Michael McFaul and Russian History

I have read with fascination Michael McFaul's book From Cold War to Hot Peace. McFaul is a political scientist who holds prestigious positions at Stanford University. He was US ambassador to Russia for two years under President Obama. He was the author of what he calls "the Reset," an effort by the Obama Administration to improve relations with Russia when Dmitrii Medvedev was President of that country. I have seen McFaul on television several times. He appears often on MSNBC. He is a whipping boy for Vladimir Putin, who has banned him from entering Russia. McFaul has spent much of his life studying, living, and working in Russia. His book is an intriguing account mostly of his time in the Obama Administration as chief advisor on all matters Russian and as ambassador to Russia. On TV and in his book he strikes me as overly optimistic and naïve about Russia and its prospects for developing a democratic political system. He insists that such a development is possible, though he admits that his efforts to push Russia in that direction and to improve US Russian relations are a failure, as he says "for now." I want here to reflect on McFaul's belief in positive possibilities for Russia's development in light of my training and experience as a Russian historian. I like and respect McFaul, but I disagree with him about how likely it is that Russia will become a democratic country in the foreseeable or even the distant future. Here's why.

McFaul's basic mistake is that he underestimates the power of Russian history. He thinks Russia is more European than it actually is. One undeniable truth of Russian history is that Russia has no meaningful history of democracy. None. Yes, after the 1905 revolution the tsar had to institute some very modest reforms to the autocratic system of government that Russia had had for centuries by that time. There was a Duma, that is, a sort of rudimentary parliament, but it had no real power. Before that Tsar Alexander II had introduced some significant reforms. In the 1860s he created the zemstvo system of local representative bodies of the landowners. He emancipated the serfs, more or less. He reformed the legal system and introduced the jury into Russian law. Nonetheless, power remained wholly in the hands of the autocrat, the tsar.

Russian autocracy developed out of the monarchical system of the principality of Moscow, a medieval system that had no hint of democracy whatsoever. That system arose in an Asiatic setting in opposition to the domination of the Mongols, hardly themselves models of democratic rule. Russia did not experience the developments in western Europe that led to modern democratic systems. There was no Protestant Reformation. The Enlightenment had only the most superficial effect on the upper classes and never seriously threatened the autocratic power of the monarch. The Russian Orthodox Church was never a center of opposition to state power nor an alternative center of power the way the Roman Catholic Church sometimes was in the West. There is nothing like the Magna Carta anywhere in Russian history. Aristocratic opposition to the unlimited power of the monarch never took root the way it did in England. Right up to the Bolshevik coup in 1917 Russia remained a largely agrarian nation. There was some industrialization to be sure, but there was nothing like the middle class that came to dominate politics in the West. Sure, there was a class known as the "intelligentsia," a Russian word that found its way into English. Most of those people were enamored of Western thought and culture. Even the thought of staunch conservatives like Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the man on whom I wrote my PhD dissertation, was grounded in western thinking. Yet that layer of western culture was never more than a thin veneer on top of a largely Asiatic society, one that consisted of autocratic rule at the top and mostly illiterate peasants at the bottom.

Then come the Soviets. First Lenin and then Stalin created a totalitarian system that was the polar opposite of democracy, all the while claiming to be the most democratic system in the world. Under Stalin the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ruled through lies, oppression, and terror. The only thing remotely like economic capitalism that the Soviets tolerated were the small private garden plots of the peasants living and working on collective farms. No other private ownership of the means of production was permitted. The Soviet Communists did everything they could to squelch independent thought, and under Stalin anyone who voiced any criticism outside the very narrow permitted bounds got a bullet in the back of the head or a sentence to the Gulag that few survived. True, Communist rule in Russia lasted only 74 years, but it was so brutal, so totalitarian, that nothing remotely like democracy could even begin to take hold.

Then there is another defining characteristic of Russian history. Throughout its history Russia has endured foreign invasion after foreign invasion in a way no western countries ever has. The United States has certainly experienced nothing remotely like it. The first rulers of what became Russia were actually Norsemen, the so-called Varangians of Kievan Rus. The domination of the Russian lands by Kiev ended with the invasion of the Mongols from the East. After them came invasions by, at least, the Swedes, Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, and French. Napoleons invasion of Russia in 1812 is a defining event in Russian history and culture. See Tolstoy's War and Peace for evidence for that assertion.

Even more traumatic was the Nazi invasion of 1941. The extent of the suffering of the Russian and other Soviet people at the hands of the Nazis is almost incomprehensible in its scope. In the Siege of Leningrad alone the death toll totaled something like three times the number of all American deaths in World War II. At the Battle of Stalingrad the average lifespan of a soldier sent to that front was something like 24 hours. The Soviet Union lost something like 20 million people in that war, some 40 times the number we lost. The entire country, or most of it, west of the Urals was devastated. When I was first in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1968, only 23 years after the end of the war, Russians asked me many times if both of my parents were alive. They were surprised when I answered yes. Certainly the Soviet Communists used the war as an excuse for the country's poor economic performance after the war, but that reality doesn't change the truth of just how awful what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War was.

As a consequence of Russia's lack of any history of democracy and of the repeated invasions of the country by foreign powers most Russians value security and order over democratic freedom. That popular preference may be hard for many Americans to understand, but that's because so few Americans understand either the power of history generally or the power of Russian history in particular. Western notions such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, due process, and open, fair democratic elections are simply foreign to most Russians. Not all Russians to be sure. McFaul mentions the many Russians he has known who value democracy and want Russia to develop into a democratic nation. Of course there are such Russians. I knew a couple of them myself in years past. There has been a layer of Russians enamored of the West and its values for centuries. Nonetheless, those Russians remain a minority, a fact we see reflected in the majority of Russians who keep voting for Vladimir Putin for president. Given Russia's history of repeated and often brutal foreign invasions, it is not surprising that a majority of Russians prefer a leader who promises security to one who promises democracy.

Putin is an authoritarian ruler to be sure. He suppresses his political opponents. He rigs the elections at least to some extent (although a majority of Russians do vote for him). He has no qualms about killing people he sees as a threat to his rule even if they have left the country and live abroad. He has created an economic system controlled by the state almost as much as the Soviet economic system was. Corruption is rampant, and Putin and his cronies are among its main beneficiaries. It is not hard to dislike Vladimir Putin and the way he rules Russia, Donald Trump's infatuation with him to the contrary notwithstanding. But we make a big mistake if we view Putin only through western eyes. He is not a western man. Russia is not a western nation. It is unrealistic to expect either of them to be western. It is unrealistic to expect Russia to look like a western country any time soon. Perhaps ever.

So Ambassador McFaul, I respect your service to our country. I envy you're elevated position in academia. I certainly envy you your audience, but I respectfully disagree with your view of Russia. That view seems overly optimistic and hopeful to me. I don't expect Russia to become like the West. I expect Russia to remain Russia. I am convinced that Russian history will lead in no other direction. I hope you're right and I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

The Bible as Invitation

I've been proofing the galleys of a republication of my book Liberating the Bible. I can't remember if I've put this last paragraph of Part 1 of the book on the blog before or not, but even if I have it's worth putting it on again. It is, I think, one of the best things I've ever written. You'll find it on page 134 of the published version of the book. It goes like this:

"Let me suggest that you think of the Bible as invitation. The Bible doesn't dictate truth to us. Rather, its ancient authors say here are the experiences and understandings of some of you ancient forbears in the faith. Generation after generation of faithful Jewish and Christian people have found meaning, hope, comfort, and challenge in these pages. So come on in. Learn what we have to say. Do the difficult work of really understanding our ancient texts on their own terms. Then do your own discernment. We did ours, now you do yours. We hope that what you read here will light your path to God, but we cannot relieve you of your duty to discern God's truth for you and your world. We don't all say the same thing. We didn't all understand God the same way. We didn't understand the universe and human nature the way you do. But come on in. Learn from us. There is great wisdom here. Learn from us, but don't just parrot back what we had to say. We invite you not to rote responses and easy answers. We invite you to the hard but sacred work of study and discernment. May God be with you in that work. Amen."

Remembrance of August 21, 1968

Remembrance of August 21, 1968

The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia

I remember it so vividly though it was fifty years ago. I was Moscow. Not Moscow, Idaho Moscow, Russia, USSR. I was there with a group of American Russian language students from a summer intensive Russian program at Indiana University, one of America's leading centers of Russia studies. We were on an Intourist bus going somewhere or other. I don't remember where, but it doesn't matter. I was sitting toward the front of the bus. One of our number sitting toward the back was reading a Moscow morning newspaper. All of a sudden I heard him cry out, in English though we were supposed to be speaking only Russian: "Holy shit! They invaded Czechoslovakia!" In deed they had, "they" being mostly the USSR's military forces with some participation by the East Germans, Poles, and some (but not all) other members of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union's military alliance with its captive client states in Central and Eastern Europe. We were shocked. There had been speculation for some time that the Soviets might do such a thing. After all, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had for some time undertaken a series of reforms known collectively as "the Prague Spring." The Party boss Alexander Dubcek and the head of the government Ludvik Svoboda (whose name in both Russian and Czech means "freedom," though it is pronounced slightly differently in those two Slavic languages) had undertaken liberalization of censorship laws and loosened the Party's control of the economy in an effort to create what they called "socialism with a human face" We knew the Soviets hated the Prague Spring, in large part at least because they feared that if those reforms worked in Czechoslovakia then people would start demanding similar reforms in the Soviet Union. On the night of August 20 to 21, 1968, they sent in the Red Army. They put an end to the Prague Spring and reintroduced strict Soviet style communism in Czechoslovakia, a country whose people were mostly Slavic like the Russians but whose cultures were considerably more western than was Russia's.

Of course, my fellow American Russian language student didn't read in the Moscow newspaper "last night the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia." He read something like: "Last night, at the request of the Czechoslovak Party and government, the armed forces of the fraternal Warsaw Pact nations entered Czechoslovakia to put down the CIA instigated counterrevolution that was undoing all of the advances of the Czechoslovak peoples under the leadership of their Marxist-Leninist Party. They were welcomed with joy by the people of Czechoslovakia." To get "Holy shit! They invaded Czechoslovakia!" out of that you had to know what was really going on in Czechoslovakia, how the USSR had been reacting to it, and how to read the Soviet press. In that quote I just gave, which I made up but which very much expresses what the Soviet press was saying, everything is false except Last night...the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact entered Czechoslovakia." That "entering" was a full scale military invasion that was met with resistance by a great many Czechoslovak people but which that small country had no hope of repelling. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 crushed the spirit of that country for at least a couple of decades. It was unwanted, violent, and repressive. It was nothing short of a sin against humanity.

And some very interesting things were going on Moscow over the next couple of days. Apparently there was a small demonstration against the invasion that was quickly broken up with the people involved arrested. We didn't see that. We did see what I take to have been a common Soviet practice when a foreign head of state was in town. The Soviets had arrested Dubcek and Svoboda and hauled them off to Moscow as their prisoners, but their presence in Moscow was treated like a routine state visit by a foreign head of state. When a foreign head of state was in town the Soviets would place sets of crossed flags of the USSR and the visiting head of state's country along the bridges that cross the Moskva River at either end of the Kremlin. They did that after they took the Czechoslovak leaders prisoner and took them to Moscow. The propaganda machine was hard at work covering up what the Soviets had really done and making it look and sound like something very different from what it actually was. Thus it ever was in the USSR. The Soviet Communists used language not to inform but to mislead and control. They were doing that with full force after the invasion of Czechoslovakia. 

We very liberal progressive American students who were in Moscow that day were furious. It's not that we thought that our country would start a war with the USSR over what that country had done. We pretty well knew it wouldn't. But we had thought that the Prague Spring offered real hope for the creation of a third way between totalitarian Soviet communism and the mostly unbridled capitalism of our own country. The Prague Spring emphasized individual freedoms and economic activity that worked for the benefit of the people. Not that we were experts on what had been happening in Czechoslovakia, but what we knew sounded really good to us. We also knew that to the extent the American government and people knew what was happening there they supported it but hardly had instigated it. It was a spontaneous movement of the Czechoslovak people. So we experienced the Soviet crushing of what was happening there appalling and maddening.

So we took about the only actions we could. First, we told our Soviet guide that we would not do what we were scheduled to do the next day. That was to go to a place called VDNKh, letters that stand for the Russian words that translate as "Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy." We told that pleasant young woman, who worked of Intourist, the Soviet foreign tourism management agency, that after what her country had just done there was no way we were going to go listen to a day's worth of propaganda about what a great place the Soviet Union was. She just shrugged her shoulders and accepted our decision. Then we went to hard currency store in the Hotel Rossiya just off Red Square and bought a good amount of really cheap Stolichnaya vodka. We took it to our hotel, the Hotel Bucharest as I recall, that was just across the river from the east end of the Kremlin and Red Square. Many of us gathered in one of our rooms there. We drank toasts to Dubcek and Svoboda, speaking to the light fixture in the ceiling because that's where we assumed the bug was. That may sound risky, but it really wasn't. We knew that the Soviets didn't care what we said or thought as long as there were no Soviet people with us. There weren't. So we let the Soviet Union have it and expressed our enthusiastic support for the Prague Spring and the people of Czechoslovakia.

We still had a few days in Moscow before we left the country and headed home. I don't remember what we did on those days. Mostly what we did in Moscow as see the sights of the city and its environs. I suppose that's what we did with those days. After those days were up we boarded our bus with all our gear and headed to Sheremetyevo, Moscow's  international airport, to begin our trip home. As we rode through Soviet Moscow we all sang the hit rock song "We've Got to Get Out of This Place: "We've got to get out of this place, if it's the last thing we ever do. We've got to get out of this place. Girl, there's a better life for me and you." It's not that I don't love Russia. I do. Its history and culture are truly impressive, and the Russian people can be among the warmest, friendliest people you'll ever meet, at least if you can meet them in private. Still, the USSR was very foreign to us young Americans, and its invasion of Czechoslovakia really put us off the place. We were glad to be going home.

In October, 1968, I returned to Europe, this time to Stuttgart, Germany, to participate in a year abroad program that the Oregon State System of Higher Education has just started with the University of Stuttgart. In March, 1969, I joined a group of German students from that university going to spend a few days in Prague. It was seven months after the Soviet invasion. I had heard that Prague was wonderful. It was one of the few cities in Central Europe that hadn't been extensively bombed during World Was II, so all of its old buildings were still original. Yet the Prague that I saw in March, 1969, was about as depressive a place as you could imagine. The buildings were poorly kept up. The city seemed dirty. The people seemed cheerless. It was clear what communism and the the Soviet invasion had done to them. They were crushed. It was sad to say the least.

Then one day we were sitting in a Prague beer hall drinking good Czech beer. I'd had Czech beer in Russia. It was awful. The beer we got in Prague was really good. I think the Czechs sent the swill to the Russians and kept the good stuff for themselves. As we sat there speaking German a group of young Czechs who appeared to be college students like us approached. One of them asked us:  "Ost oder west?" East or west, in German. Someone answered west. "Well", they said, "welcome to Prague! We'll sit and have a beer with you." Which they did. I hate to think what would have happened if we'd said east, because East Germany participated in the Soviet invasion seven months earlier. These Czechs might have come to blows with East Germans, but they were happy to have West Germans (and a stray American) in their country. I got talking to one of these Czech students, in German of course. He asked me about myself and what my plans were. I said I intended to pursue a PhD in Russian history. Wrong thing to say! He and others who overheard us became furious. "Why would you want to do that? Nothing good ever came out of Russia!" He might as well have said "to hell with the whole lot of them." I had never seen hatred like that before, and I've never seen it since. I think I more or less understand it. The Russians had occupied Czechoslovakia after World War II and had imposed an oppressive communist system based on the one in the Soviet Union upon that country and her people. They had stifled the development of the country under a dictatorial regime accountable to the Soviets but not to its own people. I'd likely have hated them too. Still, the depth and the power of the hatred I saw that day was and remains frightening. Not that the Czechs could ever really successfully fight a war against the Russians. Czechoslovakia is (was) too small, and Russia is too big. But hatred like that leads to violence. Moreover yes, the Soviet government had done terrible things to the Czechs, but the Russian people hadn't. They had no say over what their government did. And it surely isn't true that nothing good ever came out of Russia. None of that mattered to these young Czechs. Russia was evil. Russian culture was evil. Russian people were evil. For these Czechs that's all there was to it. If they could have killed Russians I fear they might have. Thank God they couldn't.

So there are my recollections of my experience with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. There are surely lessons to be learned here, but I'll leave it to you to discern what they are. I of course played no role in the big events I recount here, but I did have a different experience of them than most Americans. May we learn what history like this has to teach us so that we don't repeat its mistakes.

Exorcising Legion

This is the prepared text of a sermon I gave at Kirkland Congregational UCC in Kirkland, Washington, on August 19, 2018.

Exorcising Legion

For Kirkland Congregational UCC

August 19, 2018

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Guest Preacher

Scripture: Mark 5:1-13

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 imagine we’ve all heard it before. It is one of the stories in the Gospels of Jesus exorcising a demon, called here an unclean spirit. This story is about the exorcism of a demon who says its name is “Legion.” Now, I know that a lot of people today struggle with the notion of demons and exorcisms, even exorcisms performed by Jesus. I’ve said many times myself that what the ancient world called demonic possession we’d call mental illness. But this morning I want to suggest a way of looking at this story of Jesus’ exorcism of the demon named Legion that doesn’t depend on our believing either in literal demons or in anyone’s ability to exorcise them. I am convinced that one of the greatest obstacles to faith among us today is our tendency to take all of the stories in the Bible literally rather than seeing those stories as parables or even myths that have deep symbolic meaning, meaning so much deeper and more powerful than their mere factual meaning. So this morning I’m going to explore with you what I think is the deep symbolic meaning of this story of Jesus exorcising the demon named Legion.

And I want to start by reviewing that story and highlighting some of its more important points. The story begins with Jesus going to “the other side of the sea.” The sea in question is the Sea of Galilee, and the “other side” is in this instance the Gentile territory on its east side. Jesus here is in Gentile not Jewish territory, which suggests right at the start that perhaps this story is going to have some theme relating to Gentiles, and indeed it does.

As soon as Jesus steps ashore a man described as “out of the tombs with an unclean spirit” meets him. Now, under the Purity Code of Leviticus that dominated Jewish thought in Jesus’ time tombs or graves were ritually unclean, so this man comes from an unclean place and is possessed by an unclean spirit. So we learn at the beginning of the story that it is about uncleanliness, meaning uncleanliness under the Purity Code that is part of the law of Moses.

Then we’re told that no one can restrain this man, not even with chains and shackles. Our text says “the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces.” This man from an unclean place and possessed by an unclean spirit is so powerful that no one can restrain or control him. He breaks free from any restraint they try to put on him.

Yet this possessed, unclean man whom no one can control knows that Jesus has power over him, or at least power over the unclean spirit that possesses him. He runs up to Jesus and bows down before him. That’s a sign of respect that acknowledges Jesus as superior to, as more powerful than, the possessed man himself. Beyond that, this possessed man recognizes Jesus’ power over him in what he says to Jesus. He says: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” (I had to look up what “adjure” means. It means to plead or entreat someone earnestly to do something you want them to do.) Clearly this man, or at least the demon speaking through him, recognizes that Jesus could “torment” him if he wanted to. We learn that Jesus holds the power here, not the possessed man or his demon.

We’re told that Jesus has already ordered the unclean spirit to come out of the man, but Jesus then asks the unclean spirit a strange question. He asks: “What is your name?” Just why Jesus wants to know the demon’s name, or perhaps more correctly wants the demon to speak its name, for surely Jesus already knew it, isn’t clear. Yet the meaning of this story depends in large part on Jesus asking this question and on the answer that the demon gives to it. More about that shortly. The demon responds to Jesus question by saying “My name is Legion, for we are many.” “Legion” then begs Jesus not to sent them out of the country. They instead ask to be allowed to enter a nearby herd of pigs. Remember that this story is set in Gentile territory. There wouldn’t have been a convenient herd of pigs in Jewish territory. Jesus consents, Legion enters the pigs, who promptly run down into the Sea of Galilee and are drowned.

OK, that’s the story. But what is that deep symbolic significance I mentioned? To get at that meaning we start with the demon’s name. That name is “Legion.” Now “legion” with a lower case l is a regular word in our language, and it was one in Jesus’ world too. In our time it has come to mean just a large number of something. As an adjective it means “great in number.” A rock star’s fans are “legion,” meaning she has a lot of them, for example. In Jesus’ time, though it was a word everyone knew, it had a different meaning. It meant a large unit of the Roman army, perhaps as many as 6,000 men. Maybe you’ve heard the Roman army called the Roman legions. A comparable use in our time would be to call the US Army “the American divisions.” A legion was a large unit of the Roman army. Jesus knew that. So did the original first century audience for this story.

So this story “Legion” stands for the power of Rome, the dominant world power at the time. The demon’s name being Legion leaves no other conclusion, but there is another part of the story that also supports that reading. We’re told that the possessed man was so strong that no one could restrain him, not even with chains and shackles. He broke chains and shattered shackles. He was entirely beyond the people’s control. So I ask: What was there in that part of the world in the first century that behaved badly and was entirely beyond the people’s control? Why the Roman Empire of course. The people couldn’t control it. They couldn’t restrain it. Rome did whatever it wanted, just like the possessed man among the tombs. The unclean spirit named Legion in this story is a symbol of the Roman Empire, its power, its impurity, and its bad behavior.

And where was this powerful symbol of the Roman Empire? Inside the man. Not outside him, at least not in this story. Inside him. We are to understand I think that this man has internalized the Roman Empire. His primary problem wasn’t that Rome was out there, although that was a huge problem for the people of that time and place. His primary problem was that he was in here, inside the man. Inside his mind. Inside his heart. Jesus freed the man from Roman occupation when he exorcised the demon named Legion out of him. Then Legion did what most everyone in that time and place wanted to see Rome do. Run into the sea and drown, or at least board their ships and sail across the sea back to Rome.

In Jesus’ day Rome was making life pretty miserable for the Jewish people. They were a foreign occupying force. They imposed heavy taxes that left most everyone in poverty. They ruled the Jewish people and the Jewish homeland; the Jews couldn’t rule themselves. Rome was very much out there, in the world; and Rome being out there was a real problem for the people.

Most Jewish people in Jesus’ day longed for a Messiah, for a new Jewish king who would raise an army and drive the Romans into the sea. We confess that Jesus was and is that Jewish Messiah, but he saw things differently. It’s not that he denied that Rome out there was a big problem. He didn’t. But we see in the story of the demon named Legion that Jesus understood that the people’s bigger problem was that Rome was in here, in their minds, in their hearts. Indeed, Jesus believed that Rome being in here was how Rome continued to exist and have power out there.

The story of the demon named Legion tells us how Jesus wants us to deal with the problems of the world out there. Start in here, the story tells us. Get Rome, that is, get the world and its ways, out of your mind. Out of your heart. Our most fundamental problem isn’t that there is evil out there, though God knows there is plenty of evil out there these days. But out more fundamental problem is that the way of the world, the way of our Rome, is in here. By exorcising the internalized spirit of Rome Jesus tells us that if we want to address the evils of the world out there we need to start by addressing the evils in here, the evils of the world that we have internalized.

And I hear some of you saying: OK, you say we have internalized the ways of the world; but just what exactly does that mean? Well, it means that we have made the ways of the world our ways. It means that we tend to think and act the way the world has taught us to think and to act. I know that’s true of me—although I hope it’s less true of me than it used to be. This morning I ask you to be honest with yourselves about whether it might be true of you too.

So just what are those ways of the world that so many people have internalized? Here are a few of them: The world says violence solves problems and nonviolence doesn’t. Most Americans agree. When we see a problem the first thing we want to do is shoot it. The world strives for material wealth. It says the wealthy are the successful ones, the respected ones, the powerful ones. Most Americans agree. The world says succeed in the way it defines success—money, status, etc. Do it no matter what it takes, and most Americans agree. The world says the earth was created solely for our use, and we can do whatever we want with it regardless of the consequences. Far too many Americans agree. Perhaps you can think of other ways of the world that you or at least far too many others have internalized.

In our story this morning Jesus says that if you want to change the world start by changing yourself, with God’s help of course. Exorcise Legion. Get Rome out of your mind and out of your heart. The way you turn the world around is by turning human hearts and souls around, one person at a time, starting with yourself. If you want peace, be peaceful. If you want justice, live justly. Yes, there are problems out there—big problems. We all know that. Jesus knows that. He tells us: Deal first with they way you have internalized those problems. Exorcise Legion. Transform yourself. That’s how you transform the world. You start doing it by becoming aware of the ways in which you have internalized the ways of the world. Only when you recognize that you’ve done that can you start to transform your thinking, to transform yourself, and thus to transform the world.

It’s not easy. It takes a lot of discernment. It takes continual attention and effort. The good news is that Jesus is always there to help us. Always calling us to transformation. Always seeking to teach us God’s ways, the ways of peace through nonviolence and justice. No, it’s not easy. It is however what God calls us to do. I keep working at it. I hope that you do too. Amen.

Resist!

This is the prepared text of a sermon I gave on July 29, 2018, at Kirkland Congregational UCC in Kirkland, Washington.

Resist

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson

for

Kirkland Congregational UCC

July 29, 2018

Scripture: Matthew 5:38-48

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.

Four weeks ago, on July 1, Pastor Ryan gave a powerful sermon on the same text from Matthew that we just heard. Please forgive me for using that same text again, but there are some things about it that I just have to share with you. I by no means mean to suggest that I disagree with what Pastor Ryan said about this text. I don’t. He did a fine job with it. But one truth that some people don’t know about the Bible is that every text that has a great message for us, every text we know and love, has many different layers of meaning in it, and no one can cover all of them in one sermon. Those texts have a shadow side. I mean by that that even the really good Biblical texts can suggest something that isn’t so good. They can be misunderstood. They can be misused. This text from Matthew is one of those texts. I love it. It is one of the foundational texts from the Bible for my own Christian faith. Yet even when I was a first year seminary student some twenty plus years ago I knew that there is a danger in this text. By preaching on this text today I don’t mean to suggest that Ryan isn’t aware of that danger. I’m sure he is, but like I said no one can cover everything a text suggests in one sermon. I just want to talk about how I think this text has so often been misunderstood and misused and talk about what it actually says to us today in the difficult (to say the least) political situation we find ourselves in. So here goes.

A few days ago my wife, the Rev. Jane Sorenson, Pastor of my old church, Monroe Congregational UCC, put a very small sticker on the back of her car. It consists of one word: “Resist.” Now, I don’t know what all of your politics are, but I suspect I don’t have to explain what it is that she’s calling us to resist. The political situation in our country prompts many of us to resist what we see as a tragic trend in how our nation is going. Some of us even call it fascism, and there are good reasons for calling it that. For decades now we have used tax law to channel wealth upward, to the top one percent or so of our population, while middle class wages are stagnant and the number of people living in poverty just keeps increasing. We have been and are doing nowhere enough to stop the degradation of the earth’s environment through climate change and other dynamics. Today our federal government is split within itself between foreign affairs professionals who want to take a strong position against Russian international crimes and others, led by the President, who want to cozy up to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, the criminal leader of a government that can only be described as a kleptocracy. Our government tears children away from their parents at the border and can’t, or won’t, figure out how to reunite all of those ruptured families. We have a president for whom the categories true and false just don’t seem to matter. There is a whole lot going on in our nation and in the world today that as Christians I believe we must resist.

So I feel called to resist, but then I read the lines we heard this morning from the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus says: “Do not resist the evildoer.” That line always shocks me, or at least it used to. I mean, is he serious? Do not resist the evildoer? How can Jesus be calling us not to resist evil? And then he goes on to say turn the other cheek, give the cloak also, and go a second mile. Really? It sure sounds here like he’s advising us simply to be passive in the face of evil. Just sit there. Don’t do anything against it. Just take it. And tragically that’s what these verses have long been taken to mean. We call people who live this way “pacifists,” people who are pacific, peaceful, who do nothing to resist evil. For centuries Christian pastors have told women in abusive relationships “turn the other cheek.” Just go back and take it. Sometimes they say if you pray hard enough the abuser will reform (but they usually don’t). In any event this passage has led pastors to advise victims just to go back and take it.

What we’re faced with here is one of those shadow sides of a powerful Biblical text. Jesus calls the world and us to nonviolence, and that is a very good thing. But then there’s this bit about not resisting evil, about just taking it and doing nothing to resist it. There are those pastors telling women to go back into abusive relationships and turn the other cheek. That’s the shadow side. That’s these verses leading to something bad not something good.

So what are we to do? Become completely passive in the face of evil, do nothing to resist it? Just take it? Let evil run us over and destroy the world? It sure can sound like that’s what these verses are telling us to do. Well, here’s the good news. That isn’t what those verses are telling us to do at all. The late great theologian Walter Wink gave us a brilliant new insight into what these verses actually mean, and it is that brilliant insight that I want to share with you this morning.

Wink starts with the Greek word in this text that always gets translated as “resist,” as in “do not resist an evildoer.” He tells us that the Greek word that Matthew uses here actually means something like “go out in ranks against.” It is a military term. It doesn’t mean any kind of resistance, it means military resistance. By inference it means any violent resistance. Jesus’ call here actually isn’t not to resist. It is a call not to resist violently.

Then come the lines about turning the other cheek, giving the cloak also, and going the extra mile. Wink establishes that Jesus here is actually not calling us to passivity. I’ll explain just one of them to make the point, the famous (and infamous) turn the other cheek. Note that our text says “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek also.” That little detail about being struck on the right cheek usually gets overlooked, but it makes all the difference. Wink tells us that striking a person specifically on the right cheek is the way a superior person would strike a subordinate. The way a master would strike a slave. And he tells us that the assumption here is that the blow is struck with the attacker’s right hand. That’s because in Jesus’ world the left hand was considered unclean, and people did almost everything with the right hand if they could. Now, how can you strike a person on her right cheek with your right hand? You pretty much have to do it backhanded. Try it if you like, but of course don’t actually hit anyone. The assumption in Jesus’ instruction to “turn the other cheek” is that a subordinate person, perhaps a slave, is being struck by a superior person, perhaps the slave’s owner.

Now what happens if that subordinate person turns the other cheek, that is, turns her left cheek toward her attacker? Now how can the attacker hit her in the face? Mostly overhand. With his fist. Or at least with a slap with the palm side of an open hand. But Wink points out that that is how equals fought. In Jesus’ world, when our subordinate victim of the attack turns her left cheek to the attacker she presents him with a dilemma. He has two choices. Stop the attack, or treat his victim like an equal. He’s not going to want to do either one, but his victim has put him in that impossible position simply by turning her left cheek to him. Jesus is not commanding passivity here. Rather, he is calling us to creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil. That’s what turning the other cheek is. It’s not nonresistance. It is precisely resistance, but it is nonviolent resistance. The other two examples Jesus gives here of giving the cloak also and going the second mile are also examples of creative, assertive, nonviolent resistance to evil. Ask me about them after the service if you’re curious.

So folks, faced with a world that calls for so much resistance to evil what are we to do? What does Jesus advise us to do? Roll over and play dead? Sit here and do nothing to oppose evil? No, absolutely not. That is not what Jesus taught us to do. It wasn’t after all what he did. He opposed the evil of his day by lifting up the welfare of the poor and excluded above the law of Moses. He resisted the evil of his day by healing people his culture called sinners and calling all people to new ways of thinking, Kingdom ways of thinking not the world’s ways of thinking. So no, Jesus does not call us to nonresistance to evil. He calls us away from violent resistance to evil and to new, creative, assertive nonviolent ways to resist evil.

OK. Fair enough, but just what does that mean for us today, here and now? That sadly is a much harder question to answer than is the question of whether Jesus is really calling us to nonresistance to evil. We have lots of nonviolent ways of resisting evil available to us in this country. Some of us can give sermons like this one. We can all vote. We can all call or write our elected representatives. We can participate in one or more of the demonstrations against evil of which there seem to be so many today. Some people today are committing themselves to commit nonviolent acts of civil disobedience as an act of resistance. That’s not Christ’s call for everyone, but it is for some. If we can’t go to the demonstrations we can support the organizations that put them on. Some of us write essays and put them on line, for whatever good that does. Some of us even write books calling for a reformed, liberated Christianity. We have lots of options available to us.

No one option is right for everyone, but one option isn’t right for anyone. That one is doing nothing. That one is sitting here and just taking it. We say we are Christians. Being a Christian means many things, but perhaps the most foundational thing it means is that it brings us an obligation and, I trust, a commitment to follow Jesus. To imitate him as best we can. To learn what he really teaches us and to ground actions in what we learn. Perhaps you’ve been told that he teaches us to be passive in the face of evil. If you have been told that I apologize on behalf of the Christian church. You shouldn’t have been told that because it isn’t true. Jesus didn’t live a passive life, and he doesn’t call us to live one either. Our call is to active, creative, assertive, but always nonviolent resistance to evil. The world needs that resistance as much or more today as it have in a long time. So let’s study. Let’s pray. Let’s discern how we are called to engage in nonviolent resistance to evil. That is Christ’s call to us. May we hear that call and respond to it well. Amen.