February 23, 2014
MATTHEW 5:38-48
38“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;
and if anyone wants to sue
you and take your coat, give your cloak as well;
and if anyone forces you to
go one mile, go also the second mile.
Give to everyone who begs
from you,
and do not refuse anyone who
wants to borrow from you.
“You have heard that it was
said,
‘You shall love your neighbor
and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you,
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.
For if you love those who
love you, what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax
collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your
brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?
Do not even the Gentiles do
the same?
Be perfect, therefore, as
your heavenly Father is perfect.”
***
This is a dangerous text.
This is a dangerous text any way you read it. It is a text of both the
oppressor and the oppressed. It is a text of violence, and a text of peace. It
is a text of passivity, and a text of action. There is danger any way you read
it, and perhaps that is why Jesus preached it in the Sermon on the Mount,
because he knew the danger.
There is a danger in turning
the other cheek. There is a danger in a victim of domestic violence believing
Jesus calls her to turn the other cheek. There is a danger in, ‘if anyone wants
to sue you and take your coat, to give your cloak as well;’ there is a danger
when a cloak and a coat is all the homeless might have. There is a danger in
after being forced to walk mile, to go one more when a Native American is
walking a Trail of Tears. There is even a danger to give to everyone who begs
from you, when our elderly are preyed upon through crooked telephone schemes.
This is a dangerous text, that can keep the oppressed down, without a coat,
forced to walk mile after mile, with both cheeks struck and wounded, bodies
naked, exhausted, and poor. Yet, perhaps, even these things are not the most
dangerous part of this text, the danger of which Jesus knows, is much more
subversive, and I am afraid much more common.
There is perhaps the gravest
danger in our colloquial use of, ‘turn the other cheek.’ This phrase has come
to mean that to do nothing is take the higher ground, that to be silent about
an issue is to be virtuous. “Turn the other cheek,” has become to the
Christian, as, “Bless her heart,” is to the Southerner - that one can gossip
about any number of things and then magnanimously claim to, ‘turn the other
cheek.’ But this is not the gospel, this is dangerous. ‘Turn the other
cheek,’ in this form is as dangerous as the word, “wait,” from White Southern
Preachers before receiving a Letter from the Birmingham Jail. MLK writes,
“For years now I have heard
the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing
familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant “Never."
Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of
segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch
your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim;
…..then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. I have almost
reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in
his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux
Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than
to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
There is a danger in, ‘wait,’
a danger in societies’ ‘turn the other cheek,’ but there is also a danger in
MLK writing a Letter from the Birmingham Jail. The former is the danger against
which Jesus preachers and the latter is the danger Jesus suggests as a
response. Letter from the Birmingham Jail is a danger that turns the opposite
cheek of silence into the cheek of words, that turns the opposite cheek of
inaction to the cheek of action. This is the danger of which Jesus preaches and
later MLK writes,
“We began a series of
workshops on nonviolence, and we repeatedly asked ourselves : "Are you
able to accept blows without retaliating?" "Are you able to endure
the ordeal of jail?" We decided to schedule our direct-action program for
the Easter season, realizing that except for Christmas, this is the main
shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program
would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this would be the best
time to bring pressure to bear on the merchants for the needed change.”
If the white merchants were
not going to serve the blacks in equal ways, then the blacks were not going to
be served at all. When someone forced them to walk a mile, they marched another
also. The response was neither to turn the other cheek that oppression might
continue, nor to turn the other cheek of silence, but to turn the other cheek
of a dangerously creative response, a Christian response. To respond to evil
and unrighteousness, with dangerous creativity.
Dangerous creativity is be
the Kent State Student who stuck a daisy in the barrel of a gun. Dangerous
creativity is to respond to the Oklahoma
bombing with a picture of a firefighter holding a rescued baby. Dangerous
Creativity is to respond to a Star Spangled Banner of oppression by raising the
Black Power fist from the podium at the 1986 Olympics or to wear a snowboarding
helmet with a rainbow on it at Sochi
today. Dangerous creativity is for a navy sailor to respond to the end of WWII
by kissing a nurse in the middle of Times Square.
Dangerous creativity is to respond to the tanks in Tiananmen
Square by being the solitary student who stood in front of them.
Dangerous creativity is to be a gather of women in the 1920s in Seneca Falls. Dangerous creativity is to be Southminister
Presbyterian Church in Boise
who attends the Pride Parade and offers apologies to GLBTQ community for the
hurt caused by the Church. Dangerous Creativity is to respond to hunger with
gathering of breakfast for middle schoolers or to sit around the table on Wednesday night breaking from the hurried schedule of our
youth to share highs and lows of the week and week to come. This is dangerous
creativity, and it is the creativity of God.
God, whom the scripture
describes, “makes God’s sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on
the righteous and on the unrighteous.” It is God who responds to both evil and
good, righteous and unrighteous with sun rise, God giving an opportunity to
begin again, and providing rain to wash away and heal. This is a dangerous
creative love. It is not a gospel of retaliation and oppression, nor of
silence, but a gospel of love in action and dangerous creativity. MLK quotes
the scripture and highlights the type of response, “Was not Jesus an extremist
for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them
that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute
you.” This is the dangerous creative love of God, of which an extremist Jesus
preached. It is a love that turns not only upside-down, inside-out, but also
cheek and cheek. It makes this a dangerous text, anyway you read it. But I
prefer to read it with the dangerous creativity of Christian love, and I wonder
how you will read it, and how we will respond with our opposite cheek.
