Proper 3:
Leviticus 19.1,2, 9-18;
1 Corinthians 3.10, 11, 16-end;
Matthew 5.38-end

NOTICING HIS initials, Gandhi renamed Charles Freer Andrews “Christ’s Faithful Apostle”. To many, Charlie Andrews was simply “the Mahatma”. His students at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, called him “Deenabandhu”, “Friend of the Poor”.

He died in Calcutta on 5 April 1940. He was buried the same day in the Lower Circular Road cemetery, a stone’s throw from the home of another whom the poor of India loved, Mother Teresa of the Missionaries of Charity. Rabindranath Tagore, who gave the address at his memorial service, saw in his life “a noble embodiment of the Sermon on the Mount”.

Charlie Andrews, “that jewel of humanity”, incarnated the Sermon on the Mount, but he also wrote a book about it. The manuscript, found on his desk after his death, was his last work. For Andrews, the moral teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount was not, as some have seen it, an “interim ethic”, a sketch of the recklessly other-worldly lifestyle of those who believed that the Second Coming was just round the corner.

Nor, for him, was the sermon intended to make us feel guilty. It is not a moral code purposely set unattainably high so as to drive us to our knees in repentance. Still less, for Andrews, was it a prescription for Christian anarchism, or some kind of Tolstoyan rejection of all authority.

C. F. Andrews sees the Sermon on the Mount as Christ’s pattern for “the good life”. The sermon is not unrealistic and impracticable. It is the law of love, which we must live.

The objection that it is too idealistic and utopian ever to be implemented in a wicked world is sufficiently answered by Charlie Andrews’s own shining life, by his involvement with Gandhi in the Indian people’s civil-rights struggle in South Africa, by his campaigns for indentured Indian labourers in Fiji, and by his commitment to the Indian independence movement.

Andrews’s discussion of our Gospel reading is irradiated by his exultant vision of the Kingdom of God, in which “human society can become God’s realm”. His is an intensely personal and original reading of a too-familiar text. Three Greek words in particular pierced him to the heart, so much so that he transcribed them and kept them on his study table.

Jesus asks — we need five words in English — “What more are you doing?” Andrews heard the resonances of that “more”, a rich word in the New Testament: it was “taken up in the early church,” he writes, “to express that overwhelming experience of love, joy, and peace which came into men’s hearts with the power of the Holy Spirit”.

Each day, Charlie Andrews would look at that text on his study table, he tells us, and ask himself: “Can I truly say that my own love for Christ has become the one main incentive of my life, causing me each day to go to the extreme limit in my devotion to him alone?”

“What more are you doing?” We debate endlessly how the Sermon on the Mount should be interpreted. We ask how far its ethic of non-violence, of non-resistance to the evildoer, can be implemented, in a society that is far from a Christian theocracy. Some side with the Quakers and Mennonites, and urge an uncompromising pacifism. Others insist that there is such a thing as a “just war”.

We argue, too, about the nature of such extraordinary injunctions as “Turn the other cheek,” “Give your cloak as well,” “Go the second mile.” Should my teenage daughter, who was mugged and robbed the other day, have made no effort to defend herself? They stole her iPod. Should she have yielded up her mobile phone as well?

Such problems in making sense of the Sermon on the Mount are real enough. Perhaps we should not take Jesus’s words literally. If so, we must not suppose that the moral life becomes any easier thereby. Charlie Andrews said that by seeking the spirit of Christ’s new law, instead of concentrating on its letter, we do not make his precepts any less morally exacting.

We talk and talk about such matters, sitting on our hands or stabbing our fingers in the air. But, as we do so, Christ confronts us with that same searching question: “What more are you doing?”

The paradox of such an ethic, motivated by devotion to Christ alone, is that it is at the same time wholly inclusive. Andrews’s understanding of our Gospel is informed by his attentiveness to other and older traditions. He reminds us how Gautama the Buddha discovered that “the wheel of suffering” only revolves the faster with every act of retaliation, but that same wheel begins to turn more slowly when good is returned instead of evil.

He appeals, too, to the Jewish prophetic tradition, and to the portrait of the one who, when he was oppressed and afflicted, “did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53.7).

It does seem that there is more that we can do.

Texts of readings

Leviticus 19.1,2, 9-18

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
9 When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
11 You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. 12And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.
13 You shall not defraud your neighbour; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a labourer until morning. 14You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling-block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.
15 You shall not render an unjust judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour. 16You shall not go around as a slanderer* among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood* of your neighbour: I am the Lord.
17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself. 18You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.

1 Corinthians 3.10, 11, 16-end

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. ¹¹For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. 16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?* 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.
18 Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. 19For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written,
‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’,
20and again,
‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise,
   that they are futile.’
21So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, 23and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Matthew 5.38-end

38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 39But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. 43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.