February 20, 2011

Geno Sisneros

Epiphany 7 
    Matthew 5:38-48

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that when I saw the Gospel reading the lectionary called for today, a small part of me wanted to call in sick. I find Jesus' words in this text some of the most challenging in the whole of the New Testament. I'll be honest, I did try to call in sick but our priest-in-charge only responded to my text with a hearty laugh. So... here I am.

The part of today's Gospel reading that is causing my anxiety are Jesus' words, “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 cheek, turn the other also.”

This text has long been used to show that Jesus was a pacifist in the strictest sense of the term – completely and absolutely opposed to violence or the use of force in any situation.

I do get the whole condemnation of the eye for eye, tooth for tooth mentality. Someone once said a society who lives by that type of justice ends up becoming an eyeless, toothless society. But I also realise the sentiment behind that mentality was a way to put a limit on just how much a wronged party could exact in retribution from you. For example, you could not demand the life of a person who stole cattle from you under this type of justice. But you could demand something equivalent up to the value of the stolen cattle, but nothing more.

So mainly, my anxiety is that I've never been comfortable with the interpretation of the rest of the text. “Do not resist an evildoer” and “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” That Jesus commands us to become a doormat, a punching bag, when someone punches you in your stomach, are you to lift up your head and let them knock out your teeth as well, it seems unreasonable! I cannot imagine giving a person in an abusive relationship such horrible advice saying – Jesus said, “turn the other cheek.” But Jesus doesn't seem to allow for any exceptions here or am I wrong?

As Biblical scholar Walter Wink has said, Jesus understood this way, makes him impractical, masochistic, suicidal, doormat, cowardly, complicit.

But having said all that, as Christians we know through our faith and through our past experience that the text can indeed bless us because we believe in the integrity and the message of Jesus. But from my perspective, things are not looking so good for this particular text. But – like Jacob wrestling with the angel of the Lord for his blessing, I'm willing to wrestle with Jesus to try to get mine.

Theology students are taught the most important tool in Biblical Studies during their first year – putting text into context. This means that we acknowledge that we cannot wrestle with a Biblical text without looking at the three worlds that exist around any given piece of Biblical writing. These three worlds are: the world in the text (in this case Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount), the world behind the text (the Sermon on the Mount only appears in Matthew's Gospel so the context here is the community Matthew wrote for) and the world in front of the text (this is you and I).

Matthew wrote probably a few years after the Temple had been destroyed and Jerusalem had fallen at the hands of the emperor Titus in the year 70. We know that each of the four Gospels strongly reflect what was happening in the life of the community to whom they were written for. At the time Matthew's Gospel was written his community was in the midst of transition and great distress. Themes of oppression and conflict were still very real to them. So it’s easy to see why Matthew's Jesus provides teaching on these themes.

When Matthew's Jesus says to not 'resist' an evildoer, the Greek word translated as “resist” is antistenai. Literally, anti which is 'against' and stenai which is 'stand' – to 'stand against'. “Do not ‘stand against’ an evildoer.” We see this word many times in the Hebrew Bible where it is used mainly in military terms. The image is that of two armies pushing against each other, neither backing down until they have annihilated the other.

Matthew's Jesus used this word explicitly because he knew it would incite images of military and war in the minds of his listeners. This sentence is a teaching about the response to military force.

Walter Wink's inspiring interpretation here is that evolution equips us with two responses in the face of that kind of violence, fight-or-flight. That is either, to fight back using violence against violence, or to run only to be hunted down or sit passively by and be killed. Wink believes that Jesus is challenging us in this text to find a ‘Third Way’. In saying “do not stand against an oppressor”; Jesus is warning us not to become what we hate. Answering violence with violence takes us down the downward spiral of more violence.

And what of the next sentence, “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also”.

If we think literally about this sentence it sounds here like Jesus is speaking only to left-handed people! But I don’t think he thought they were more violent than right-handed people so there must be something more to it? To strike someone on the right cheek would require that we be left-handed. But we know in the Jewish culture of first century Palestine, the left hand was considered unclean. You wouldn't wave out to someone in the street with your left hand and you certainly wouldn’t strike them with it.

Aside from the fact that the left hand was considered unclean, “the left hand symbolized the power to shame society and was used as a metaphor for misfortune.” [2]

The word ‘left’ was a negative term. Even today we use the word 'right' as the opposite of wrong/left. The Greek word ‘Orthodox’ means ‘right thinking’, as opposed to ‘left’ or ‘wrong thinking’. We have a bill of “rights”, not a bill of ‘lefts’. The English word “sinister” comes from Latin for the word 'left'. ‘

Matthew’s community would have understood the connotation here. To strike someone on the right cheek, you would have to use the back of your right hand. You would back-hand them. Back handing someone is not usually used to injure them but to humiliate them. The back-hand was used by a master to a slave, by a husband to his wife, by a father to any of his children. The idea here is that if someone backhanded me on my right cheek, ‘turning the other cheek’ to them would be a way to protest their mal-treatment of me, a way of re-affirming my humanity and of highlighting their shameful behaviour.

I think all of these understandings also serve to illustrate that violence is never actually just about violence , it is always about domination. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ is seeking to teach non violent responses to domination. Jesus was challenging Matthew’s community to find a “Third Way”.

The past few weeks have been remarkable. The uprisings by the people of Tunisia and Egypt, among other places, have shown that with united minds and united voices, sometimes, there can be a Third Way. History has also shown that to be true. The Third Way in these situations have been about nonviolent protest and civil disobedience – not resisting violence on its own terms. However, I can’t help but think of the victims of genocide throughout history and what the Third Way meant for them. The Third Way, at times, seems easier said than done.

I wish I could say that I’ve completely wrestled my blessing out of the text, but I haven’t. I do have a greater understanding and a greater appreciation of Jesus’ teaching and because of that, I believe God, through Jesus, has given us hope. I pray that more and more each day, our hearts and minds are opened wider to the Third Way. In the meantime, I will keep wrestling, and I hope you will too.

[1] I am grateful for the work of Walter Wink who inspired this sermon.

[2] Hamilton, Jeffries (1992). Social Justice and Deuteronomy: the Case of Deuteronomy 15. Atlanta: Scholar's Press.