Matthew 5:38-48
Our scripture reading today is one that has a complicated past. It has been misused a lot by the church as a way to silence victims of abuse and discrimination. Turn the other cheek, and love your enemies have been turned into tools for people in power to use to silence those they wield power over. Sometimes it’s a domestic abuse victim who goes to their pastor only to be told they have to love their abuser more and everything will be fine. Sometimes it’s a person who was sexually abused by a priest as a kid and when they finally come forward are told they have to forgive while their abuser isn’t held accountable. Sometimes it’s a minority trying to stand up for their rights, only to be told they are going against God by “hating” the people who oppress them. For me it was a high school bully who told me “you can’t be a Christian and hate people.” It was a professor who made an incredibly offensive and stereotypical remark about a minority community, and when we tried to speak to him about it, he defended what he said and then told us we had to “give him grace” and forgive him because that’s what the bible says.
This scripture that we read today is a perfect example of what happens if you take scripture out of its historical context. “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” We read those words today with our 21st century, western worldview, and we hear Jesus commanding us to be passive. Don’t fight back, submit to mistreatment, let people walk all over you. If you fight back, you’re as bad as they are, you’re not loving them. But the problem is, that’s not what Jesus was saying here.
The difficulty we have with this passage begins with verse 39: “But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.” That seems to set up the rest of what Jesus says to be about passivity and submission to oppression. I’m reading from the NRSV, but pretty much every translation says the same thing. King James say “that ye not resist evil”, the Message, “don’t hit back at all,” Common English Bible, “you must not oppose those that want to hurt you,” Easy to Read Version, “don’t fight back against someone who wants to do harm to you.” It seems pretty clear when you read it in English. But the Bible wasn’t written in English. And if we go back to the Greek, we find something very interesting in this statement. The word we translate as resist, anthistemi, is a military word. It refers to soldiers taking their stand to resist an opposing army. Which is really significant because there are other words in Greek that mean resist that don’t refer to the military. Which means that a better translation of verse 39 would be “do not use violence to resist an evildoer.” “Do not fight back with violence against someone who wants to do you harm.” I don’t know about you, but to me, that means something completely different. Jesus isn’t saying, don’t defend yourself, don’t fight back, just passively submit to evil and oppression. Jesus is saying, don’t respond to violence with more violence.
Now you might be thinking right now, but what about the rest of it about turning the other cheek and going the second mile? Doesn’t that support the other translation? Except this is why we need to understand the historical context of scripture. We need to understand the social norms and rules of that day, the political situation that Jesus and his followers were living in. Jesus lived under the oppressive rule of the Roman empire. His followers were people like him, poor, marginalized, people with no power. His message was especially popular among women, slaves, day laborers, the disabled, people who were treated badly by the rest of society. And he spoke to them not as a person of power who wanted to keep the status quo, but as an equal who wanted to help them find ways to claim their dignity in the face of injustice and oppression. So he gave them examples, not of ways to submit passively to their oppressors, but of ways to resist nonviolently.
Let’s look at the first example: “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” There are a couple of things we need to understand about ancient middle eastern culture. First, the left hand was only used for cleaning oneself. It was a huge taboo to touch anyone with your left hand. So if you are hitting someone, you have to use your right hand. But Jesus specifies, if anyone strikes you on the right cheek. To hit someone on the right cheek with your right hand, you have to backhand them. At that time backhanding was reserved for only people who were your inferior. So a master might backhand their slave, or a Roman soldier might backhand a Jew. And the person who was struck was expected to grovel and apologize and passively submit to the person who struck them. But if they say, ok, now strike me on the left cheek, now they’ve created a dilemma for the person who hit them.
In order to hit someone on the left cheek with your right hand, you have to hit them with your palm. And that was an action reserved to challenge someone. Hitting someone with your palm meant acknowledging them as your equal. So, let’s say you’re a slave, and you’ve just been backhanded by your master, and you say, strike me on the left cheek, you’ve given them two options. Either they can strike you again, and acknowledge you as an equal based on the social norms of the day, or they can back down. Either way, you have asserted your dignity into the situation, you have resisted the unjust act your master has just performed, without using violence to do it. And now you’ve made them uncertain about their power to humiliate and control you.
So what about the second one? “If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” This is another case of a poor translation. What we’re talking about here is an outer garment, and an undergarment. If anyone wants to take your outer garment, give them your undergarment as well. At that time, if someone sued you, and you weren’t immediately able to pay, you had to give something as collateral until you paid off your debt. If the only thing a person has to give as collateral is their coat, it means they are incredibly poor, and will probably never be able to pay off the debt. So we’re talking about an act of injustice here, suing a person who will never be able to pay, and then taking away the only thing they have. So why does Jesus say to give their undergarment as well? At that time, if someone saw you naked, the shame fell on them for seeing you, not on you for being naked. So Jesus is saying, take off the rest of your clothes, stand there in the middle of the court naked, cause every person involved to be shamed for seeing you naked. By doing so, it draws attention to the injustice of what is happening, both that the person sued you and took your only belongings, and that the court allowed it to happen. The shame they experience seeing you naked is the shame they should be feeling for the way they have treated you. And once again, you’ve resisted their injustice without any violence.
And finally the third example: “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” At that time, Roman soldiers could force people to carry their gear for up to one mile. After that they had to either carry their own gear again or find someone else to force to carry it. Limiting this to only one mile was kind of a way to appease the people that the Romans ruled over, to keep them from getting too upset about the way they were treated. And if a Roman soldier forced someone to go more than a mile, they would get in a lot of trouble with their superiors. So imagine you’re travelling down the road, and you meet a soldier, and he makes you carry his gear, which keep in mind, could weigh over 100 pounds. We’re talking armor, weapons, food, all of it. So you carry it one mile, and at the end of the mile the soldier goes to take it back from you, but you keep walking. And he knows he’s going to get in trouble if anyone finds out, so he is begging you to give back his gear, but you just keep walking for another mile. And the entire way, this soldier is following you, his inferior, begging you to return his gear so he isn’t punished for breaking the law. Once again, you’ve completely turned the tables on him. Now you are the one with power in the situation, and he is humiliated in the way that he intended to humiliate you. And you did it all without using violence.
So Jesus, speaking to the lowest members of society, teaches them to use nonviolent methods to resist their oppressors. And immediately after that, he tells them “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” But Jesus, weren’t you just telling us to call them out and make them feel ashamed of how they treated us? Now you want us to love them? Which one is it? Well, it’s both. Those are not contradictory instructions. You see, when you are a marginalized person, loving your oppressors does not mean letting them continue to mistreat you. Listen to that again: loving your oppressors does not mean letting them continue to mistreat you. When someone is abusing or discriminating against another person, it is not love to let them continue unchecked. Abuse, discrimination, prejudice, bigotry, these things are sins. The loving thing to do is to call them to repentance, to show them that what they are doing is wrong because it is harming God’s beloved children. God desires the reconciliation of all people, not just that we restore our relationship to God, but that we restore our relationships with one another, so that we can create peace in this world. But there can be no reconciliation without repentance. And so, the way that we love the people who have harmed us, it to call them to repent. And we stand with people who have been abused by calling the people who harmed them to repentance on behalf of the victims when they cannot do it themselves.
Jesus’ instructions here are difficult. The world teaches us that when we are mistreated, abused, discriminated against, our only options are to either passively take it, or fight back with violence. But Jesus offers us a third way, to use nonviolence to resist, to draw attention to the injustice, and then to call the person who has harmed us to repentance. We live in a world that is full of violence and injustice, but Jesus calls on us to break that cycle of violence. It’s not an easy thing to do. It takes creativity, it takes courage, it takes love, and it takes belief that there is a better way. The world wants us to think that our options are to either suffer in silence or respond in kind. But Jesus teaches us that we can live differently. We can break the cycle and choose both peace and justice. Jesus didn’t passively stand by when people were suffering. He healed people he wasn’t supposed to, he ate with outcasts, he turned over tables in protest of injustice, he called out the religious leaders for their mistreatment of marginalized people and called them to repent. And then he taught us how to do the same. So, let us go, and do likewise.