“Growing Up”
Matthew 5: 38-48
February 20, 2011
Seventh Sunday of Epiphany
First United Church – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right check, turn the other also…”
I don’t know if Mohammed Bouazizi ever heard these words. As far as I can tell, the Quran doesn’t record Jesus’s discussion of “an eye for an eye”, so I kind of doubt that Bouazizi was thinking about this teaching while he decided to light himself on fire.
In case you missed it, Bouazizi died on January 4. A 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, many are saying he was the drop of water that finally caused a wave of revolution to come crashing through the Arab world.
On December 17, 2010 he set up his fruit cart like he had so many times before. And, just as had happened many times before, the officials showed up to confiscate his goods.
Bouazizi was poor. He had no family connections and no money to bribe the officials. They claimed that he did not have a permit to sell his fruit and, just as they had in the past, they took all the fruit that he had carefully paid for (on credit, I’d imagine). He needed that fruit to earn his daily bread. He needed that fruit so he could have something to take home to his mother and younger siblings.
The police officer that accosted him cursed his mother, spat in his face, and slapped him across the face. And, instead of turning the other cheek, as I can imagine he’d done so many times before, Bouazizi made a different plan.
He went to the governor’s office to lodge a complaint. No one would meet with him.
So he bought gasoline, went back to the governor’s office, and – less than one hour after his initial confrontation with the police – Mohammed Bouazizi, age 26, lit himself on fire. He was rushed to the hospital and admitted. He even received a visit from Tunisia’s president. But the recognition he wanted came too late. He died on January 4.
Thousands attended his funeral. He became, for many, a symbol of everything that was wrong with Tunisia. People who had been waiting to find their voices, did so. Tension mounted, protesters gathered, demands were made, the president fled and resigned, and on and on. We have, of course, been watching some version of this repeat itself in nation after nation in the past few weeks.
People who are tired of turning the other cheek have decided they aren’t going to do it anymore. People who are no longer willing to give up their cloak when the government takes their coat are speaking out. People who are exhausted from walking that first mile have decided to just sit down. They aren’t walking that second mile. You just can’t make them.
It’s a sight to see, to be sure.
And all of this confrontation and conflict and revolution and hope and upheaval seems to be the perfect backdrop as we discuss this well-known passage in Matthew’s gospel. We are still on the mountain with Jesus. If you’ll remember from last week, what we have here is essentially Matthew’s way of making sure everyone knows that he believe Jesus is the new Moses. So we have Jesus, up on a mountain, talking about the Law.
And Jesus challenges the notion of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” that the Jewish people had been living with for so long.
Now this is not to say that Jesus was dismantling the Law or somehow saying it was worthless. He was simply teaching in a very common rabbinic way – looking at earlier statements, picking them apart, taking issue with them, and spinning them into something new.
This passage has often been cited by Christians as an example of how Jesus came to bring a new religion that was the antithesis of Judaism. We now understand that Jesus was, in fact, a rabbi like so many others – he taught in ways that were typical of other rabbis and that included questioning traditional teachings.
While we’re on the subject of what this passage isn’t, let’s hit a couple other points.
First, this passage is not a call to be a doormat. For too long, this passage has been used by those in power to make marginalized groups and individuals feel as though God wants them to suffer in silence.
Enslaved people were told to be absolutely compliant to their masters, no matter what kind of brutal treatment the received. African Americans in our own society were told to quietly follow discriminatory laws that robbed them of their human dignity. Women and children who have been beat up by abusive husbands and parents have been told to suck it up and tough it out.
If you hear nothing else in this sermon, I want you to hear this: God is not telling you to be a doormat.
God does not wish for you to suffer silently while others disregard your humanity and disrespect the person God created you to be.
What God does want is for you to be made whole. And Jesus says so, right here in this passage: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Perfect is not a great word because it seems impossible. But that word can also be translated “mature.” God is not calling us to be flawless – God is calling us into wholeness. God is asking us to grow up and be the people she imagines we can be. And that brings us to another thing this passage is not: it’s not impossible.
In fact, if we look at this passage closely, with a careful understanding of first-century near eastern culture, what we find is a detailed reference guide for nonviolent resistance. It turns out Jesus isn’t telling us to be doormats and Jesus isn’t telling us to be perfect little girls and boys. Instead, Jesus is giving us step-by-step instructions for resisting evil.
First: “turn the other cheek.” What we typically imagine is that Jesus is saying, “If someone hits you, don’t fight back. Just let them hit you again on the other side of the face.” But what we’re missing in that interpretation is an understanding of how the enslaved were treated by their masters in first-century Palestine.
If a master wanted to reprimand his servant in public, he could strike her in a very prescribed way. The enslaved person was to stand before the master without coercion and the master could strike her with the back of his right hand. This wasn’t about physically hurting the enslaved person – it was about defining the master’s status – his power over the other.
But what would happen if she, after receiving that first blow, turned her head to the other side, presenting her left cheek?
The enslaved person appears to be subservient, but, in reality, she is exercising authority over her master because he is now unable to do anything. He cannot hit her with his left hand. He cannot hit her with the front of his right hand. But doing this one simple thing, she has rendered him powerless – at least for the moment.
Second: “give your cloak also.” In Jesus’s time, normal people would have had just two articles of clothing – a coat to protect them from the elements and a cloak, worn under the coat. It was essentially underwear.
So I want you to imagine a scenario where powerful person sues a impoverished person for some indiscretion. Instead of just giving up his coat, as asked for, he also takes off his underwear and stands there completely naked. It’s as if he’s saying, “Look, you want what I have? Fine. Take it all. I’ll just stand here naked and let you look like an idiot for taking advantage of me.”
In some ways, this seems to me like what happened to Mohammed Bouazizi. He had just the small cart of fruit. When the powerful took that away from him, he retaliated by doing something that he knew would cause them shame. By killing himself in such a public way, he stripped himself as naked as he could possibly be. And he did, indeed, bring shame to the powerful.
I know that God joins us in wishing he could have found another way to do this that didn’t involve sacrificing his life, but I also recognize that, by acting in such an extreme way, he shocked the rest of the world into paying attention. That’s the same kind of shock value Jesus is talking about here.
Third: “go the second mile.” Roman soldiers were allowed to conscript everyday folks to carry their packs when they felt like taking a break. A soldier could walk up to you on the street, ask you to leave whatever you were doing, and carry his heavy gear. But he could only ask you to carry it for one mile. After that, he’d need to find someone else to do his bidding.
Imagine what would happen if I kept going after that first mile. For starters, I can imagine I’d start to look pretty rough. Carrying that heavy pack in the hot sun – I’d start to sweat, and walk very slowly, and maybe even stagger a bit under the weight. The fit and powerful solider would pretty much look like a jerk, walking beside me empty handed. And what do you think would happen if his commanding officer showed up and saw me struggling? The solider could really get in a lot of trouble for breaking the rules and allowing me to carry his pack more than a mile.
This image of a normal everyday person walking is powerful. Something about moving forward, participating in this everyday act for a specific reason – it’s powerful. I’m reminded of Gandhi’s Salt March; the citizens of Montgomery, Alabama walking to work during the bus boycott; and Jigme Norbu – the nephew of the Dalai Lama and a Bloomington native. Norbu was struck by a car and killed while marching across Florida for Tibetan freedom just this past week.
With these images of a solitary freedom walker, a protester stripped naked by a ruthless system, and a proudly defiant enslaved person silently disarming her master, Jesus points the way towards nonviolent resistance. Jesus isn’t telling us we should just lay down and let people walk all over us. Jesus is giving us creative tips for how to resist in very real ways.
Jesus does this because he understands that God has a very real dream for each person in the world. God believes, quite deeply and truly, that each of us has the potential to grow up.
Each of us can mature. God knows that we have the ability to become whole. And God knows that the way to get there isn’t through violence or physical retaliation. We are not called to return hate for hate, but to go deeper, work harder, and find within ourselves the capacity to love even in the midst of hatred.
This is not the kind of syrupy Hallmark-card love that we celebrated on Valentines Day last week. This is agape love.
Dr. King defined agape love as “understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men.” I like that.
It’s not about loving someone because they make your tummy do flips, or because you want something from them, or because they’ve done something nice for you. Instead, it’s a love that shows good will towards all people. And it’s powerful stuff. It is love that understands where the other is coming from. It is a love that moves in creative ways towards wholeness in relationship. It is a love that redeems.
Agape love is what makes it possible to stand up for your God-given rights in ways that aren’t violent. Agape love is what gives us the true desire to teach the enemy a better way – and that can only happen through nonviolent action, not by returning hate for hate in a retaliatory manner.
Where do you need the power of agape love in your life? Who are the enemies that God is calling you to love?
You don’t have to like them, mind you, but God is calling you to love them.
God is calling you to see them with the same eyes he sees them with. Jesus is calling you to remember that even your worst enemy is just as loved by God as you are.
That’s a shocking statement and, to be honest, it’s not one that’s easy to hear.
When I think about all the folks in the Indiana House of Representatives that voted last week to further denigrate my friends who are gay and lesbian by attempting to amend our constitution to take away their God-given rights to love and be in partnership, I’ll be honest – I don’t much like to think that God smiles on those people the same way God smiles on me.
When I think about the U.S. Congress – which, in the past few weeks has attacked women by attempting to redefine the word “rape” and by cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, I don’t much like to think that God calls me to love those folks on Capitol Hill.
Like it or not, though, it’s true. God loves us all.
And the good news is that God doesn’t ask us to sit idly by and allow people to take away our dignity or treat us in abusive ways.
Instead, God is holding out hope that all of us – people who are taking to the streets in Northern Africa and the Middle East, people who are trying to take away our friends’ rights, and people like me who are far from perfect – God is holding out hope that each one of us has the ability to learn to love each other into better behavior and grow up.
God is holding out hope – and all we have to do is grab it and hold on for our dear lives.
