Luke 6: 27-38 Epiphany 7 2-23-25
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| Beatitudes Joseph Matar |
Russell Moore is an Evangelical pastor
who has been kind of ostracized out of the
Southern Baptist Convention.
He wrote a book called “Losing Our Religion”,
and he said in an interview that
it came out of an experience
he heard repeated often by his colleagues,
He says, “it was the result of having multiple
pastors tell me essentially the same story
about quoting the Sermon on the Mount–
turn the other cheek - to have someone come up
after and to say,
‘where did you get those liberal talking points?’
And what was alarming to me
is that in most of these scenarios,
when the pastor would say,
‘I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ’,
the response would not be, ‘I apologize’.
The response would be,
‘yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak.’
And when we get to the point
where the teachings of Jesus himself
are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a
crisis.”
Basically, the church people thought they
knew better than Jesus.
To be honest, whenever I tell the preschool
kids about this part of Jesus’s sermon in chapel,
which I did only two weeks ago,
they are not buying it either.
They were actually a little horrified that I
would suggest they turn the other cheek.
They thought it sounded weak too, or stupid.
They would much rather take the super-hero
approach to offenses and respond with lasers
or bolts of obliterating lightning.
Similar
to those church people,
I had to tell them, “I didn’t make it up.
It’s Jesus. This is just what he said.”
Did you know that in 1937, Nazi supporting pastors
got together at the behest of the government,
and worked on an alternate version of the bible.
Since I’ve been in Silke’s class about Dietrich
Bonhoeffer
on Wednesdays, I’ve been reading about this.
Their group was called “the Institute for the Study
and Elimination
of Jewish Influence on German Church life”,
and their assigned task was to render Christianity
acceptable within the antisemitic
and militarized climate they had created.
They abridged and edited pieces and
left whole books and writings out.
Including the entire Old Testament and
all of Paul’s letters because he was too Jewish.
Instead of presenting Jesus as he was actually presented in the bible:
a Jewish person oppressed
by the state,
they ridiculously made Jesus into a martyred warrior
who
died fighting against the Jews. And in version,
Jesus advice to the average person was, basically,
be nice to be nice to your fellow Germans
and to don’t make trouble.
Apparently the pastors first task as a group was to produce
an alternate version of the sermon on the Mount –
or the similar sermon on the plain in Luke.
They aimed to neutralize the ethics in Jesus’ sermon
because it was so contrary to maintaining
a fascist oppressive government.
It’s difficult to find a complete version of this re-write.
and I wouldn’t read it to you here if I could find
it.
But the “turn the other cheek” line was written:
“If someone has hit you on the cheek, overcome him
by kindness!”
You can see where this is going.
Close, but just not right. Kind of the Chat GPT, AI
version of Jesus.
So what do church people, Nazis, and four year olds agree
on?
Jesus teaching is difficult and we’ve got to change
it.
It just doesn’t lend itself to our toddler sense
of right and wrong and strength and weakness.
It actually goes against most everything we think,
our instincts, our inclination, even what we think
might be effective.
Jesus said, “But I say to you who are listening:
Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you;
bless those who curse you; pray for those who
mistreat you.
If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other”
Jesus could sound weak I guess.
People have accused Jesus of telling his followers
to be doormats. To just take it when violence
without objection. Some people have used this turn
the other
cheek line, especially, to keep people in abusive
relationships.
Someone could manipulate it to understand
that followers of Jesus should just let
everyone do whatever they want.
That Jesus followers should never say no,
that we shouldn’t have any boundaries or limits.
That the offender always wins.
I’m sure that’s the way the Nazi’s wanted the people
to understand it. Just be nice!
No matter what atrocities we’re doing over here,
you just be nice.
But this is not what Jesus was advocating for.
Jesus was not advocating for non-resistance.
He was advocating for a non-violent resistance.
Which is very different.
Walter Wink, an excellent theologian from the 1980’s
who wrote about power coined this, “The Third Way”
The first two ways being fight or flight.
Wink says “Jesus is not telling us to submit to
evil,
but to refuse to oppose it on its own terms.
We are not to
let the opponent
dictate the methods of our opposition.”
Do not submit to evil,
but refuse to oppose evil on its own terms.
In Jesus time, without formal legal ways of responding to
violence,
retaliation for violence was frequent.
If someone hit you or hurt you, you couldn’t call
the police.
Many people used retaliation which escalated the
violence.
You slap me on the cheek, I slap you on the cheek.
You hit me with a bat, and I bring out the superhero
lasers that the preschool kids wanted to bring out,
and everyone is dead. It’s basically how many wars
play out.
Turning the other cheek is a way to not escalate violence,
But at the same time, not submitting to it.
It takes quite an act of bravery to stand there
and dare the other person to do it again.
It’s not fighting, but it’s not running either.
And not escalating violence is just one of Jesus’
lessons.
We have to remember, Jesus was a non-politically powerful
Jewish peasant, preaching to other non-politically
powerful
Jewish peasants. They constantly lived with a
drastic
imbalance of power with them on the bottom.
A real complete police state.
There was no representative government for people
who were not Roman citizens, there was almost no
recourse.
Protests were quickly put down. Acts of defiance or
violence against someone more powerful
was sure to get you arrested or killed.
So how do you resist evil in this situation?
You shame your attacker with their own actions.
If they hit you on the cheek,
remaining in front of them and offering
them the other one is actually an act of defiance.
not being a doormat. It makes a spectacle of their
cruelty and their loss of control.
Mahatma Ghandi used Jesus words in this sermon,
even though he was Hindu,
to create his practice of non-violent resistance
against the oppressive South African and then
Indian government in the 1920’s.
He called it non-cooperation with your opponent.
Ghandi said “The spirit of the Sermon on the
Mount
competes almost on equal terms
with the Bhagavad Gita for the domination
of my heart.”
And then Martin Luther King Jr. went to India
in 1959 to learn about Ghandi’s understanding
of non-violent resistance and used it during
the fight for civil rights in the United States in
the 60’s.
Activists for civil rights were told, and taught,
and trained in non-violent resistance.
Before they went out in public,
They had training sessions where they were
put in aggressive situations and taught to
resist their natural inclination to retaliate.
The televised scenes of young black people
being attacked by dogs held by police
and being hit with fire hoses, and
then not responding with violence,
were extremely effective in revealing the
violence that was always a part of the system of
segregation and oppression in the South.
And it had a great affect on the public perception,
and turning the tide in the United States
and then getting the civil rights act passed.
Do not submit to evil,
but refuse to oppose it on its own terms.
Do not let the opponent dictate
the methods of our opposition.”
In other words, do not let the oppressor
make you into what they are.
It actually puts the oppressed person
in charge of the situation again.
It gives them agency where they would
normally feel as if they had none.
And that is one of the greatest effects of
this third way of Jesus teaching.
This feeling of agency reduces fear.
The person who turns the other cheek
is not cowering in fear, they become strong.
And truly, it makes almost a parody of the situation.
If we go on to the line right after
the turn the other cheek,
it says, “if someone sues you for your coat,
give them your shirt too.”
Someone demanding another person’s coat
is something that would happen in a debt court.
A creditors’ loan wasn’t repaid and
the creditor demands the coat that they wore to
court,
which was a court of the Roman empire
and completely weighed in favor of the creditor.
Instead of fighting it, which a poor person had no
chance of winning, or crying or cowering or
rolling up in a ball, Jesus suggests making
a mockery of the procedures.
Go “oh please, you must be
cold, take this shirt too. And you give them your
shirt
and soon you’re walking around in your
naked in front of them. Which brought more shame
on the viewer of it than the person without clothes.
You may have lost your clothes,
but it makes their demands look pretty stupid.
And you have not given into violence or fear.
Walter Wink calls this “unmasking the powers”
Humor is often a really effective tool
against oppression. Humor shows
shows that people are not intimidated,
they’re not fooled by their oppressor’s
temporary power, they’re not afraid,
they see that the emperor actually has no clothes.
Intimidators and bullies and tyrants need
the people to be afraid.
They rely on their ability to intimidate.
And fear makes us capitulate in advance.
They need the people they want to control to be
afraid, and to comply, and if that doesn’t work,
they need them to be violent, so they have an
excuse to be more violent.
Jesus is telling the crowds there,
to stand up for themselves,
but to take control of their responses.
Don’t answer the oppressor in kind,
but find a new third way
that is neither cowardly submission,
nor violent reprisal.
So Does could third way of turning the other cheek,
work on a micro and macro level?
Does it work between personal enemies?
Could it work between nations?
I don’t know. This is a good discussion we can have.
I do think it would work better
than the other options, of escalating violence,
of escalating rhetoric, or of capitulating in fear.
I do think we can use this teaching
of Jesus in so many different ways,
when we feel attacked, or bullied,
or oppressed, or like we have no
recourse or power.
When we want to retaliate against someone.
Resist, but do not let the opponent dictate
the methods of our opposition.
And the intent of all this has to come
out of what Jesus starts this sermon with.
We have to start in a place of love,
even those who mean to do harm.
We put ourselves in a place of power
when we pray for our enemies.
This is a concept that the Nazi bible
had no room for at all.
They just completely omitted Jesus line that
that said “love your enemies and
pray for those who hate you.”
When we pray for our enemies,
when we refrain from violence,
we maintain our integrity, and
we prevent ourselves from becoming
the very evil thing we fear and hate.
In the end, Jesus is not showing us how to
win a war or a court case, or an election
or any other of those small battles.
Jesus is telling us the way to win
in the ultimate way.
Jesus is showing us THE WAY.
Jesus’s way.
The way that said, on the cross,
“I would rather die than hate you.”
The way to build an empire, not based on force,
but based on love.
The way to bring God’s kingdom on earth.
The way of peace.
And there is nothing weak about that.
