Sermon, Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, "The Third Way"

 

C Epiphany 7 Pilg 2022

Luke 6:27-38

February 20, 2022

           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.  

Sermon, First Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022, "The pandemic as a portal"

  C Christmas 2 Pilg 2021

                                               John 1:10-18

                                               January 2, 2022 

           In this socially distanced time, maybe your Christmas, like mine, was a procession of videos or Facetime calls from young relatives.  With all the glee of a prison inmate, these forced confessions, or, I mean, expressions of gratitude, come to us with the gift prominently on display presumably so that “A” we know the gift did truly arrive and “B” the young person remembers what they are thanking us for.  I imagine that when the communication to us is over, Aunt Beth’s gift is moved in front of the youngster and the process is repeated. 

           We may not get to see the joy of Kian or Eli opening their gifts, but I do appreciate my sisters and brother pushing their kids to do one of the not so glamorous but necessary rituals of Christmas.  Our children should learn and practice gratitude—even when it feels like they are being tied to a chair to do so. 

           Unfortunately, our family also experienced some of the hard lessons of pandemic.  A number of our family members made the trip to Florida, even went to Disney World, and somehow, in the mix, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece all tested positive for Co-Vid.  My mom actually ended up in the emergency room but probably due to her vaccination status was fortunate to only end up with a deep cough and fatigue.  The Omicron variant is humbling even the fully vaccinated and boosted. 

           As we walk into another surge in this pandemic, I was reminded this week of the article written by the great Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, who observed in April 2020 that the pandemic was hitting some of the richest nations in the world the hardest, namely the United States.  The language we were using to offset the pandemic, the language of war, was not working out for us.  We would be prepared if our frontline workers had needed stockpiles of guns and bombs, fighter jets and submarines.  We did not have the language nor the resources ready for care and healing.  We did not have the resources or the language in place for care and healing.  We didn’t seem to know how to requisition that. 

Roy went on to write,

 

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.^[1]

 

The pandemic is a portal—a choice between two worlds.  The pandemic required and requires that we see all of us in this together.  The old way pretended that we could build a wall, circle the wagons, or a gated community around ourselves and escape the horrors of the world.  A new world needs to be imagined.

           Our Scripture verse today is a foreshadowing of Holy Week when Jesus stands in front of Pontius Pilate, interrogated by Pilate, the local representative of the Roman Empire.  Jesus responds to Pilate by saying, “My empire is not of this world. If my empire were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Judeans; but as it is, my kingdom or empire is not of this world.”^[2]  The Greek word translated as “world” is kosmos and it is used in the first chapter of John when the writer seeks to define Jesus by saying, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him.”

           That word, kosmos, is used over and over again in Biblical books influenced by what is called “Johannine theology.”  Johannine theology is found as today, in the gospel of John, but also in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation.   Most classic translations interpret the word kosmos as “world” which has led to some unhealthy theology throughout the ages. Christian tradition has sometimes used that classic translation to bend away from embodiment and bend toward denial of the body, away from the physical world toward more of a concern for heaven and the afterlife.  

But the late, great Biblical scholar, Walter Wink transformed the meaning of Johannine theology by recognizing that the more apt translation for the word kosmos was "Domination System."  In Jesus's context, Wink might even agree with me that "Roman Empire" could be another good translation.  Jesus tells us not to be of the Domination System or the Empire.  Do not practice its ways or be like it.  

           Jesus always tells his disciples to not be of the Domination System or Roman Empire.  Jesus is always telling the disciples within Johannine theology that we are born into the kosmos but we are not to participate in the ways or trade of the kosmos.

Jesus, before Pilate, in that Holy Week Scripture, is not saying, my kingdom or Empire is not of this earthly world, or is in heaven.  Jesus is saying that his kingdom or Empire is not the violence and death, oppression and slavery of the Roman Empire.  Jesus is not being otherworldly.  He is being anti-establishment.  The same is true in the passage before us today.  Jesus was in the Domination System, born into it, yet the Domination System did not know him. 

           We remain in the season of Christmas—a time when the entrance of Christ into the world highlights how God’s order and way of doing things engages, confronts, and collides with Rome’s order and way of doing things.  Too often, what I feel in the pull of a cultural Christmas, is to be more like the materialism and violence of Rome than the countercultural values of God born in Christ.   That cultural narrative is so strong, so powerful.  So strong and and so powerful that often I hear the Christian church touting the way Rome did things based on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism.   The Christian church then, without reference to who Jesus said he was or what he did, names those things Jesus and Christ and God to ordain a focus on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism. 

And I’m drawn to that cultural Christmas—the flash and buzz of it as I scurried around trying to make sure I had an expensive enough present for nieces, nephews, daughter, sons, and spouse. 

           Sometimes, even outside Christianity, there are echoes of doing things a different way.  Maybe you’ve heard of one of those echoes.

 

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?^[3]

 

Did it?  Does it?  Do the boring and mundane values of gratitude, mutual healing, care, the sharing of bread, love for God’s good earth, kindness, hospitality, and non-violence mean a little bit more –even when we might have to push our kids to make the video just to say another boring thank you?

           The pandemic is a portal.  It not only has told us who we are but given us permission to imagine a different way of doing things, another world.  I was reminded this past week how different that world might be when I read this short and simple message from faith leader, Carlos A. Rodriguez, that reminded me of values that were about my family, my wider community, and who we are to be in this moment in time, praying for a new kosmos.  Rodriguez wrote: 

 

Someone is alive this week because you wore a mask last month.

Someone is healthy today because you followed the guidelines and kept your distance.

Someone is not hospitalized right now because you got boosted already.

Thank you for your kindness!

Keep loving.

 

            I pray, dear friends, that your Christmas is one filled with the values of a kosmos that means a little bit more.  We were born into a Domination System as Christ was.  God, in Christ, especially during this season, calls us to imagine a whole new way of doing things.  May we all have the courage to fight for it.  Amen. 

---

^[1] Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca. 

^[2] John 18:36

^[3] Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  (New York:  Random House, 1957). 

Book Report: Christopher Grundy, Recovering Communion in a Violent World: Resistance, Resilience, and Risk

And that is the point.  The goal is to change the economy of Holy Communion from one in which the sacred food is a scarce commodity controlled and doled out by a religious elite (clergy, elders, or both) to one in which all participate in sharing so that we all might experience abundance. p. 146

Before I begin, I should share that Christopher Grundy is a friend of mine, I consider him part of my extended family, I love his music, and that I am more proud of my alma mater, Eden Theological Seminary, knowing Professor Grundy teaches there. 

Grundy’s book will be an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about the meaning and practice of Holy Communion.  I think the one weakness of the book is that it makes references to a broad critique of current Christian practice and meaning while actually developing a more specific point of departure for a critique of current Christian practice and meaning around objectification and sexual violence. 

If Grundy’s text did indeed try to speak more broadly about the myth of redemptive violence, I think he would need to engage Walter Wink’s writing[i] and, even more so, Dom Helder Camara’s Spiral of Violence.[ii] 

What he has done has torn the tablecloth off the table of what patriarchy considers a silent, private meal to acknowledge the horrific hierarchies and objectification that should have trigger warnings at every turn.

In doing so, Grundy gives us permission to imagine and risk something more egalitarian, just, loving, and communally public which should be in keeping with a meal tradition that sought to intentionally unseat and disrupt a violent status quo.

My hope is that Grundy or someone else will pick up his text and engage the broader public discourse.  That engagement will be critical as State violence enjoins peaceful protest on the street and, at times, seeks to provoke or use vandalism or property damage to justify violence against human bodies.  What does a sacrament like Holy Communion teach us as we see or move in protest, State action, and media delivery?  How do we imagine that sacrament being practiced on the streets in a way that is faithful?  What can we learn from public liturgies which have already been practiced?

As a more specific text, however, Grundy has offered an alternative meal practice that is long overdue.  We recognize that void when we are on a youth mission trip, only have saltines and water, and find that the meaning of that communion seems deeper and more meaningful than what we experience on Sunday morning.  In my last settled pastorate, I found it powerful when we did not have our regular communion stewards in place.   An intergenerational mix came forward with mentoring and grace evident in distribution.  I found that mix seeded with much more joy and meaning—disrupting the hierarchy Grundy strongly critiques. 

In particular, Grundy wants to unhook Holy Communion from what Christians would traditionally call “The Last Supper.”  The words given to Jesus in The Last Supper are fraught with an acknowledgment of violence or predicted violence.  Grundy is especially critical of language that moves “Jesus’s body and blood” from a subject to an object, controlled, managed, and done violence to that body and blood by others.[iii]  He points to other meal stories/traditions that are profoundly more countercultural—manna and water, feeding of the multitude, eschatological promise, footwashing, breakfast on the beach, and Emmaus.  He makes the invitation for others to imagine with him. 

In that imagining, I see the Syro-Phoenician/Canaanite woman as a questioning interloper in the liturgy, not unlike children during Passover, asking why she and her daughter are not included at the table.  With that healthy questioning, the table is transformed and expanded to continue asking, “Who is here or not here for whom the table should be transformed and expanded?”

That imagining would go hand in hand with Grundy’s explanation of the apostle Paul’s Holy Communion practice where nobody goes away from the table hungry and some of those at table are actually economically poor.  In those socially radical practices, Holy Communion is not Holy Communion unless those in need are present and actually fed.  I believe what Grundy is asking for is a table which is integrated with justice-doing and peace-making in our community.  If rituals and a sacrament are going to imprint powerful meaning, should they not somehow disrupt tables too often communicating class and caste?

As with the healthy spiritual practice of Biblical study then, I would ask whether maybe all Holy Communion should begin with an acknowledgment of our social location.  Rather than the too often empty Prayers of Confession we make inside and outside our Holy Community liturgy, social location acknowledgment would be a way of saying where we are and where we want to be. 

Not only with Paul, but Grundy lays out elements in other Biblical communion stories that have elements which require socially radical practices.  If we practiced what we read in the Emmaus communion story, we might need to receive food from a stranger or provide hospitality to a stranger, share in prayer, have a meal that is an epiphany, a citation, or a performative reiteration of a meal that helps the Beloved Community to come near, and an acknowledgement and recognition by the disciples of that Beloved Community. 

In spelling out these Scriptural stories that have socially radical practices, Grundy is encouraging his readers to integrate meal practices in Holy Communion that have too often been separate—feeding the poor, community potlucks, and the small bread and grape juice of Holy Communion.  In practicing violent objectification, sparse economies, and hierarchical distribution, we are practicing a theology of Jesus that should honor body and blood as subjects, multiplying abundance economies of solidarity, and just distribution.  His text offers us a possibility and dialog of transformational intention.

What we have been doing in Holy Communion should come loaded with trigger warnings for those who have experience or are experiencing ongoing sexual violence.  Grundy’s text calls out our ongoing assumptions to show what damage we are doing to the Body of Christ in a tradition that romanticizes the trauma, torture, and death of Jesus.  He makes it clear that we have ample resources within the tradition to make healthier choices.

As with all work within a major faith narrative, his text also shows the constant struggle we have to critique the Christian tradition while recognizing how we must also engage power.  Early in the text, Grundy shares that he will use the Beloved Community (I love this) rather than Kin-dom or some other translation of the early Jewish movement that Jesus referenced as the Kingdom/Empire of God.  Beloved Community, as a term coined in the Civil Rights Movement, can open us to speaking openly about the alternative Domination System.  I assume that Jesus’s use of Empire/Kingdom of God is intentionally satirical and provocative as a proverbial phrase that opens us to something radically different than the Roman Empire/Kingdom of Caesar.  Beloved Community will always need to be moored over and against racism, materialism, and militarism.  Or, better yet, the American imperial project. 

I pray that liturgical theologians will use Grundy’s good text as a point of departure for language and imagery that has long needed changing.  I am grateful that he has given us all permission to open a wider treasure of meal stories for liturgical use in Holy Communion. 

---

[i] https://bibleresources.americanbible.org/resource/critical-perspectives-the-myth-of-redemptive-violence and found in more detail in Wink’s Powers trilogy.

[ii] The whole text is found here:  http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/general/spiral-of-violence-camara.pdf. 

[iii] From note 22, on p. 37, “ . . . Holy Communion helps to structure an environment in which we produce a living body that is simultaneously treated as a ritual object—and an object of violence.”

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, February 24, 2019, "Unmasking a violent system"

C Epiphany 7 2019 BFC

Luke 6:27-38

February 24, 2019

         

          One of the great mythological questions asked in each age is, “What does it mean to be human?”  To even state the question that way is to somehow put all of creation under our feet and suggest that the rest of God’s creation is somehow less than, not as important, as a tool for our welfare and benefit.  I have found myself bristling when those well-intentioned about our Conference church camp, Camp Mimanagish, have asked, with all good intent, “How might we use Camp Mimanagish and be good stewards of this gift rather than seeing intrinsic value in the goodness of the pine and moose, water and rock?”  To ask, “How might we be in relationship with Camp Mimanagish?  What might we learn from it and what does the Boulder River sing to us?”  Those are significantly different questions.  One set of the questions says the camp is valued but disposable outside of human relationship.  The other questions suggest that this earth has intrinsic value outside of human reach. 

Returning to the question, “What does it mean to be human?”  We have historically disguised the question to suggest that some of us are more human than others in a hierarchy of being that some are not worthy, disposable, and some are of intrinsic value to God. 

George Lakoff, retired linguistic professor at UC-Berkley, regularly repeats the conservative moral hierarchy to help understand why there is such social, political, and economic polarization in this day and age.  People who are progressive in the social, political, and economic spheres cannot possibly understand conservative people unless they see this moral hierarchy at work.  Lakoff relates that hierarchy as follows:

• God above Man

• Man above Nature

• The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak)

• The Rich above the Poor

• Employers above Employees

• Adults above Children

• Western culture above other cultures

• America above other countries

• Men above Women

• Whites above Nonwhites

• Christians above non-Christians

• Straights above Gays[1]

This hierarchy suggests that all those beneath another are not as “human” or not as worthy as others so that if I should treat one as less-deserving down the hierarchical ladder, why would anyone object?  Either explicitly or just by repeating this as a cultural norm, is this not the personal, economic, and governmental history of our country?  I recognize that this moral hierarchy unfortunately moves through me and dictates some of the worst part of me.  As I watch the full force of the United States government, Democrat and Republican, begin the ramping up to affirm American exceptionalism, I recognize that we are not only seeking justification to invade another sovereign country, almost sure to happen now, but also affirming this moral hierarchy as not just conservative.

          The poisonous, evil Doctrine of Discovery which allowed Europeans to dispossess Native peoples of their land used this moral hierarchy.  It was Governor Harvey of Virginia who said that “savages” had no claim or right to the land any more than “wild beasts” in the forest.[2]  Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Colony invoked the very Bible passage I use to say that God has given the land to the community for its welfare and benefit.  Winthrop had an addendum.   He stated that the Natives of New England had not used the land as any European might so the land was available for the taking.[3]  With such an understanding, what is now known as southern and central Illinois, the birthplace of yours truly, was taken from the great Illinois people, because they weren’t really using it in the grand, ole European way.

          Who is human?  Who is worthy of the full rights and privileges of the personal or household, the business place or the courtroom, the government or equal?  If I take a nonviolent knee to protest police brutality or racism as a pro football player of color or as Ole Miss basketball players did yesterday[4], is that more human than an NFL owner breaking the law at least twice through solicitation of prostitution?  Which is more Patriot-ic?  Which is more human?

          At the time of Jesus, the moral hierarchy was even more stratified.  Jesus seeks to upend that hierarchy in teaching we have from the Gospel of Luke we have for today using a shared source that was also before the author of the Gospel of Matthew.  First, Jesus cuts through the idea that anyone’s moral hierarchy is better.  “See that enemy over there?” Jesus says.  “You know, the one you would like to move further down the ladder to place yourself over the top of?” 

          “Yeah?  Don’t they suck, Jesus?”  And Jesus says, “Love them.”

          “Whaaaaaaaaat, dude?”

          “Yeah, love them.  Do good by them.  Treat them justly, honorably, rightly.  Bless them.  Speak well of them.  Confer God’s blessing on them.  Praise them when you see them do right.  Pray for them.  Lift them up to God on their behalf.  Find common cause and solidarity with them.”[5] 

          “Duuuuuuude.” 

          “Yes,” Jesus teaches, “you are to show whole-hearted, unreserved, unconditional desire for the well-being of another.  And stop this transactional relationship thing that makes somebody beholden to you or to create people ‘owing’ you.  Give because people need it not to obligate or indebt.”

          “Duude.”

          “(shaking head), Yes.”

          Jesus does not allow our enemies to become another part of the moral hierarchy.  He does not allow violence to come to them because they somehow deserve it, are less than, or are not worthy of our respect, praise, or prayer.  And in upending the moral hierarchy, Jesus makes it clear to all in hearing distance that we are to be made and re-made in the image of a nonviolent, benevolent God.  

          But Jesus is not calling us to be a doormat.  Oh no.  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, the courtroom, with wealthy against indebted peasant, and the one not included in Luke, the Roman centurion and the Jew. 

          If I am facing you, as Master to slave, I will not hit you with the unclean hand, the 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 hand to indicate 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, tell everyone that you are “less than”, by backhanding you on the right cheek.  You now turn your left cheek to me.  You offer me an impossible dilemma.  If I strike you with my left hand, the left hand being unclean, I bring shame upon myself.  If I strike you with an open-handed right, I indicate you are my equal.  You are indicating that you are my equal, inviting me to treat you as such.  It is a sign of resistance to the moral hierarchy.  I, as the one seeking to make sure you know your place in the honor and shame code, am now caught 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 his privilege, his ability to take the basic needs of a peasant.  The ancient world was a two-garment world—cloak or coat and shirt.  In your debt to me, after I have taken your crops, your land, your possessions, you now have nothing left but your garments.  and you are unable to pay.  I now insult you by taking your coat.  Shame is leveled on you as I enforce the moral hierarchy of rich over poor.  But a wry smile creases your face.  You know that in the ancient world, to see another person naked, brings shame not on the naked person but on the person seeing the nakedness.  I take your coat.  You now take off your shirt and my eyes grow wide as you give that to me as well.  The shame I intended for you, you now hand over to me in an unmasking of an evil and unjust system—I with one arm holding your coat and one arm holding your shirt.  Shame is brought upon me as I view your nakedness.  You are now no longer an object I dictate to.  You are a subject who has turned the tables on the moral hierarchy and unmasked the injustice of the court room.

          Finally, within the Roman Empire, centurions could impress conquered peoples to walk one mile with their heavy pack.  It is a way that the centurions can remind everyone who is in charge and whose schedule matters.  Roman civil law dictated that if centurions were to impress someone to walk more than one mile, a heavy penalty could be levied on them.  Imagine this.  As Jesus says it.  They now imagine a Jewish peasant walking that extra mile while the Roman centurion, trails them,  pleads with them to give the pack back, begging to get the pack back.  It is a way of saying that you will not rob me of my humanity.  You will not enforce a violent, moral hierarchy that robs me of what it means to be human.   It is saying that God sees me as quite different than you might see it.  And I will use all my humor, wisdom, resistance, and civil disobedience to say, “I am a beloved Child of God, not worthy of your abuse, your exploitation, or 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!”

          Now we should remember.  We might be able to do this once or twice.  And then those who see themselves further up the moral hierarchy will figure out a response to reinforce the cultural norm.  That means we will have to be creative, engaged, and experimental to know how we will continue to unmask the violence of the system and remember our humanity.   

          Jesus has not asked us to employ violence to counter the violence of the system.  He has not asked us to be doormats.  He is teaching a third way.  What Jesus holds open is the possibility that the Master, the creditor, and the centurion might become transformed by our action and become just too.  Evil can be opposed without being mirrored.[6] 

          Sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, it is time that we seek to put an end to these moral hierarchies through resistance to evil in creative, confrontational, nonviolent ways.  This is the third way of Jesus.  We must do that in a way that also sees the animals and trees as sisters and brothers but also our enemy who is not beneath us.  Rather, we must also say that we are not doormats to express the beauty, the courage, the divinity that moves in and around us, between us and underneath our feet.  God seeks to smudge us that we all might know ourselves as Beloved Children of God. 

How do we offer this creative, nonviolent confrontation to bring an NDO to Billings?  How do we offer this creative, nonviolent confrontation so that the scourge of violence against Native people comes to an end?  How do we creatively cut the purse strings to a pharma/soporific/addiction culture loosens its evil grip on our loved ones?  Let us begin the revolution of a nonviolent, creative third way, and tear down the walls of a moral hierarchy that are absolutely empty of meaning in God’s eyes.  Beloved children of God:  Love.  Turn the other cheek.  Give them your shirt.  Walk the extra mile.  Repeat.  Then creatively unmask and repeat again.  Amen. 

---

[1] George Lakoff, “The Conservative Moral Hierarchy,” July 1, 2017, https://georgelakoff.com/2017/07/01/two-questions-about-trump-and-republicans-that-stump-progressives/.

[2]Eric Kades, “History and Interpretation of the Great Case of Johnson v. M’Intosh,” Law and History Review, Spring 2001, p. 72.

[3] Ibid

[4] “Eight Ole Miss players kneel during anthem in response to Confederacy rally,” ESPN, February 23, 2019.  http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/26063456/eight-ole-miss-players-kneel-anthem-response-confederacy-rally.  You know, the place with a mascot of a southern plantation owner.

[5] David Ewart, “Year C, Epiphany 7, February 24, 2019, Luke 6:27-38,” Holy Textures. 

[6] Walter Wink, The Powers That Be:  Theology for a New Millennium (New York:  Doubleday, 1998), pp. 98-111.  Wink’s incredible description of this can be found here:  https://cpt.org/files/BN%20-%20Jesus%27%20Third%20Way.pdf.