Resist the Evildoer

I got a request at church this morning that I make the sermon I gave available.  So here it is.

Resist the Evildoer

Rev. Tom Sorenson, Co-Pastor

September 22, 2013

Scripture:  Matthew 5:38-45; Matthew 26:47-52

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

I told a couple of our members this past week that on Sunday we would do a service on peace because the previous Saturday, now yesterday, September 21, is International Day of Peace.  They laughed.  What?, they said.  Only one day for peace?  Good point.  Every should be a day of peace of course.  Still, International Day of Peace is a real thing.  The United Nations created it first in 1981.  In 2001 they fixed its date as September 21.  The UN calls for all nations and people “to commemorate the Day through education and public awareness on issues related to peace.”  This year September 21 was a Saturday, and we don’t usually gather on Saturday.  Next year September 21 will be a Sunday, but not this year.  So we’re doing September 21 on September 22.  Today we focus on peace.  In particular we focus on peace the way Jesus taught and lived peace.

The peace that Jesus taught and lived is, with regard to how we live in the world, the peace of nonviolence.  Those of you who have been around here for a while know that I preach nonviolence.  I know it’s a hard sell.  After all, we live in a nation formed through violence—the Revolutionary War, an imperial war of expansion against Mexico in 1848, the Civil War, an imperial war of expansion against Spain in 1898, military and other violent conquest of the West, including genocide against the Indian nations.  Our nation is indeed grounded in violence.  Our culture thinks violence solves problems, a fact that may well have something to do with our repeated gun tragedies like that shooting last week in the Washington, DC, Navy yard.  Our Christian tradition, or most of it, abandoned nonviolence seventeen hundred years ago when Christianity became the official state religion of the very violent Roman Empire.  I know that nonviolence is a hard sell.  Believe me, I know.  Some of you have even argued against it with me.

Nonviolence is a hard sell, but here’s the thing.  We are Christians, and Jesus Christ both taught and lived radical nonviolence.  I’m not making that up.  He just did.  Go read the Gospels again if your doubt it, and come to me with your questions.  There are a few passages that need some explanation to see that they don’t really advocate violence, but trust me, they don’t.  In the brief passage we just heard from Matthew’s story of Jesus’ arrest Jesus won’t even let his followers use violence to try to save him from arrest, torture, and execution.  Nonviolence was Jesus’ way, Reza Aslan’s wholly unconvincing argument to the contrary notwithstanding.  Nonviolence was, more than anything else, what distinguished the man Jesus of Nazareth from all of the other would-be messiahs of his day.  Jesus had a different vision from their dream of creating the kingdom of God through violence.  He had a better vision.  He knew God better than they did, so he taught and lived radical nonviolence.  He calls us to teach and live radical nonviolence too.

Nonviolence is a hard sell because our culture is a violent one.  Those of you of a certain age remember how we used to play cowboys and Indians, or cops and robbers, when we were kids.  Bang!  Bang!  You’re dead!, we’d shout.  Kill the bad guy.  Problem solved.  That was our play, and that is our culture.  That culture really doesn’t want to hear that Jesus and God are different from that.  The problem is, they are different from that.  Very different from that.  They just are.

Nonviolence is a hard sell among us because our history and our culture are violent, but there’s another reason nonviolence is a hard sell in America.  Nonviolence is a hard sell among us because people think that nonviolence means passivity in the face of evil.  And they’re right, aren’t they?  We just heard Jesus say “Do not resist an evildoer,” but turn the other cheek, give the cloak also, and go the second mile.  Passivity, right?  Acquiescence in the face of evil, right?  Just accept it and don’t resist it, right?  That’s sure what it sounds like.  Well, that may be what it sounds like, and some of you have heard me say this before; but those lines actually do not counsel passivity and non-resistance at all.  Relying on the late theologian Walter Wink, let me explain.

In most English translations we read “Do not resist an evildoer.”  It sounds pretty absolute.  The problem is, “resist” is a weak translation of the Greek word used in the original language of Matthew.  That word actually means something more like do not go out in ranks against, or do not resist with military force.  A much better translation would be do not resist an evildoer violently.  Jesus here isn’t saying do nothing.  He is saying do nothing violent.  Then he gives three examples of what he means:  When someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek.  When someone sues you to take your coat, give your cloak also.  When someone makes you go one mile, go the second mile.  These examples sound like passivity to us, but that’s because we have lost the context in which Jesus originally gave them.  Someone strikes you on the right cheek?  In that world he would have done it with his right hand because the left hand was considered unclean and wasn’t used for much of anything.  To hit you on your right cheek with his right hand he’d have to do it backhand, and that was the way a master disciplined a servant or a slave.  So turn the other, that is, your left cheek.  Now if he wants to hit you again with his right hand he has to do it overhand.  That’s how equals fought.  You have said to your attacker you can either break off the attack or treat me as your equal.  I win either way.  Neat.  Give the cloak also?  Most people in Jesus’ world owned only two pieces of clothing, here called a coat and a cloak.  Someone takes your coat, or outer garment?  Give the cloak, or undergarment too.  That leaves you before your oppressor naked, and in that world your nudity would have shamed not you but the one who looked at you.  Neat.  Someone forces you to go one mile?  What in heaven’s name does that mean?  Who forces someone to go a mile?  Well, in that world a Roman soldier was authorized to force a civilian to carry the soldier’s gear for him for one mile.  One mile, not two.  If people saw him having someone carry his gear for two miles the soldier would be in a lot of trouble with his superiors.  By starting to go a second mile you have forced an armed soldier of the foreign occupier to beg you to stop, a humiliating position for the soldier to be sure.  Neat.  None of these examples are examples of passivity.  They are examples of creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to oppression.  They are examples of creatively turning the tables on an attacker, a creditor, and an occupying soldier.  Jesus is saying resist, but do not resist violently.  Resist peaceably, creatively, assertively, effectively.

So what does that mean for us?  Let’s take our current situation with Syria as an example.  Let’s assume that the Assad regime in Syria did in fact commit an atrocious act, a crime against humanity, the killing of hundreds of innocent people with poison gas.  Our leader’s immediate reaction was:  Bomb them!  In other words, solve a problem by resorting to violence.  Never mind that our adding our violence to the horrible violence already being done in that divided, complex, and warring nation could do nothing but make matters worse.  See a problem?  Bomb it!  That’s the usual American response.  We always want to solve problems with violence.

But look what happened.  Russia—and we still so love to hate the Russians—stepped forward with a plan to have the Assad regime rid itself of chemical weapons.  Assad agreed.  Will he follow through?  We don’t know yet, but so far he has agreed.  The United Nations, representing all of the nations of the world, got involved.  Assad responded not to a threat of violence from someone he sees as his enemy, that is, from us.  He responded to an offer of aid from someone he sees as his friend, Russia.  He responded to the forceful but nonviolent response of the world community.  Our violence was never going to end his violence.  It just would have provoked more violence.  A nonviolent response by the world, and especially by Assad’s major international backer, seems to be ending his ability to inflict at least one kind of violence on his own people.

So why don’t we get it?  Nonviolence drove the British out of India.  Nonviolence brought down apartheid in South Africa.  Nonviolence produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in our own country.  Nonviolence brought down Communism in most of Eastern Europe.  Creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil works.  More importantly, nonviolence is the moral choice.  Nonviolence is the way of God and of Jesus Christ, violence is the way of the world, especially of the empires of the world.  I’ve given some reasons here why nonviolence is such a hard sell; but honestly, I don’t get it.  It ought to be the easiest sell in the world, especially in a Christian community.  Jesus was nonviolent.  He was nonviolent because God is nonviolent.  Nonviolence is moral.  Nonviolence works.  Nonviolence is the way of peace.  Jesus’ word of nonviolence is today what it was two thousand years ago, a new word of a new way that the world desperately needs to hear.  If we don’t hear it, we may well destroy ourselves with our violence.

So let us resist the evildoer.  Jesus doesn’t tell us not to, but let’s always do it nonviolently.  Do it creatively, assertively, consistently.  But always nonviolently.  That’s what Jesus did.  That’s what he calls us to do.  May we have the wisdom and the courage to hear and to follow.  Amen.