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Two
words: Fight….Flight. These two words, fight and flight,
seem to be the only ways we know how to handle conflicts,
injustice or the presence of evil. Put up or shut up. Fight
back or back down. These are often presented as the only two
options. Neither option is a good one, though, is it?
Fight.
In the fight mode, we retaliate, get back, seek revenge, or
want an eye-for-an-eye punishment. There is no way out when
the fight mode is our only response to conflict. If
I have a hoe and my opponent has a rifle, I am obviously going
to have to get a rifle in order to fight on equal terms. But
then my opponent gets a machine gun, so I have to get a
machine gun. You have a spiral of violence that is unending.
In the fight mode, even if you win, you must always be on
guard for the next fight.
The flight
mode is not much better. In the flight mode, we run away,
ignore, never speak to them again, or avoid facing the
challenge. Simply stay out of the way. Leave it alone. It is a
go-along-to-get-along mentality. The quickest way to avoid a
fight is to not pick one. But at the end of the day, the
flight mode lets the bully keep bullying and the bullied keep
ducking for cover and living in fear of the next encounter
with those who seek to humiliate them. The flight mode does
not seem to change too many things.
That is
why today’s scripture is so interesting. At first it seems
to affirm the flight mode. Hear these words again:
You
have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for
tooth.” But I tell you, “Do not resist an evil person. If
someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other
also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let
him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one
mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and
do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
If you are
like me, you were probably taught that these passages were
about Christian kindness, charity and niceness. “Do not
resist one who is evil,” has been taken to mean “Let
others run all over you.” Do whatever it takes to keep the
peace. If they hit you on one cheek, turn the other and let
them batter you there, too (not the best advice for battered
women).
But
the strange thing about attributing the flight mentality of
existence to Jesus’ words is that it runs counter to the way Jesus’ life is
portrayed in the gospels. Jesus resisted evil with every fiber
of his being. There is not a single instance in which Jesus
does not resist evil or confront injustice when he encounters
it. Therefore, to hear Jesus’ words from today’s scripture
as a call for Christian passiveness and disengagement must be
off base. And yet Jesus clearly does not advocate the fight
position, either. If he did, today’s scriptures would
probably read more like this:
I
tell you, “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, sock
him right back… harder if you can. And if someone wants to
sue you and take your tunic, file a counter suit and try to
take him for all he is worth. If someone forces you to go one
mile, refuse, put up a fight, don’t back down.”
It
is clearly not “fight” that Jesus is advocating, and his
life would seem to suggest that he is calling us to something
beyond taking “flight” in the face of conflict. So is it
fight? Or is it flight? Well, I believe that further
examination of this text will illuminate that Jesus is showing
us a new way—a third way—of doing things.
We
begin with Jesus’ admonition, “Do not resist an evil
person.” The problem begins right there with the word resist.
The Greek term is antistenai. Anti is familiar
to us: “against.” Stenai means “to stand.” So a
more proper translation might be “stand against” rather
than resist. Antistenai is used in the Old Testament,
in the vast majority of cases, as a technical term for
warfare. This term, Antistenai (“to stand against”)
refers to the marching of the two armies up against each other
until they actually collide and the battle ensues. When two
armies collided, they were said to “stand against” each
other. A more accurate translation of this passage might say,
“Do not stand against an evil person.” In other words,
when in a conflict, do not come to the point of blows. The new
Scholars Bible interprets this passage as: “Don’t react
violently against the one who is evil.” The meaning is
hopefully becoming clearer. Don’t react in kind. Don’t
turn into the very thing you hate. Jesus is not telling us not
to resist evil, but only not to resist evil on its terms. We
are not to resist violently.
In
our reading tonight, Jesus gives three examples of what he
means when he says to live in a way that does not return evil
for evil. The first is probably the most famous and the most
misunderstood: to turn the other cheek. Modern readers so
often misunderstand these words because we have lost the sense
of the first-century world to which it was written. We must
always remember that even though the Bible has timeless
truths, it was a document written at a certain time to a
certain people. That is why we must consult the scholars and
archaeologists who have helped us fill in the information that
has gotten lost in the passage of time. For insight into
tonight’s text, I am grateful for the work of biblical
scholar Walter Wink.
“If
anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”
Imagine if I were to strike a blow with my right fist at your
face. Which cheek would it land on? It would be the left. It
is the wrong cheek in terms of the text we are looking at.
Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the right
cheek...” I could hit you on the right cheek if I used a
left hook, but that would be impossible in Semitic society
because the left hand was used only for unclean tasks. You
couldn’t even gesture with your left hand in public. The
only way I could hit you on the right cheek would be with the
back of the hand.
Now the
back of the hand is not a blow intended to injure. It is a
symbolic blow. It is intended to put you back where you
belong. The backhanded slap was always given from a position
of power or superiority. In the biblical world, the back of
the hand was given by a master to a slave or by a husband to a
wife or by a parent to a child or by a Roman to a Jew. So what
Jesus is saying is, in effect, “When someone tries to
humiliate you and put you back down into your social location,
which is inferior to that person, turn your other cheek.”
In the
process of turning in that direction, if you turned your head
to the right, I could no longer backhand you. By turning the
other cheek, you are defiantly saying to the person trying to
disgrace you, “I refuse to be humiliated by you any longer.
I am a human being just like you. I am a child of God.” This
is clearly no way to avoid trouble. The person in the position
of power might have you flogged within an inch of your life,
but he will never be able to assert that you have no dignity.
“Turn the other cheek.” This is not a call to cowardice.
It is not a call to be submissive. It is certainly not a call
to take a licking and just keep on ticking. “Turn the other
cheek,” Jesus says. This is a call to all children of God to
never surrender their dignity. Into the midst of a world of
either fight or flight, Jesus says to seek a new way, the way
of nonviolent resistance.
From
tonight’s reading, there is no way around the notion that
Jesus advocated and practiced nonviolent resistance. But there
are some important things to realize about this nonviolent
resistance Jesus is calling us to. First, this is not a method
for cowards; it does resist. In turning the other
cheek, we do not return the strike, but we don’t back away
or back down. We are to stand for the very things Jesus stood
for: justice, mercy, dignity and love. This method is passive
physically but is dynamically active spiritually.
Furthermore,
the nonviolence that Jesus calls us to is directed against the
evil actions rather than against persons. In turning the other
cheek, Jesus is hoping that the one who wishes to humiliate
the other with the backhanded slap will be forced to see that
person as a human being worthy of dignity and respect.
At the
center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. People in
conflict must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge
in actions of hate. To retaliate with hate and bitterness does
nothing but intensify the hate in the world. Someone must have
sense enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can be done
only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our
lives. In turning the other cheek, Jesus seeks to stop the
chain of violence in hopes of helping people see each other as
brothers and sisters made and shaped by the love of the same
Creator.
It is true
that we no longer live in a world where backhanded slaps in
the public square are commonplace. But we still live in world
were backhanded comments meant to demean others are far too
prevalent. So how has this ethic of nonviolent love been
enacted in our modern time?
Can this active nonviolence,
turn-the-other-cheek stuff really change things? There is a
wonderful true story recorded in Walter Wink’s book, The
Powers That Be. One Sunday in 1991, cantor Michael Weisser
and his wife were unpacking boxes in their new home when the
phone rang and a voice said: “You will be sorry you ever
moved into 5810 Randolph Street, Jew boy.” Then the caller
hung up. Two days later, the Weissers received a packet in the
mail: “The KKK is watching you, Scum. The Holocaust was
nothing compared to what’s going to happen to you.”
The
Weissers called the police. It looked like the work of Larry
Trapp, the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Trapp, who was
confined to a wheelchair, was dangerous. He made explosives
and, it was revealed later, planned to blow up the synagogue
where Weisser was the spiritual leader. Weisser called
Trapp’s KKK hotline and left this message: “Larry, do you
know that the first law that Hitler’s Nazis passed was
against people like yourself who had physical handicaps? You
would be one of the first to go.”
Weisser
continued to call, and one day Trapp picked up. “What do you
want?” he shouted. “Stop harassing me.” Weisser sought
to turn the situation in a new direction said, “I know you
are in a wheelchair and I thought maybe I could take you to
the grocery store or something.” Trapp was stunned, thanked
him for the offer, declined and said not to call anymore. But
Weisser continued to call, and during one call Trapp admitted
he was “rethinking a few things.” Yet he continued to spew
the same old hatreds. Weisser called him again. “You are not
rethinking anything at all.” Calling Trapp a liar and
hypocrite, he demanded an explanation. Surprisingly Trapp
said, “I’m sorry.” And the next day he called Weisser
and said: “I want to get out, to change, but I don’t know
how.”
The Weissers went over to Trapp’s that
night to break bread. When they entered his apartment, Trapp
broke into tears and tugged off his two swastika rings. He
then resigned from all his racist organizations and wrote
apologies to the many people he had threatened or abused.
When, a few months later, he learned he had less than a year
to live, the Weissers moved him into their home. When his
condition deteriorated, Mrs. Weisser quit her job as a nurse
to care for him. Six months later, Trapp converted to Judaism.
Three months after that, he died.
So
take the essence of Jesus’ call to turn the other cheek and
live in the world a different way.
Become the change agent in the places you live and
work. To put into action this love we are called to means
learning to say to an alcoholic family member or friend,
“Look, I love you. But I also love myself and my family, and
until you get some help, I cannot be in the relationship with
you in the same way. I am willing to help you. I am willing to
make the call for you or go with you to a meeting. But I am no
longer willing to let your disease run over me and others that
I am responsible for.”
To take
seriously this understanding of turning the other cheek means
having the courage to get out from behind the closed doors of
your office when conflicts arise. It means learning to call a
boss or a coworker on actions that seem to demean or devalue
your gifts and contributions to the organization rather than
simply growing thick skin or waiting for the right opportunity
to get revenge. It means having the willingness to listen and
compromise, and finding new ways to communicate, new ways to
live and work together.
If we are
to take seriously this understanding of Jesus’ call to turn
the other cheek, then we would have the courage not to laugh
along with jokes we find offensive, and invite those telling
racist, sexist, political or homophobic jokes to see the
dehumanizing intent of the words they are using. It means no
longer letting bullies run the show or outsiders continually
be laughed at, picked on or humiliated. It is a radical,
courageous love Jesus calls us to—a love that can create new
paths in a world so often bent on violence to solve its
problems. It is what the world needs now—this love, sweet
love—a love that is active and transforming, courageous and
strong.
So that
brings us to our symbol for the evening. It is a machete. A
strange symbol for a sermon about nonviolent love, I suppose.
But think about it for a minute. In a world where there seem
to only be two options, fight or flight—where you can either
take the sword and fight back or you can set it down in fear
and trembling, hoping that others might do the same—Jesus
shows a third way, a new way. Where there seem to be limited
options, we are called to use what would be a weapon and clear
a new path, just as the machete will clear a new path for
hikers in need of a different way. Christians are summoned to
blaze new trails where reconciliation is possible, human
dignity is enhanced, new futures are imagined and love is
realized.
With
apologies to Robert Frost I leave you with this:
Two
roads diverged in a yellowed wood,
And I was sure that both would fail.
But then I remembered my Savior’s words,
I got off the road and I blazed a trail.
Note:
The bulk of insight into this text came from Walter Wink’s
groundbreaking book entitled Engaging the Powers. Wink
is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and is
currently the Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn
Theological Seminary in New York. He wrote a trilogy of books,
Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers and the
above-mentioned Engaging the Powers, all of which deal
with the languages of principalities and powers that are found
in the Bible. They are incredible reads that will offer
amazing insight into the biblical texts, along with
challenging applications for the lives of contemporary
disciples.
Furthermore,
I am once again grateful to the writing of Martin Luther King,
Jr. In particular, I looked at a piece he wrote entitled
“Nonviolence and Racial Justice” which appeared in the
February 1957 edition of Christian Century.
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