What a Difference a Word Makes

What a Difference a Word Makes

                                                                         Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson

February, 2019

Luke 6:29; Matthew 5:39

So, we all know about the Sermon on the Mount, right? At least, I’m sure we’ve all heard of it. In seminary we used to joke that if we ever gave the Sermon on the Mount as a sermon in a preaching class we’d flunk. See, the Sermon on the Mount isn’t really a sermon. It is a long collection of sayings attributed to Jesus. You’ll find it at chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew. It is a diverse collection with sayings that cover a broad range of issues. Here I am interested in part of it that comes in chapter 5. There Jesus famously says: “Do not resist the evil doer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Matthew 5:39. Keep that verse in mind as we turn to a similar verse in Luke, Luke 6:29. There Luke has Jesus say: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Obviously this verse and the one from Matthew I just quoted are similar. They both refer to someone striking a person on the, or a, cheek. But notice the difference here. Matthew has Jesus say “right cheek” while Luke has him say only “cheek.” Luke leaves out a word that’s in Matthew’s version of this saying, namely right. It is that difference that I want to explore here.

The verse in question about cheek strikes in Luke appears in a collection of Jesus saying that, though much shorter, is quite similar to the Sermon on the Mount. Except here Jesus isn’t on a mount. He’s on a plain. Scholars call this selection of Jesus sayings “the Sermon on the Plain.” It begins: “Then he came down with them….” Luke 6:17. It’s quite striking how Luke, apparently quite intentionally, removes Matthew’s mountain and puts Jesus “down,” that is, specifically not on a mountain. The reason why Luke does that is probably that the author we call Luke wasn’t Jewish but the author we call Matthew was. Matthew puts Jesus on a mountain to deliver what is by far the longest collection of his sayings because Matthew portrays Jesus as the new Moses, and Moses received the Torah law from God up on a mountain. Luke doesn’t present Jesus as the new Moses. He doesn’t at least in part because he’s writing for a Gentile audience to whom Moses didn’t mean nearly as much as Moses meant, and means, to Jews. So Luke gets Jesus off his mountain and places him on what scholars call “the plain.”

Then there’s that difference in wording in the two versions of the strike on the cheek saying. Matthew has it “right cheek,” and Luke has it just “cheek.” One word difference, and how much difference between two nearly identical sayings does that really make? Especially here? I mean, if Jesus’ point is just that we shouldn’t hit back why should it matter which cheek someone hits us on? We’d think none. We’d think it doesn’t make any difference at all. I’m pretty sure that’s what most of us would think, and we’d be flat wrong. That Matthew makes it specifically the right cheek that someone hits us on is important. Really important. Let me explain. Or better, let me let Walter Wink explain.

The late Walter Wink was a major 20^th century Protestant theologian. He is best known for a huge and scholarly trilogy on what he (along with St. Paul and a lot of others) calls “the powers.” He also wrote a smaller, more accessible book about the powers called The Powers That Be. It would be worth your time to read it. Here I want to look only at one small but really important part of Wink’s work, namely, how he explains the meaning of Matthew’s “right cheek.”

Wink starts out by calling Jesus ethical teachings “Jesus’ Third Way.” Of course if there’s a third way there must be first and second ways that come before it, and for Wink there certainly are. The first of those ways is the way of violence. When people act in this way—and tragically this is the way in which most people have always acted—they try to solve problems with violence. They try to create a world of peace and justice through violence. Through armed might. Through using that armed mite to kill people they think are the enemy. Jesus rejected the way of violence. We often understand his “turn the other cheek” as precisely an expression of his rejection of violence, and it is but in its own way. The second way is the way of pacifism. It is the way total nonresistance. It is letting the assailant hit you again without doing anything to stop the assault. For a couple of millennia now this second way is what people have thought Jesus was counseling with his “turn the other cheek.” Don’t fight back. Don’t do anything to resist. Just take another blow because that’s what God wants you to do. It may surprise you to learn that Wink says Jesus rejected that way too. Well, that’s precisely what Wink says, and it’s precisely what Jesus did. Wink uses an exegesis, an explanation, of the other cheek saying in Matthew to explain his point. His explanation goes like this.

We start by understanding something about the world, the culture, in which Jesus uttered this saying. In that world, the world of first century CE Judaism, the left hand was considered unclean. People avoided using it as much as possible. There is an assumption behind Matthew’s “right cheek” that the person hitting you is doing with their right hand. No one in the world would do that with the left hand. Then we ask: If someone is going to hit you on the right cheek, what’s the only way he can do it? Only with the back of his hand, that’s how. Go ahead and try it, although of course don’t actually hit anyone. You could hit a person on their left cheek forehanded or with your fist. You can’t really hit them on the right cheek with your right hand that way. You can hit them only with the back of your right hand. That’s why Matthew’s Jesus says “right cheek.” Luke apparently didn’t get it. He was Greek not Jewish, so he didn’t have a Jew’s strong aversion to using the left hand. If he knew a version of this saying that included “right cheek” he apparently didn’t understand the significance of “right.” So he left it out and said only cheek. In doing that he lost a great deal of Jesus’ meaning.

Wink then tells us that striking someone with the back of the hand is how a person in a superior position of authority and power would strike a person in a lower position of authority and power. In particular, that’s how a master would strike a servant or a slave. Just slap them across the face with the back of your hand. That’s all they deserve, not that you use all of your strength against them. Hitting with the fist is how equals fought. And of course if I hit someone in the face with my right fist I’d hit them on the left side of their face, on their left cheek. Jesus is assuming here that the cheek blow in question is one administered by a superior person to an inferior one with the back of the hand.

So now what happens if the person who has been slapped across the right cheek turns the other cheek, the left cheek, to the assailant? It puts the assailant, who assumes he is superior to his victim, in an impossible position. Now if he is going strike his victim again he has to strike that person’s left cheek. He could do it with his forehand or with his fist but not with the back of his hand. In other words, our assailant has two choices. He can break off the attack, or he can treat his victim as his equal. Either way the victim wins and the assailant loses.

In Matthew’s version of the saying though not in Luke’s Jesus is being quite brilliant. He has given a poor, subordinate person who could never beat a superior one in a fistfight without suffering dire consequences a way to win without fighting. Use something the assailant is assuming, that he is superior to you, against him. Don’t hit back, but don’t just take it either. Be clever. Be creative. Be assertive. Understand the situation you’re in and find something in it that you can use to win without using physical violence. That, Wink says, is Jesus’ Third Way. That way is radically nonviolent. Jesus tells us never to use violence for any purpose. But that way is not passive. It doesn’t just take it. It doesn’t play the victim. It counsels the victim to stand up for herself, to assert her dignity and her equality, but to do it nonviolently. That, Wink tells us is what the whole passage that “turn the other cheek” comes from is about. “Do not resist” means do not resist violently. It doesn’t mean don’t resist at all.

Jesus always stood on the side of the victims, the voiceless, the powerless; but he never told them to get violent. Quite the opposite. Put your sword away. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Matthew 26:52. Jesus knew the profound truths about violence. Violence always begets violence. More importantly, God is nonviolent. Radically nonviolent. Always and everywhere nonviolent; and God calls us to be nonviolent too. Nonviolent, but not passive. Nonviolent, but not mere victims. Be nonviolent, but oppose evil with nonviolent, creative, assertive resistance. That’s what Jesus taught—and teaches. So let’s get on with it, shall we? Amen.