Resist

Propers: The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Welcome to the resistance.

If there is to be any goodness, truth, and beauty in this world, if there is to be any justice, mercy, and grace, then it is imperative that we resist evil. Nowhere in the Bible is humanity given permission to be passive, to do nothing, in the face of abuse, injustice, or oppression. No, Jesus says, for inasmuch as you did not do it for the least of these, you did not do it for Me.

What then are we to make of Jesus’ sermon this morning? “Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give your cloak as well. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Be perfect, therefore, as Your heavenly Father is perfect.” At first blush, this seems like a formula for suicide. What would the world be like if we did not stand up to evil, if we did not push back against wickedness and cruelty? What would the world be like if Christians were all doormats and cowards?

But of course that’s not what Jesus is saying. Our Lord does not mandate peace at all costs. A soldier’s duty is to defend his country. A police officer is sworn to uphold the peace. And a private citizen has not only the right to self-defense but also the moral obligation to defend those who cannot defend themselves. “If you do wrong,” writes Paul, “you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain.” Rather, Jesus is talking about instances of abuse of power. Notice that His examples are those who strike you, who force you, who sue you—who have power over you.

Now, what is our natural response when we are wronged? Someone hits us, what do we do? Well, we have two very natural, very human, responses: fight or flight. Either we hit him back, or we get out of the way. This is how the world works, how it’s always worked: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Yet Jesus counsels a different tack, a Third Way, which is neither violence nor cowardice. His response is not so much natural as it is supernatural. He says that we are to love our enemies.

This does not mean what we probably think it means. Loving our enemies doesn’t mean that we have shiny happy feelings about them. It doesn’t mean that we pretend they aren’t our enemies, or that we should do whatever they like in order to make them happy. No. In the Bible, love is not a feeling, and it certainly isn’t passive. Love is when we put someone else’s needs before our own, when we do what is best for them even at cost to ourselves. In this case, loving our enemies means enabling them to see their own sin, that they might repent and be saved. Jesus is laying out His blueprint for active, nonviolent, Christian resistance.

A little background may be in order. Keep in mind that the Sermon on the Mount is being preached to the downtrodden and dispossessed, the people of a conquered country occupied by the superpower of its day. Rome rules Judea. But Rome has rules. The Empire craves order above all things, and for that she needs soldiers who are strong but also well behaved.

“If anyone forces you to go one mile,” Jesus says, “go also the second mile.” Romans were meticulous about marking miles on their roads; you can still see these marker stones scattered all about England today. A soldier of the Legions could, by right, force a local to bear the soldier’s burdens for up to and including one mile, but no more. Recall Simon of Cyrene, who was pulled from the crowd and made to bear our Lord’s Cross. Going a second mile could get the soldier in trouble. He would be liable to the magistrate or to his commanding officer. He would be forced to confront the injustice of the situation; he would be forced to ask you to stop. It would now be on him to liberate you from the servitude that he himself placed upon you.

“If anyone takes your coat,” Jesus says, “give your cloak as well.” Now, a poor man’s coat, in this context, was an outer garment that doubled as his bedroll for the night, rather like wearing a sleeping bag. A farmer or shepherd in the field needed his coat to keep warm after dark. The cloak, as this translation puts it, is really a man’s tunic, or undergarment. So if some wealthy landowner seizes your coat, pull off your clothes and throw them at him! Here you stand, naked in public, but the shame is not yours. Your opponent now finds himself in an odd reversal, begging you to put something on, to cover your nakedness. His injustice has been revealed for all to see.

And then we have that infamous turning of the other cheek. Specifically the right cheek, Jesus says. Someone striking a social inferior—an officer striking an enlisted man, a master striking a slave, an abuser striking his wife or child—will almost inevitably strike with the back of his open right hand. It is a very natural gesture of contempt, an act of degradation. Turn your face, and he cannot slap you with the back of his hand. He cannot shame you, as it were, offhandedly. He’ll have to come at you the other way, with a punch. Thus is the victim’s dignity asserted, and the abuser’s brutality laid bare.

This is how a slave stands up to his master, a local to his occupier, and a social inferior to his supposed better. It is a blueprint for loving your enemy by resisting his evil, by showing him the ugly truth of his own thuggery, and refusing to pretend that you are anything less than human in the sight of those about you both. It is a call to action against batterers, bullies, and abusers. They may have the bigger stick, but you will show everyone the nobler, unbroken soul.

And it works! Jesus’ Third Way of active, nonviolent, Christian resistance has toppled empires the world over, beginning with Rome. It was easy for the Legions to crush the insurgents, the terrorists, the freedom fighters of ancient Judea. But it was the witness of the martyrs, the preaching of the saints, the freeing of slaves and forgiveness of sins that allowed the Christian Church to conquer Rome. The Empire that murdered Christ was powerless against His love.

This was the Third Way used to such powerful effect by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Desmond Tutu. Stories abound of Jesus’ Third Way shaming oppressors and bringing them to conversion, without violence and without compromise.

A white man in apartheid South Africa spat in the face of a black woman walking with her children. “Thank you,” she told him. “And now for the children?” He found himself unable to respond.

Bishop Tutu encountered a white man walking toward him on the same sidewalk. “I don’t give way to gorillas,” the man snarled. Bishop Tutu stepped aside with a flourish. “Ah yes,” he said, “but I do.”

Chinese students, forbidden to demonstrate against Communist Party policy, carried signs proclaiming, “Support Martial Law,” “Support Dictatorship,” “Support Inflation.”

Authorities refused to fumigate a squatter community that had been overrun with lice. People gathered up their lice-infested blankets and dumped them on the floor of the administrator’s office, eliciting immediate action. Such is the power of the Third Way.

This was Jesus’ plan from the beginning: to lay bare the truth of sin and to offer the healing balm of repentance and new life. It proved so powerful, so unstoppable, that He soon found Himself executed by the powers that be in the most public and humiliating manner that their devious little minds could devise. Yet even that didn’t stop Him. Why, it barely slowed Him down. Three days later He was up again, giving to His Apostles the Great Commission, to go forth into all nations and baptize them in the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. He loves His enemies so much that He drowns us in our sins and raises us to new life in Him.

So turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. Give your cloak as well. Love your enemies, dear Christians. Love them so much that you show them a better way than either fight or flight: the Third Way of goodness, truth, and beauty: the powerful, light-bearing, life-giving resistance of Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The examples of nonviolent resistance above are taken from Violence and Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus' Third Way, by Dr Walter Wink.