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.