Non-Violent Resistance

February 19, 2017

Linda Murphy          

Ordinary 7     Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18     Psalm 119:33-40     1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23      Matthew 5:38-48

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The Sermon on the Mount continues with ten more verses which if interpreted literally accepts submission and passivity to an oppressive power and if the translation is poor can and has led to the justification of a ’just war’.

Theses passages are tragically mis-interpreted because we have failed to put these words into the context in which it was written. Matthew’s gospel was written at a time of considerable tension between the oppressor Rome and the people of 1st century Palestine.

The behaviours Jesus describes – slapping the right cheek; suing; forcing to go a mile was not the kind of things “anyone” could do. They were the kind of actions only a privileged few could do and did to the crowds who were listening to Jesus.

Slapping the right cheek, this was done by Masters to their servants and slaves. It was always done by hitting with the back of the right hand across the right cheek. The blow was about asserting status and power over the other. This action was about rank, privilege and power.

By offering the other cheek it appears that you become doubly subservient; doubly accepting of your master’s authority over you. However by offering the other cheek you are rendering your master powerless! He cannot strike your left cheek with the back of his right hand. Doing this publicly would expose the master to shame and ridicule.

Jesus audience were people subjected to these very indignities, forced to stifle outrage at their dehumanizing treatment by the hierarchical system of caste and class, race and gender, age and status, and as a result of imperial occupation.

The next verse concerning suing suggests giving everything you have away including your under clothes! Indebtedness was endemic in first century Palestine. It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy. Why then does Jesus advise to give over not only their cloak but also their undergarments? By stripping, the debtor has brought the creditor under the same prohibition that led to the curse of Canaan. The entire system by which debtors are oppressed has been publicly unmasked. The creditor is reveled to be not a legitimate moneylender but a party to the reduction of an entire social class to landlessness, destitution, and abasement. This unmasking is not simply punitive, therefore; it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause, and to repent.

The third example of going the extra mile is drawn from the relatively enlightened practice of limiting the amount of forced or impressed labour that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples to a single mile. As with Jesus’ two previous examples by offering to walk for another mile, the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed.

Begging and borrowing, then as now were complex social interactions that involves negotiating honour and shame, social respect and status and money. The teaching here is directed to those who have, not to the poor. It changes the social relationship to one of kinship. Jesus is telling us to treat beggars and borrowers as if they were our whanau. While this was an excellent system in Jesus time I would ask that you don’t go out and give to our beggars on Queen St, rather direct them to the City Mission for assistance.

The last of our verses today are about loving your enemy. Once again there is a need to place this in the context of the time. It means to be attached to them; to care for their welfare and their fair and just treatment and this is probably harder to achieve than just saying “love your enemy”.

In fact Rodney Stark author of “The Rise of Christianity” has argued that the early Christian willingness to love actively and indiscriminately, especially in relieving the miseries and hardships of urban life suffered by the majority poor in the cities like Antioch, was a major factor in Christianity’s growth.

Jesus was not forbidding self-defense here, only the use of violence. Nor is he legitimating the abandonment of nonviolence in order to defend the neighbours. He is rather showing us a way that can be used by individuals or large movements to intervene on behalf of justice for our neighbours-nonviolently.

Jesus is offering a way to liberation from servile actions and a servile mentality.

Gandhi did this. Martin Luther King Jr did this. Mother Theresa did this, as did Cesar Chavez.

A few weeks ago Peter and I saw a film called “Hidden Figures. This was a film about how iintelligence and drive can surmount the influence of bigotry, harassment, bullying and discrimination.

Interest to make this film was sparked by a photograph of staff at NASA taken in 1961, where a group of some 30 Afro-American women were standing separately from the rest of the employees who were largely white and male. Digging deeper the author uncovered an inspiring story of three of those coloured women who battled the ignominy of not only being a women in the male dominated world of the early 1960’s but also being coloured in the segregated Southern states of the United States of American to become some of the most respected employees ever at NASA in the fields of mathematics, engineering and computing. In the process the bigots, bullies, harassers and discriminators were shown to be the frail victims of the environment they were brought up in.

This film was powerful and was an example of the power of non-violent resistance against an unjust system.

The recent Women’s marches all over the world protesting the appointment of Donald Trump as President of the United States would be the most current non-violent protest. However history is scattered with examples of nonviolent resistance as a means of social change and all going well this movement will continue. Many here today have been part of protest movements and when presented with injustice and unfairness within our society we follow the words of today’s gospel.

Out of the heart of the prophetic tradition, Jesus engaged the Domination System in both its outer and spiritual manifestations. His teaching on nonviolence forms the charter for a way of being in the world that breaks the spiral of violence. Jesus here reveals a way to fight evil with all our power without being transformed into the very evil we fight.

When we turn the other cheek, when we give to one who needs, when we love our enemy, we do something the consequences of which we cannot immediately measure, but it is something noticeable enough that the created order moves just a little bit, a little closer to God, each time it happens…

Amen.