+ In the Love of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We continue to witness the incredible revolution as Egyptians reclaim their dignity and their nation in non-violent protests. And now we are watching as non-violent protestors take to the streets in other Middle East countries― and in Wisconsin!
These non-violent protests are the progeny of this morning’s readings from Leviticus and Matthew’s Gospel. Both passages forbid retaliation and violence.
In our reading from Leviticus, God says, “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself . . . .”
And in St. Matthew’s Gospel (5:38-48), Jesus says, “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.”
Jesus begins by citing a legal principle known as lex talionis― the law of retaliation. Now to us, the idea that if someone pokes out my eye, I get to poke out his eye, sounds barbaric. But the original purpose of lex talionis was to limit retaliation, so that I couldn’t kill you for poking out my eye.
But when Jesus says, “Do not resist an evildoer,” many Christians think that we are supposed to submit to evildoers and let them do whatever they wish.
This past Wednesday I read an article in The New York Times about Dr. Gene Sharp. He wrote a book, now in its fourth edition, titled From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. At the very beginning of his book he writes:
“‘Political defiance’ is nonviolent struggle (protest, noncooperation, and intervention) applied defiantly and actively for political purposes. The term originated in response to the confusion and distortion created by equating nonviolent struggle with pacifism and moral or religious ‘nonviolence.’ ‘Defiance’ denotes a deliberate challenge to authority by disobedience, allowing no room for submission” (p. 1).
Keeping those words in mind, let’s return to our Gospel. After Jesus says, “Do not resist an evil doer,” he gives three examples, all of which are examples of what Gene Sharp describes as “deliberate challenges to authority”:
“But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. . . .”
Last November I preached on the parallel passage from Luke’s Gospel, demonstrating how turning the other cheek is a deliberate challenge to the authority of the person who delivers a backhanded slap. Turning the other cheek forces the other person to treat me as an equal.
The next two examples are unambiguous examples of political defiance.
“. . . and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. . . .”
As a direct result of Rome’s imperial policy of high taxation, many Jews owed money, like the debtor hauled into court in Jesus’ example. But after giving up his cloak as well as his coat, the debtor wouldn’t be wearing any clothes at all, thus bringing shame on the court. In another publication, Gene Sharp lists 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action, including: “Protest disrobings.”
“. . . and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”
The occupying Roman army had the right to force people to carry burdens for one mile. It’s what happened when soldiers forced Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. By going a second mile voluntarily, the person reclaims his freedom to choose, and perhaps even gets the soldiers into trouble― they were forbidden to force someone to go a second mile!
These three examples show that when Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not resist an evildoer,” he doesn’t mean that we should submit passively to evildoers; instead, he means that we should resist creatively. In fact, the Greek word translated “resist” is a military term for armed resistance. So when Jesus says, “Do not resist an evildoer,” a better translation is, “Do not resist an evildoer violently” (Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992], pp 178-179, and 267-269 passim).
I’m reading a fascinating book by Eliza Griswold titled The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line between Christianity and Islam (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). She writes:
“‘When the West sneezes, Africa catches a cold.’ I first heard this expression from a Nigerian pastor named James Movel Wuye, who works alongside his former mortal enemy, Imam Muhammed Nurayn Ashafa, to bring about a change of consciousness in the way Nigeria’s Muslims and Christians view one another. During the eighties and nineties, the two leaders taught thousands of young people to kill, and now they “reprogram” them to tolerate each other’s differences. Tolerance is a word of which both are wary, since to them it smacks of a moral relativism to which they do not subscribe. To them, it suggests they should tolerate heresy and falsehood. Each strictly adheres to the tenets of his respective faith and unabashedly calls himself a fundamentalist” (p. 66).
. . .
“‘I used to say, “We’ve been beaten on both cheeks, there’s no other cheek to turn,”’ [Pastor James] said, teaching others to justify bloodshed by relying on the literal, inspired word of scripture. Once it was a call to violence couched in self-defense. ‘I used Luke 22:36―as Jesus said to the disciples the night before his crucifixion, “And if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.”’ When the pastor was thirty-two, a fight broke out between Christians and Muslims over control of a market. ‘That day we were outnumbered,’ he said. ‘Twenty of my friends were killed. I passed out, so I don’t know exactly what happened.’ When he woke up, his right arm was gone, sliced off with a machete” (p. 67-68).
Pastor James had neglected another inspired word of scripture, when Jesus had warned that those who take up the sword will perish by the sword (Matthew 26:52; see also Luke 22:36-38, 49-53).
Here’s an excerpt from The New York Times article about Dr. Gene Sharp “When the nonpartisan International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which trains democracy activists, slipped into Cairo several years ago to conduct a workshop, among the papers it distributed was Mr. Sharp’s 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action. . . . Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian blogger and activist who attended the workshop and later organized similar sessions on her own, said trainees were active in both the Tunisia and Egypt revolts. She said that some activists translated excerpts of Mr. Sharp’s work into Arabic, and that his message of ‘attacking weaknesses of dictators” stuck with them. . . . ‘If you fight with violence,’ Mr. Sharp said, ‘you are fighting with your enemy’s best weapon....’”
This morning Jesus says to us again, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
May we all hear Jesus again, perhaps for the first time.
Amen.
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