Without historical, political, or societal context, some
Christians believe the Scripture passage read for us today is an invitation to
be a doormat. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. And if someone slaps you one cheek, just keep
on taking it. Jesus calls Christians to
be nice. To swallow real hard in the
face of persecution. And to do no harm
no matter what the other person does to us.
Jesus wants us to be lily-livered, fragile and feeble weaklings. Right?
To contrast, there has been a wholly paper-overing of who
Jesus really was, the context he lived in, to picture Jesus as forever the
victor and conqueror. In this version,
popular today in evangelical and conservative Christian circles, Jesus is John
Wayne. He is a muscular super-hero who
kicks the butts of all his enemies.
Seminars, workshops, and retreats invite men to be men, to kill the
Muslim hordes, and for Christianity to take its rightful place on the world’s
throne. Sometimes I’m not so sure this
is what people have as a faith and then try to institute it. Or whether people see Christianity as an
excuse to institute their hunger for power and world domination.
Meanwhile, many of us won’t go so far as adopting a Jesus
who kicks the butts of our opponents.
But we have long justified a history of Christendom, that, when we’re
honest, has a conquering Jesus that justifies the enslaving of others, the
taking the land of other, and the persecuting of those who disagree with
us. Because . . . Jesus wants, craves
power over others.
I believe Jesus called us to a Third Way. I do not believe Jesus calls us to be a
doormat. I do not believe he calls us to
a faith which craves, above all else, to put Christianity über alles,
over all people and all things.
In this teaching, expanded upon more in the Gospel of
Matthew, Jesus uses three common scenes of disproportionate power in the
ancient world: the household, with
master and slave (Rome was a slave society), the courtroom, with wealthy
power-seeker over indebted peasant (Rome was a commercial debt society), and the
one not included in Luke, the Roman centurion engaging the colonized or
occupied Jewish populace.
In the first scenario, a master and a slave . . . If I am
facing you, as master to slave, I will not hit you with the unclean hand, my
left hand. I will use my right hand to
hit you on the right cheek. We are not
in a fight. I am using the back of my
right hand to hit you to indicate that you are not my equal, not human like I
am. It is a slap of insult. If I use my open hand or my right fist to hit
you on the left cheek, I would be indicating that I see you as my equal. I insult you.
I intend to shame you. I tell
everyone observing that you are “less than,” by backhanding you on the right
cheek.
Jesus is not trying to ratchet up the violence with what
he tells the person not in power to do next.
He is upsetting an honor and shame system that is intended to dehumanize
the person slapped. Jesus says, “Turn
the other cheek.”
The slave turns their left cheek to the master. Now the master is an impossible dilemma. If the master strikes the slave with the left
hand, the left hand being unclean, the master has now brought shame upon themselves. If the master strikes the slave with their
right hand, an open hand to get to the other cheek, the master indicates the
slave is their equal. This will not do. But the slave is inviting that equality. It is a resistance to the moral
hierarchy. It upends the honor and shame
code that was prevalent at this time.
As the master, the one striking would be seeking to make
sure the slave knows their place. By
turning the other cheek, the slave puts
the master in a moral quandary.
Similarly, we are now in the court room. Peasants would not have used the courts to
pursue justice. This is someone who has
means, showing their privilege, their ability to take the basic needs of a
peasant. The ancient world was a
two-garment world: a cloak or a coat and
a shirt. Understand what is at
stake. If we are down to the peasant’s
very clothes, they have presumably lost their land and all other possessions to
this wealthy power-seeker. Nothing is
left but the peasant’s garments and they are unable to pay. The wealthy power-seeker now takes their
coat. Shame is put upon you as the moral
hierarchy of rich over poor is enforced.
Jesus must have had a wry smile crease his lips as he
described what to do next. Give them
your shirt too. In the ancient world, to
see another person naked was to bring shame not on the naked person but on the
person viewing the nakedness. The
wealthy power-seeker takes the peasant’s coat.
As the peasant also takes off their shirt, the wealthy power-seeker’s
eyes must grow wide with disbelief as they accept the shirt to view the
peasant’s nakedness. The shame intended
for the peasant is now overturned.
The peasant is no longer an object but shows they are a
subject with power of their own. The
peasant turns the tables on the moral hierarchy, shown the injustice of the
honor and shame code, the wider injustice of the courtroom.
Finally, within the Roman empire, centurions could impress
conquered peoples to walk one mile with their heavy pack. It was a way that the centurions can remind
everyone who was in charge, whose schedule mattered. Roman civil law dictated that if centurions
were to impress someone to walk more than one mile, a heavy penalty could be
levied on the centurion.
So imagine this.
Imagine Jesus teaching this. Walk
two Jesus says. The crowd now imagines a
Jewish peasant walking that extra mile while the Roman centurion trails them,
begging to return their pack, pleading with them.[1]
The Jewish peasant is saying that you will not rob me of
my choices, of my humanity.
All of these scenarios are saying to the Jewish crowd
listening to Jesus . . .
God sees you differently
than the master, the wealthy power-seeker, or the centurion might see you. Use all of your humor, wisdom, resistance,
and civil disobedience to say, “I am a beloved Child of God, not worthy of your
abuse, your injustice, your exploitation, your occupation, and
persecution. I am a beloved Child of
God. I am not a doormat. (beating chest) I . . . am . . . a . . . beloved . . . Child
. . . of God!”
We should remember.
The crowd Jesus is teaching may be able to do this once or twice before
those in power develop a response. That
means they will forever need to be creative and experimental to know how they
will continue to unmask the violent system and remember their humanity. With love as the most creative force in the
universe, I believe Jesus was banking on that, encouraging them to know a God
who moved and lived and breathed through them in this way.
The other possibility is to lose on the other end of what
Brazilian archbishop, Dom Hélder Câmara, referred to as the “spiral of
violence.” Those outside an unjust,
violent system, react with violence to overturn that system. They revolt. They
may get temporary reprieve or wins but the powerful are the ones with the
advanced weaponry. Those in power
respond to their violence with even greater violence. Violence begets violence. “Violence attracts violence,” Câmara writes.[2]
There is a third way. Jesus taught of a profoundly non-violent, confrontational God who sought to engage injustice to bring about transformational justice, life, and love. In conclusion, Câmara writes, appealing to the young people of his nation who are hell-bent on revolt, praying that they will not lose their determination but also not their lives, in a spiral of violence,
If I joyfully spend the rest of my life, of my
powers, of my energies in demanding justice, but without hatred, without armed
violence, through liberating moral pressure, through truth and love, it is
because I am convinced that only love is constructive and strong.
I know your sincerity and I respect your
choice. Leave no-one indifferent around
you. Provoke discussions. Your youth must force people to think and
take up a position: let it be
uncomfortable, like truth, demanding, like justice.[3]
Hear in this writing not a plea to be a doormat or a conqueror
but a hope against hope, something not even realized yet, that we might see in
one another the Divine, our common humanity.
In our world today, maybe even to say our common life on this good earth
God has created.
Engaged,
confrontational nonviolence is a third way.
And it has paved the way for so much.
Perhaps not written about so much because history is too often the story
of the winners, the conquerors.
Hear some of its
core tenants, six core principles from the Martin Luther King Center:
1. Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous
people. It is active, nonviolent
resistance to evil.
2. Nonviolence seeks to win friendship
and understanding. The end result of
nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation.
3. Nonviolence seeks to defeat
injustice, not people. Nonviolence
recognizes that evildoers are also victims.
4. Nonviolence holds that suffering
can educate and transform. Nonviolence
willingly accepts the consequences of its actions.
5. Nonviolence chooses love instead of
hate. Nonviolence resists violence to
the spirit as well as the body.
Nonviolent love is active, not passive.
Nonviolent love does not sink to the level of the hater. Love restores community and resists
injustice. Nonviolence recognizes the
fact that all life is interrelated.
6. Nonviolence believes that the
universe is on the side of justice. The nonviolent
resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win.[4]
Those principles are forever evolving as we learn more and more
of what it means to be Beloved Children of God, to be human. Jesus did not invite us to be doormats. Neither did he invite us to be violent
conquerors. Rather, he offered a third
way. It is difficult. It may require our own transformation. But the path Jesus offers is in keeping with
a non-violent God who knows that love is the most creative force in the
universe. Amen.
[1] Walter Wink, “Jesus’ Third
Way of Nonviolent Resistance, https://sites.ualberta.ca/~cbidwell/DCAS/third.htm
[2] Dom Hélder Câmara, Spiral
of Violence, (London: Sheed and
Ward, Ltd., 1971). https://www.liberationtheology.org/library/spiral-of-violence-camara.pdf.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Martin Luther King,
Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/lesson-activities/six_principles_of_nonviolence.pdf.
