Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. Jesus doesn’t say that there are no
enemies. He is not naïve. He knows that conflict and opposition,
oppression and resistance, are real.
What he does say is that our enemies are human, just like us, and need
to be treated as such. God loves them just as much as he loves us. Jesus teaches us to recognize our common
humanity and to act in ways that preserve the possibility for reconciliation
between enemies. In short, we are to
respond to the reality of evil by loving as God loves – without discrimination.
Practically speaking, what this means is that we are to
resist evil nonviolently. This core
teaching of Jesus is more familiar to us in its negative form: “Do not resist
an evildoer.”[1] Does this mean that we are to do nothing in
the face of evil? Often, it has been
interpreted as a counsel to passive submission to evil, embracing suffering
without complaint. In fact, “turning the
other cheek” and “going the extra mile” have become short-hand for a kind of
noble acceptance of suffering (or servile, depending upon your
perspective). At best, such endurance is
viewed as taking the moral high road; at worst, such endurance is nothing more
than the internalization of a sense of inferiority.
The problem is that such passivity completely misses the
point of Jesus’ teaching. Both the
context of this passage, and its attestation in other and earlier sources of
Christian tradition, indicate a much different interpretation. Immediately following the admonition, “Do not
resist an evildoer,” Jesus goes on to give several concrete examples of
creative ways to resist evil (more on that in a moment). So, either Jesus is flatly contradicting
himself, or else “Do not resist” must mean something other than passive
acquiescence to evil.
The verb translated as “resist” is antistênai. In Greek, antistênai frequently is used as a military
term. It connotes counterviolence in
response to hostilities initiated by someone else, as in withstanding a violent
assault by drawing up battle ranks against the enemy. In Jesus’ time, the question of how best to
resist Roman occupation of Israel was a live question. In this context, Jesus is taking violent resistance or rebellion off the
table as a legitimate response; not resistance per se.[2] The
command is “Do not violently resist an evildoer.”
This reading is borne out in comparison to other sources of
early Christian tradition that preserve this core teaching of Jesus.[3] Parallels can be found in Romans chapter 12,
which preserves several allusions to Jesus’ teaching from “the Sermon on the
Mount,” including “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” and “Do not be overcome
by evil, but overcome evil with good.”[4] This
saying is also preserved in I Thessalonians 5:15 and I Peter 3:9. There is even an early Hebrew translation of
the Gospel of Matthew that reads, “Do not repay evil for evil” instead of “Do
not resist an evildoer.”
What all these texts evidence is a common source in Jesus’
authentic teaching the basically says, “Do not mirror evil.” Jesus does not advocate nonresistance to
evil, what we generally now refer to as “Pacifism.” Instead of passivity, Jesus advocates
resistance to evil that refuses to mirror evil; specifically, by engaging in
creative, nonviolent responses to evil.
Jesus provides several examples of creative, nonviolent
responses to evil in Matthew’s account of the “Sermon on the Mount”: “turn the other cheek,” “give the
undergarment,” “go the second mile,” and “give to all who beg.” Let’s briefly examine each of these in turn.
“If anyone strikes
you on the right cheek, turn the other also.”
Why the right cheek? In the
ancient world, right-handedness was normative and the left hand was used only
for unclean tasks. What is being
imagined here is a back-handed blow on the right check using the right
hand. This would be the means whereby a
superior would strike inferiors in order to discipline and insult them. This is the way a male householder would
strike his wife, children, and slaves.
By offering the left cheek as well, one is asserting one’s
dignity by forcing the aggressor to either escalate the violence (say, having
the person flogged), or tacitly acknowledge the person as his equal by hitting
his left cheek with his right hand, or simply do nothing. In any case, the aggressor no longer has the
initiative and is forced to acknowledge his inability to humiliate the other
person. The illegitimacy of structural
violence that benefits one group at the expense of others is exposed for what
it is.
This is not an act of submission but rather an assertion of
dignity and an expression of courage. It
is what Bishop Cate Waynick refers to as “upping the ante.” It is akin to the freedom riders who
desegregated trains and buses in the South, or African-Americans who sat at
“whites only” lunch counters. They, too,
offered the other cheek, exposing the mendacity of their enemies while
asserting their freedom at the same time.
What is notable here is that their actions liberated a whole generation
of black men and women from the crippling fear of racist violence that had kept
them in subjugation to Jim Crow law, while preserving the possibility of
eventual racial reconciliation.
“If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your
undergarment as well.” Under Jewish law,
the poorest of the poor were offered some small measure of protection in that,
if they were sued to collect repayment of debts owed and only had their coat as
collateral for a loan, the coat had to be returned to them at night so that
they had some way to keep warm. It was
a measure against economic exploitation.
Jesus lived at a time when Galilean peasants were being
exploited through heavy taxation and indebtedness so that their ancestral lands
could be expropriated to build large estates for the rich. Being sued in court was an ever-present fear
that was often realized in fact. Jesus
is telling his hearers not only to offer their coat, but their undergarment as
collateral: In other words, to strip naked in the courtroom to publicly shame their
creditors.
Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, but the shame of it fell on
the witnesses rather than the naked person.
Jesus is encouraging a kind of burlesque strip tease to metaphorically
express the way in which the rich were stripping the poor of everything they
owned. Imagine the response this would
have evoked! The creditor would be
revealed as a rapacious and greedy brute, stripped of the veneer of legitimacy
provided by his clever and venal manipulation of the legal and economic
systems. It would, perhaps, allow the
creditor to see himself as he really is for the first time.
It is in this context, by the way, that Jesus advocates
giving to those who beg. Such generosity
was a way of redistributing wealth to support those who were reduced to penury
by means of systematic economic exploitation and injustice. Such giving is not charity, but rather an
act of compensatory justice. Again,
stripping naked in court was a way to demonstrate the indignity of poverty as a
legally enforced system of economic privilege and disenfranchisement.
When I was in seminary, I participated in a similarly clever
unmasking of the illusions of heterosexual privilege. A group of us planted a large sign in the
middle of the courtyard outside the University of Chicago Divinity School that
read “homosexual acts in progress.” We
then engaged in such provocative behavior as reading, playing chess, strumming
a guitar, and shining shoes. It was a
playful way to undermine the caricature of gay and lesbian people as sexually
debauched, providing an opportunity for passers-by to examine their own
stereotypes of gay people and the ways in which our society privileges
heterosexuality as normative. Rather
than mirroring the evil of that system, we offered back an image of equal
dignity.
Jesus, had a sense of humor, and was not above recommending
a little light-hearted ridicule. If the
emperor is naked, we need not pretend otherwise.
Finally, “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the
second mile.” Here, Jesus is directly
referencing the Roman army’s practice of forced or impressed labor. Although Roman law stipulated that a soldier
could only force someone to carry his pack (probably weighing about 70 pounds)
no more than one mile, it was a law that was frequently ignored. Forced labor of this and other kinds was
sometimes compelled to the point of death.
Here again, Jesus is upping the ante in a way that takes the
initiative away from the enemy.
Volunteering to go a second mile forces the soldier to wonder, “Is this
some kind of set-up? Is this guy trying
to get me in trouble? Can I get away
with this, or will my commander decide to punish me this time?” The power of choice now resides with the
victim of forced labor. One can imagine
an almost comical situation, with the soldier and victim arguing over who is
going to carry the pack.
Bishop Cate Waynick tells the story of a parishioner in the
Diocese of Indianapolis, an accountant, who was frequently pressured by clients
to engage in less than scrupulous bookkeeping practices. In thinking about how he might offer to “go
the second mile” for his clients, he decided to respond to such pressure by
simply saying, “I’d be happy to do this for you. Just put your request in writing and sign
your name.” He has yet to find a client
who, upon reflection, thinks that “going the second mile” is such a great
idea. This wise accountant figured out
how to up the ante.[5]
These are just examples.
They are not literal commands to imitate, but rather catalysts to
imaginative experimentation. Jesus does
not command us to be doormats. He
challenges us to find creative ways to up the ante. Beyond “fight” or “flight” there is Jesus’
third way, the way of nonviolent resistance.
Walter Wink characterizes the elements of this third way as follows:
·
Seize the moral initiative
·
Find a creative alternative to violence
·
Assert your humanity and dignity as a person
·
Meet force with ridicule or humor
·
Break the cycle of humiliation
·
Refuse to submit to or accept the inferior position
·
Expose the injustice of the system
·
Take control of the power dynamic
·
Shame the oppressor into repentance
·
Stand your ground
·
Make oppressors make decisions for which they
are not prepared
·
Recognize your own power
·
Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate
·
Force oppressors to see you – and themselves –
in a new light
·
Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a
show of force is effective
·
Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking
unjust laws
·
Die to fear of the unjust order and its laws
These are principles informing action inspired by Jesus’
teaching and example. They offer
practical guidelines for resisting evil without mirroring it. They provide a way for us to love our enemies
even when we must oppose them. This is
what it means to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect: not morally without error, but rather
refusing to limit the scope of love. It
requires courage, discipline and creativity.
We will fail. We will
suffer. And we will discover a power
working within us that is greater than we could have asked for or
imagined. Amen.
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