A Slap in the Face--July 4, 2023

A Slap in the Face--July 4, 2023

[Jesus said:] "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...'" [Matthew 5:38-39]

How did Booker T. Washington put it?  "I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."  Yeah, I think he was on to something.  I think Booker T. Washington knew something about how the way of Jesus works.

These words from Matthew 5 come from the heart of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, and, to be honest, we modern Christians have found all sorts of ways to miss the point of Jesus' teaching here, or to outright ignore it.  But when we listen to Jesus' words and take him on his own terms, I think we'll find that Booker T. Washington was pointing us on the right path--these words are about refusing to give bullies and enemies power over us by making us hate them, or to sink to their level in returning evil for evil.  Love includes the refusal to let someone else's rottenness dictate my behavior in response.

But to see how we get there, I'm going to ask you to follow along with me for a moment.  To do that, I'm going to lean on the insights of other scholars and authors (I'm thinking right now of Walter Wink's work with this and similar passages, if you're interested in further reading along these lines.) First off, let's take a closer look at the details Jesus offers us.  He begins quoting a passage from ancient Israel's code of laws: the lex talionis [law of retaliation], most well-known as "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."  Everybody had heard those words in Jesus' audience, because they're a core legal principle in the Torah, as familiar to Jesus' hearers as "innocent until proven guilty" or "You have the right to remain silent" in our culture.  But out of context, it's easy to hear "an eye for an eye" and assume that the law was requiring revenge and commanding victims to get back at their assailants, when the original intention of the Torah was to limit how much you could do in response to someone else's hostility.  In its original setting, the commandment was saying, "If someone harms you, you are not allowed to do more to them than they did to you; so if they punched you and knocked a tooth out, you're not allowed to stab them in the chest or threaten the life of their child as payback."  Jesus knew that his listeners had heard the words "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" before, but over enough centuries it was easy to yank those words out of context and turn them into permission (or even requirement) for revenge, rather than an attempt to limit retaliation.

Okay, so things are maybe a little bit clearer here.  But next we need to explore the details around the hands Jesus mentions.  Jesus' statement here in Matthew specifies striking someone on the "right cheek."  Now, in a culture like the ancient near East, in which the right hand is dominant for just about everyone (and there were strict rules that the left hand was used for less savory tasks like bathroom-related functions, while the right hand was for dominant use in most other everyday interpersonal uses), hitting someone else on their right cheek with your right hand meant you were doing a back-hand slap. (Go ahead, picture it in your mind--if you're facing your imaginary opponent and you are going to use your right hand to strike them, the only way you can hit their right cheek is to use the back of your hand.) That's not a punch thrown between equals, but an attempt to belittle someone--to shame them, to insult them, and to dehumanize them.  

So when Jesus says, 'If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also," it does two things at once.  First of all, it says to the opponent, "I will not let you demean me by treating me as if I am somehow beneath you; if you are going to strike me, I'm going to insist you treat me as an equal and you'll have to commit assault and punch in the face."  It refuses to accept the terms your opponent is trying to force you into--to put you down in order push themselves up.  It is also a way of shocking the opponent into seeing how they are treating you, and saying that you will not be treated as less than someone made in the image of God--and yet it also recognizes that even your opponent is made in the image of God as well.  And that's the power of this response: by turning the other cheek, you force your opponent to confront what they've done to you, and you force them to either treat you as a social equal if they are going to pursue their hostilities, but it also doesn't give them any further ground to hate you or attack you.  It's back to Booker T. Washington's insight--we refuse to give another person the power to make us distort our souls, our deepest selves, by hating them and sinking to their level.  In one move, the person who has been struck simultaneously refuses to be demeaned, asserts their own worth and dignity (as if to say, "You'll regard me as an equal or not at all"), avoiding sinking to the level of the attacker, and offers a way forward without giving the attacker any justification for their attack.  In other words, it refuses to let your course of action be decided by the rottenness of the hostile opponent.  It bears with their choice to cause harm without being forced to cause harm in return.

That is downright revolutionary.  And that's Jesus for you.

Sometimes people accuse Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount of being too idealistic, too naive, or too oblivious of the meanness and violence of other people.  I respectfully disagree--I'm convinced that it is precisely Jesus' clear-eyed realism that makes his teaching so powerful.  Jesus knows that we cannot often (hardly ever) control what other people will do to us, and he is unwilling to let go of his commitment that all people--even bullies--are made in the image of God.  So Jesus doesn't teach us to fight other people's evil with more evil, and he doesn't think we can force people to be good with threats or intimidation.  But we can control what we do, how we respond, and whether we break the old cycles of hatred and violence or not. Jesus' teaching does not require us to live in a fantasy world where everyone learns their lesson and behaves kindly in the end; he assumes we live in the real world, and he prepares us to respond to that world without giving in to the rottenness all around.

The longer I live on this planet, the more I am convinced that learning to love requires us to be equipped to deal with the world as it is, knowing that we cannot force others to behave lovingly or peaceably, but we can refuse to give in to the impulse of others to be hostile and violent.  That's where today's calling leads us--to go high when others go low, in order that they might be jolted into a change of perspective and action.  It means, above all, as Booker T. Washington says it, the refusal to let our souls be distorted by letting anybody else make us hate them.

Lord Jesus, enable us to break the old cycles of seeking revenge while still insisting that you see us all as beloved and worthy of dignity.