we want to punish the man who has done this, so there will be more love, more tolerance and more understanding”.  That evening, in what has become known as the Rose March, tens, probably hundreds of thousands of fellow Norwegians converged on the centre of Oslo each carrying a single rose.  There was no talk of revenge: they sang songs of peace.  If ever there was a demonstration of the upside-down commands of Jesus being put into action, here it was on a massive scale in front of the eyes of the world.

So what can we learn from this?  Would we, either as individuals or as a society, act in the same way in similar circumstances?  What is our attitude towards those who persecute us?  What, for example, do we feel about those who rioted and looted on the streets of our cities earlier this month and what would Jesus have to say about them?  Are we willing to extend hospitality to strangers, such as Eastern European migrant workers, or do we silently wish they would all go home?  How do we live up to the command to live peaceably with all?

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild?  What do you think?