Tricky Jesus 1—Turn the other cheek
Last Sunday, New Zealand lost a great man, in the person of Sir Paul Reeves. To me, one of the most significant dimensions of Sir Paul's heritage is that he was a son of Taranaki, someone who stood in the lineage of his Parihaka tupuna Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi. Sir Paul's efforts throughout New Zealand and the world, to find common ground and to resolve conflict through peaceful dialogue, were in the spirit of the Parihaka legacy – a legacy of passive resistance, of non-violent opposition to oppression.
And so I thought it fitting to begin this new sermon series on the parables and difficult sayings of Jesus by revisiting that challenging part of the Sermon on the Mount that we find in chapter 5, vv38-42.
You have heard how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer no resistance to the wicked. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well; if someone wishes to go to law with you to get your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone requires you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give to anyone who asks you, and if anyone wants to borrow, do not turn away.
The original law of 'eye for eye and tooth for tooth' is found in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and strange as it may sound to us now, the intent of this law was actually to limit disproportionate revenge. In a newly formed, tribal society, it is easy to imagine people going over the top in their retribution of offences done against them, or indeed their slaves. One example of this is in Genesis, where a descendent of Cain crows: “I killed a man for wounding me, a boy for striking me.” It's the kind of thing you expect from the Sopranos, or Sons of Anarchy – a delight in revenge that's violently incommensurate with the nature of the original crime. And so the Lex Talionis, 'eye for eye' law has the social function of constraining the natural impulse to strike back in rage when you've suffered an injury.
What is Jesus doing with this law? And how can we accept his teaching when it seems to advocate not only putting up with violence and violation without complaint, but actually asking for more? And what does offering 'no resistance to the wicked' have to do with the Parihaka tradition of non-violent resistance that I started off talking about?
As he is doing throughout this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is taking Old Testament law, and finding its inner principle – the spirit, rather than the letter of the law. And invariably, the spirit of the law, the 'new standard' of Jesus, is higher and harder than the former, external standard. His teachings are aspirational, ideals to strive toward as we grow and mature, rather than accommodations to our weakness.
I hear him saying “at a certain time in our history, we needed external rules to tell us what we could and couldn't do. These laws were and are necessary for governing society. And they were set at a level that was realistic for a human society to live by. But I am here to teach you how to be the kind of person who is so transformed by your relationship with God, that all that is good and humane about the law will arise spontaneously from within you, and become part of your character. This won't happen straight away, and you will fall short of this way of being, but with God there is forgiveness, and when my Spirit lives in you, you will have extra help to live a life that flows from God.”
So in this teaching, where he refutes the 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth' idea, he isn't just providing limits on revenge and retribution, he's challenging us to rid ourselves of the impulse to revenge altogether. Our natural, defended, animal response to being hurt is to hurt back. Our reptile brain, when threatened, reverts to only two options – fight or flight. So if someone comes at us fists swinging, or with a legal writ seeking to screw money out of us, or if someone makes unjust demands of our time or our energy, our hind brain rises up and we either run away, or we raise our own fists or our voices, get our own lawyer and sue for damages and costs along the way, or enter into extensive complaint procedures against the person who has wronged us.
Jesus says that there is another response. And in exploring this other response I don't want us to be too literal minded. Just a few verses earlier, Jesus was advocating cutting off our hands and plucking out our eyes if they are leading us into sin. You don't see too many people following that suggestion to the letter. When Jesus says – 'offer the other cheek, give your cloak as well, and go two miles instead of one', I don't think he's seeking to re-traumatise the traumatised, or turning a blind eye to abuse, or wanting to turn people into weak doormats incapable of righting an injustice when they see one. I think he's being deliberately poetic and rhetorically memorable with these statements. They're meant to be surprising. In essence, I think he's saying: “find a creative response based on giving and forgiving, that lets you opt out of fight or flight.” Or, “When you're provoked,and your adrenaline kicks in, and all your defence mechanisms come into play, what can you do to stop being an object that's being 'acted on', and instead become a subject who acts and chooses freely?” How will you, in your every day life, become a peace maker, rather than someone who just reacts, and reacts in a way conditioned by a tendency to revenge?
I'd like to make a demonstration here of one of the ways I've read this passage interpreted, that may cast some light on the link between this teaching of Jesus and the principle of non-violent resistance.
[Invite someone to come forward and establish which is their right cheek. 'Strike' them with a back-hander onto their right cheek. Then have them offer the other cheek.]
Now while that might have been a too literal engagement with the passage, what that demonstrates to me is how it's one thing to hit another person in a fit of anger or a momentary reaction, but it's quite another thing to deliberately and cold-bloodedly engage in an act of violence. What [xxx] has done in that situation is upped the stakes. They've brought light and clarity into the situation by naming my casual, and under-the radar, and possibly habitual, violence for what it is – not in words, but in the action of saying – 'let's be clear exactly what the dynamic is here. You are going to hit me, and I am not going to hit you back. Will you live with that?' When a systematic or unthinking act of oppression is taking place, and those on the receiving end don't just cower in a corner, or engage in understandable but predictable acts of outrage and return violence, but instead engage in a surprising, creative act of exposure, then the tables are turned and the original perpetrator is exposed for what they are.
That's what happened at Parihaka. After a series of acts of resistance by the people of Parihaka, continuing to occupy confiscated land, and going on ploughing land that had been taken from the tribe and given to settlers, the government ordered troops to storm the village. But instead of defensive fighting, the agents of colonial violence were met by hundreds of children, skipping and singing and offering food. You could argue that Jesus' teaching meant that when the land grab was going on, the people of Parihaka should have given up their land and added in a few extra acres to boot. But what they actually did was, I think, closer to the spirit of the gospel. They did not engage in violence, the currency of war and killing that was taking over the whole country. They did not exact revenge. They held their spiritual centre, and they came up with ways to make it quite clear to the government of the day that what they were doing was wrong...as wrong as it would have been for them to shoot the children who greeted them on 5 November 1881.
This teaching of Jesus puts a spoke in the wheel of retribution that otherwise just goes on turning and turning. Reconciliation can only come when one party, usually the one that has been wronged, refuses to see themselves as a slave or a victim to the situation that is unfolding, and instead sees themselves as having something to offer, something to give. And all that can be given, sometimes is forgiveness.
We see this borne out in Jesus' own life. Later in the gospel of Matthew we will see him being arrested, and rebuking his followers for getting out their swords and fighting back. 'Put your sword away,' he says to his disciple, 'for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.' And he healed the ear of the man who was arresting him. Jesus allowed himself, in the end, to be mocked, beaten, and killed, rather than to fight back and possibly spark insurrection and more killings. In Luke's gospel we hear him say 'Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.'
Those of us who follow Jesus are unlikely to suffer in our bodies the way that Jesus did. We are unlikely to be asked to die rather than fight back. But all of us confront situations regularly where our hind brain rises up, our cheeks flush red, our fingers twitch on the computer keyboard, our voice gets harsh, and all we want to do is strike out, hurt the person who is hurting us, flame them, shame them, hit them and annihilate them. To us in those moments Jesus says, 'don't be a slave – a slave to a cycle of vengeance, or to your baser instincts. Be creative. Love calls you to keep your centre, and if you can, respond to this situation with such generosity that the ill will of the other is laid bare. Give your tormentor the gift of realising the smallness what they are doing, by staying a large human being yourself.’
Which brings me back to the large human being that I started off by talking about – the late Sir Paul Reeves. In 2009, he was part of a team that completed a $25 million Treaty land settlement with the government. Parliament approved the settlement, and the Crown apologised. Sir Paul replied on behalf of his people, with a statement of forgiveness, the first time that had happened from the tribes that have settled treaty claims. 'And now it is finished' he said, and went on to say 'Our forgiveness comes from our painful history...and apology, forgiveness, leads on to the greatest prize, which is reconciliation.'
As reported in the NZ Herald, Sir Ngatata Love, also part of the Te Atiawa claim, said that gesture said much about Sir Paul's faith and character. "The way he thought was if someone you know humbles themselves, then people must be dignified and say, ‘We now move on’.”
When someone chooses to be humble, that calls out dignity from the other. Violence and contempt breeds more violence and contempt. Humility that is chosen and not compelled, brings out the best, most human, response in others. This is what Jesus taught us. This is how Sir Paul lived, in imitation of his Master. Let us go and do likewise.
or this one:
The idea is that for a surprising and unexpected moment you get a glimpse of life from a different angle, and that this glimpse is enough to put you on the path of wanting to find that place again and to live there more and more of the time.
Unfortunately, in Jesus‘ day, and in ours, people were only too willing to mis-hear, and to condemn all that they heard before they had even made sure that they had really heard it. Hence the hard words that Jesus says about his reasons for talking in parables. In chapter 12 of Matthew's gospel, the Pharisees and religious leaders had been giving Jesus and his disciples a nasty time, trying to trick him, accusing him of law-breaking, looking for reasons to charge him and put him out of action. And Jesus went on picking corn and healing people on the Sabbath. And the Pharisees accused him of healing people by the spirit of Beelzebul.
This dynamic is very like the religious landscape we have in our own day, particularly in the United States, where there is such entrenched division and scaremongering that mild and generous men like Brian McLaren get hate mail and are accused of serving Satan, all because they suggest some ways of thinking about God that don't fit with a certain religious ideology. When religious views get entrenched like that, all people are doing when they listen to each other is looking out for particular key words that will help them to assign a label and put them in the category of’ with us‘ or’ against us.'
And so in chapter 13, immediately following these discourses with the Pharisees, we have Jesus saying words that I've always found a bit difficult.
The disciples went up to him and asked,’ Why do you talk to them in parables?‘ In answer, he said,’ Because to you is granted to understand the mysteries of the kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not granted. Anyone who has will be given more and will have more than enough; but anyone who has not will be deprived even of what he has. The reason I talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. So in their case what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah is being fulfilled:
Listen and listen, but never understand!
Look and look, but never perceive!
This people's heart has grown coarse,
their ears dulled, they have shut their eyes tight
to avoid using their eyes to see, their ears to hear,
their heart to understand,
changing their ways and being healed by me.
But blessed are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear!
The reason I have sometimes struggled with this passage is that it seems to imply that Jesus, rather than trying to help the listeners to hear and understand or to look and really see, seems content to confirm them in that space and to speak in such a way that blocks them out even further from the truth of life, so that those who have little will have even what they do have taken away.
But when I put this explanation into context by looking at the behaviour of the Pharisees in the previous chapter, and when I think about the ways supposedly religious people talk to and about each other in our own time, it all starts to make a bit more sense. There is simply no way to talk to someone who is firmly predisposed not to hear what you are saying. If everything in them is protecting their cherished ideas, or their status, or their livelihoods, or the mental paradigm that makes them safe in the world, they will simply not hear or see anything outside that. It's a self-defeating cycle. So when Jesus is saying that’ those who have much will be given more, and those who have little will lose what little they have', he's not being mean and unfair. He's talking about insight, or receptivity. And it is just simply the way things go that when you're open, and have the capacity for recognition, your insight and understanding will grow, and change, and increase. But if you're closed, and hostile to new insight, then whatever you do believe already will ossify, and no longer serve your needs in a changing world, and you will be left clinging on to dust.
What all that that means is that before people can receive the information that might help them to change, their ability to receive has to be transformed first, by some means that doesn't involve listening to someone talk discursively, no matter how persuasive they are. You cannot argue somebody into a vision of God's economy. It's a cycle that has to start with a circuit breaker, not by way of what is seen or heard in the ordinary way of things, but by way of some in-breaking moment, a crisis, a catastrophe – something that creates a big enough chink in the armour to let some real light in.
And until that happens, it is better to share your viewpoint in hidden, paradoxical or creative ways that don't buy into rational argument, that can't be so easily distorted or condemned, and that may have some chance of provoking an unexpected reversal of viewpoint. Jesus‘ way of doing this was by speaking in parables, which is reflected in his favourite phrase,’ let those with ears to hear, listen.‘ The implication being,’ and if you don't, you won't, and I'm not going to sweat it.‘ Again, when Jesus says’ don't cast your pearls before swine‘ I used to think he was being unnecessarily offensive. But now I realise that he was protecting his disciples against the ways that people behave when their certainties are challenged, and in the knowledge that no amount of gentle discourse will change that reality...only a particular kind of life experience or unusual spiritual intervention can do that. I find this quite relaxing – it frees me from any obligation to try and make everyone understand me and accept what I say. It frees me from the delusion that I can use my words, no matter how good the words might be, to change things, fix things, or’ get someone to see it my way.‘ It frees me from an attachment to wanting a particular communication event to result in the outcome that I desire.
But what of those of us who do feel that we are open and receptive to what Jesus has to say to us, how might the parables function in our lives? I recently came across a useful metaphor shift for understanding the idea of’ life in the Spirit‘ – again from my’ book of the moment‘ Simon P Walker's The Undefended Life. Walker questions the idea that living’ in the Spirit‘ is a kind of mystical state that has to do with being’ filled', like a vessel with a liquid inside, where we can have more or less of God in us filling us and flowing out from us. He suggests that instead of seeking to be’ more filled with the love of God', which can cause us to feel frustrated and guilty when we feel depleted, life in the Spirit is best expressed with a spatial metaphor:’ to live more fully in the life of God.'
He contends that most of us live in the fear narrative, the deepest inner story we tell ourselves is that life is fearful, the world and God and other people are essentially hostile and our job is to make ourselves safe in whatever ways we find to work for us. This fear narrative works like a whole environment, a’ headspace‘ if you like, in which we live and move and have our being. But conversion, entering into’ eternal life‘ is about changing the narrative we live within, putting on a different mind, and choosing moment by moment to live in a world where God is’ for us‘ and where all the fullness of love and grace are abundantly flowing towards us. All we have to do is adopt a posture of receptivity. This world, says Simon Walker, is’ within our reach...a reality that is simply veiled to us...it exists alongside this world of the flesh...inviting us into [it].‘ And he likens those moments when we do step into it as being like stepping through the surface of a mirror into a space where we breathe new air and we are free and at peace.
In my mind, the parables and teachings of Jesus are like portals to this world, wardrobes into Narnia if you like. When we enter into the mental space of the parable, we are breathing the air of God's kingdom just for a moment. The values and customs of this space are topsy turvy, kind of like a mirror world, and when we grasp them, we look back at our fear-driven world and ask how we could have gotten things so upside down. In the world of the parable, the last are first and the first are last, small is valuable and influential and big is unimportant, the rich suffer and the poor eat at God's banquet. In the world of the parables God is all about bountiful provision, and notions of deserving, fairness and reciprocal tit-for-tat behaviour are either irrelevant or outright rejected.
And this is something we can't be told, really. We have to live it, like opening our eyes underwater and discovering a whole world under the surface. Walker says’ we know when we have been there; we feel it like electricity.‘ When we open ourselves up to the impact of one of Jesus‘ parables, it's like having a taste of life in God's kingdom, life’ on the other side‘ of a veil that is always there, but always permeable. It's very different from what we might experience in affecting worship because it's experienced while in the midst of normal life. Which isn't to knock the value of worship that momentarily transforms our hearts and perceptions, just to say that what really counts is the shift that goes with us into the ordinariness and stresses of our daily existence.
We are going to take a short moment now to reflect on those moments in our journey with God where we have breathed the air of the realm of the Spirit in the midst of our life here in normal-land.
I invite you to ponder:
when have you experienced a glimpse of living in this alternative inner landscape?
What was the texture and feeling of this experience...taste, colour, emotional resonance?
What took you there – what was the cause of you suddenly being in this new realm?
What could you see, what did you know, while you were under the influence of the air of heaven?
How long did it last, and what caused you to return to your habitual ways of being and seeing?
I contend that it is Jesus‘ intent that we should live most of our lives from the other side of the veil, which is not to say abstracted from real life or somehow muted or detached, but actually more fully present and alive because we're not distracted by all our habits of self-protection. We will go on exploring what this might look like, and the practices that might support it, over the coming weeks and months.