Unintuitive Intervention
I don’t know about you, but it’s been awhile since anyone slapped me across the face.
And I don’t know about you, but when the DMV asks for my social security card and a recent utility bill, they’ve never asked for my t-shirt, too.
Quite often, Jesus gives us obvious, specific commands that we don’t need to guess about. Jesus says: feed the hungry, welcome the unwelcomed, visit the sick, and give what you have to the poor. He starts off with some of those obvious commands: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. There’s not a lot of interpretation or exegesis needed. In fact, they’re so easy to understand, that if we somehow complicate them or rationalize them away with our theology, then we might be following something or someone other than Jesus.
But after Jesus offers these pretty straightforward commands, he throws in a couple curveballs: if someone strikes you on the cheek, turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, give them your shirt, too.
It’s after those weirder commands that Jesus starts using an extended economic metaphor. He talks about lending, and credits, and repayment. This is a somewhat odd shift, one that leaves us scratching our heads. Jesus seems a little scatterbrained when we first hear it all.
But if we listen carefully, we start hearing something a little bigger. The first set of commands are given to those who are maligned and mistreated. It is about living in the presence of evil and division. Jesus says when you are a victim to violence, when your possessions are stripped from you, when others plot and conspire against you, here is how you follow me. Most of us, if I had to guess, have been here.
The second set of commands, beginning at the paragraph break that’s printed in our bulletins, is concerned with those who bear authority and means. This second set of commands is for those who have capacity to shape the world and society, and offers instruction on faithfully doing so. Jesus says when you have money, when you have sway, when you have authority, here is how you follow me. Most of us, if I had to guess, have been here too.
So… what is this really about? Yes, Jesus commands us to freely give of our abundance, to pray for those who mistreat us, and to care for our enemies. AND there is something floating on top of those commands, something that comes into focus when we take a ten thousand foot view:
The way of Christ is non-transactional.
In following Jesus, our relationships aren’t tit-for-tat. In following Jesus, our economics are built by generosity for generosity. In following Jesus, our love and compassion and kindness is given to all the wrong people. We follow a redeemer who healed people who didn’t deserve it; taught to people who didn’t understand it; and even called people as disciples who later betrayed him. There was no calculatedness, no self-interest, no secret, ulterior motive. The way of Christ was never, ever transactional.
“In following Jesus, our love and compassion and kindness is given to all the wrong people. We follow a redeemer who healed people who didn’t deserve it; taught to people who didn’t understand it; and even called people as disciples who later betrayed him.”
You probably remember the feeling of a relationship or interaction that was transactional. Those types of relationships are hollowed out. Think about a doctor’s visit. The best doctor asks how you’re doing, what’s been happening in your life, and how your joint pain is affecting your daily life. They listen, they ask thoughtful questions, and they communicate well. But then there are the doctors who make their care a transaction. You are there to help the doctor - state your symptoms, accept the answer, get out as quickly as you came. In-out… There’s nothing more than a script and the task at hand. Here’s what the patient is “supposed” to do, here’s what the doctor does.
It’s hollow.
In a transactional world, people become means to an end, not an end unto themselves. People are a currency, or an “asset,” in service to one’s own objectives, whether that be an organization’s goals or an individual’s goals. It’s when you’re one of a thousand patients to be billed by a doctor, not a whole person; or you’re a consumer to be manipulated by an advertiser.
Churches can fall into this trap, too. For example, one much-maligned phrase in our denomination refers to the number of households or individuals who give financially. And—I hate to even admit this—at a national level, we call these households and individuals “giving units.” It’s horrible! It’s something out of the Matrix - how many giving units has a church acquired?
These are all symptomatic of a world that is all about transactions. What can you do for me? If I love that person, will it be advantageous down the road? Will someone earn the generosity I give them?
But… fortunately, Jesus, in addition to decrying this self-motivated, self-serving transactional ethos, also shows us a more excellent way. And it all begins with unintuitive truths.
“In a transactional world, people become means to an end, not an end unto themselves. People are a currency, or an “asset,” in service to one’s own objectives, whether that be an organization’s goals or an individual’s goals.”
Anyone who’s spent time in a kitchen probably knows a really weird truth. Sharp knives are safer than dull knives. Right? When we use a dull knife, we start using way more force. Tension builds up in our bodies, and we have to contort our hands and fingers to compensate for the extra pressure being applied. When the fruit or vegetable inevitably slips under our weight, not only are we in for it, but that extra force and pressure and tension ensures there’s a little extra something heading toward our fingertips.
It’s not intuitive that sharp knives are safer than dull ones, at least until you’ve made a trip to the ER. But one of the best ways to keep yourself safe in the kitchen is to keep sharp knives. It’s an unintuitive intervention.
It might help us to hear a more ancient example of an unintuitive intervention. When the Hebrew people are exiled by the violent Babylonians, God offers an unexpected command: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,” the prophet cries. “And pray to the Lord on Babylon’s behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” In the midst of heartache and hopelessness, God intervenes through what is otherwise unintuitive. God asks the Hebrew people to pray for their captives, and work for their shared welfare.
Today, just like sharpened knives and prayerful exiles, Jesus lays out an ethic rooted in unintuitive interventions:
When someone hates you, and you want to hate them, don’t. Love them instead.
When someone curses you, and you want to curse them, don’t. Bless them instead.
When someone asks for a loan, and they’re going to run off with the money, do it anyway.
When someone is mean, and uses ugly words, and spews vitriol, offer them your kindness, your compassion, and love.
These are interventions in a world that is far too transactional. These interrupt the noise of hate, and polarization, and division, and evil. They are unintuitive, yes, and they are uncomfortable, yes. They’re maybe even a little dumb. But they have a chance at shaking up the world. They have a chance at bringing kindness, and compassion, and love to a planet that feels anything but those.
Jesus is commanding us to let go of presuppositions and knee-jerk responses. He’s inviting us to think in new ways, ones that are full of depth and nuance, and to live in ways that resist the transactional, tit-for-tat pattern of the world.
We are called to loosen our purse strings, and to cut the strings attached to our love and generosity and patience and kindness. Simply put, love without discrimination of whether someone deserves it, is worth it, or will appreciate it. As we heard earlier this month, love doesn’t take two to tango, it only takes one.
This doesn’t mean we subject ourselves to harm, loosen our boundaries until we are taken advantage of, or give away money we don’t have. After all, Jesus says “do to others as you would have them do to you.” We know it would be wrong to take money from someone financially insecure, or to take and take and take from someone who won’t say no. Those exploitive patterns and behaviors are also transactional, and predicated on a tit-for-tat way of life. And Jesus is trying to change us by an ethic that lets go of that posture, and an unintuitive ethic of love and generosity.
“We are called to loosen our purse strings, and to cut the strings attached to our love and generosity and patience and kindness; simply put, love without discrimination.”
It’s natural as human beings to feel at a loss for how to make this a more loving, hospitable world. With the rise in globalization, mass communication, and social media, we live as people who are profoundly susceptible to manipulation, falsity, half-truths, and groupthink. Our lives are more transactional than ever. This cold transactionalism is in the groundwater, despite our best efforts to remain rooted in reality.
That’s what makes this ethic all the more powerful and joyful.
In a world wherein our feelings feel dictated by corporations and unseen digital forces, Jesus invites us to an unintentional intervention: love, when everyone tells us to hate.
In a society where politically- and identity-motivated violence is quickly rising, Jesus invites us to an unintentional intervention: pray for those who mistreat you. Find your welfare in theirs.
In an economy that is predisposed to transactionalism, Jesus invites us to commit acts of unexpected generosity, and to find freedom in letting go of our wealth.
Command after command, teaching after teaching, Jesus is earnestly, fervently inviting us to do what is unintuitive to the powers of the earth: to love, to pray, to bless, to give.
Just as we uncover this ethic from the somewhat straightforward commands of Jesus, we start by following those somewhat straightforward commands. There is prayer and contemplation every Wednesday night during Vespers on Zoom. There are opportunities to give of your time and talents in our congregational life, especially in Christian education, and with our partners like LiteracyNJ, Manna House, and Family Promise. There is an unbelievably pronounced need for affordable housing in Newton — housing that will come at a great cost, with investments that are not profitable. And every day, we have the chance to repay evil with good, hatred with love, and loneliness with connection, whether that is online or in person. In all these ways, and an infinite number that were not listed, we are beckoned to intervene in God’s world for the good of all God’s people. We are beckoned to let go of transactional relationships and interactions, and to participate in an ethic of undivided joy.
It might not feel intuitive, but it’s where we start. With little steps, day by day. With little prayers, hour by hour. We turn our cheek, love the people who supposedly aren’t deserving of it, and we offer a blessing. We won’t ever see the fulfillment of it all, but we will move the needle just a little bit. Even when we thought it was stuck, we’ll get that needle of hope and joy to wiggle in the right direction.
Sources
Mary Hinkle Shore, “Commentary on Luke 6:27-38,” WorkingPreacher.org, 23 February 2025, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-627-38-3
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For information on “Paradoxical Interventions,” and the use of paradox in therapeutic settings:
Donald Capps, Reframing: A New Method in Pastoral Care (Fortress Press 1990).
“Paradoxical Technique,” in APA Dictionary of Psychology, American Psychological Association, https://dictionary.apa.org/paradoxical-technique
Peluso, P. R., & Freund, R. (2023). Paradoxical interventions. In C. E. Hill & J. C. Norcross (Eds.), Psychotherapy skills and methods that work (pp. 199–223). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197611012.003.0008
Ryan Howes, “Paradoxical Interventions,” Psychology Today, 23 January 2010, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-therapy/201001/cool-intervention-8-paradoxical-interventions
