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“How to Retaliate”
Matthew 5:38-48
The Rev. Dr. Rob Joy
Grace Church
Columbiana, Ohio
March 2, 2014
The Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew’s gospel, chapters, 5, 6, and 7, seem clear and
difficult to confuse as to what Jesus was saying, at least much of it. If we took some of
what Jesus is saying here and applied them, ahem, “religiously” we could get in trouble
quickly. Think of this in verse 42: “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” What would rapidly happen to our bank
accounts if we literally applied Jesus’ words here? Any telemarketer or anyone else calling from your alma mater, or from Jerry’s kids, you know for muscular dystrophy, or for
St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, or for the Police Benevolence Association, or the American Red Cross, or the American Heart Association, or the NRA, PTA, NAACP, NACCC,
or ASPCA! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out you may be a hero, but your
bank account will be a zero, if you don’t refuse anyone. Unless you are a Warren Buffet
and have more money than you can give away in a lifetime, in which case would you
meet with me and the finance committee in my office after the service and we’ll talk
about the concept of biblically based tithing. (It will just take a few minutes.)
These words of Jesus can be misunderstood. Suppose, for instance, that you have a
God-fearing aunt who was being fleeced by a televangelist, all so he could build a two
hundred foot high concrete and steel reinforced sculpture of the praying hands? (Several
televangelists come to mind.) What would you say to her, especially after she looked at
you with her sincere eyes and said, “But Jesus told us never to refuse those who ask of
us.” So maybe you point out this is wrong of this shyster to do this, and she says, “Well,
if he has done something wrong to me, I will turn the other cheek.” You see, a too-quick
and dirty application of the words of Jesus can sometimes lead to abuse instead of what
Jesus really wanted: the full flourishing of our lives and all the lives around us.
The situations Jesus talks about here are interpersonal. Applying them too broadly
gets us in trouble. Applying them one-on-one in specific circumstances makes more
sense and we can begin to understand them.
Matthew 5 is not a call to passivity if we see our neighbors being harmed. You can’t
turn someone else’s cheek for them, and we probably should not order someone else to
turn THEIR cheek. Clearly, if you see a neighbor being harmed or abused or cheated, the
Bible calls us to intervene in Good Samaritan fashion to protect that person, to stop the
problem. Clearly we need to do what we can to right the injustices of this world. To
NOT do so, to NOT act when we know we can and should, that is abusive.
John Irving wrote a novel called, A Widow for One Year. In it he depicts a man who
lures women into his studio supposedly to model for true art. He begins by taking polaroid pictures of these women in the nude. His first photos are of the whole person and
show the woman smiling and looking content and lovely. But as time goes by he begins
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to snap pictures of only body parts, and suddenly the part of the woman’s face you can
still see in the pictures becomes twisted into something profoundly despairing and sad.
This supposed artist, like all pornographers, had taken their humanity away from them.
And that is what all injustice does: it takes away people’s humanity and leaves them despairing and sad.
Jesus talks here about day-to-day interactions with people. That, as his followers, we
need to nurture attitudes of generosity, and forgiveness, and love. Those should be first
nature to us, not even second nature, but first nature.
Like earlier in this chapter, Jesus takes a biblical command and then deepens it and
gives it new depth and meaning for his followers who are citizens of his new kingdom.
Before, Jesus had spoken of the Ten Commandments, now he talks about the lex talionis,
the “law of retaliation.” Jesus is going to teach his followers how to correctly retaliate.
The law of retaliation starts with the familiar “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
It was meant to be a limitation of retaliation in the Old Testament times. If someone injures you so that you lose and eye, the very most you can do is damage one of his eyes so
he cannot see. If someone knocks one of your teeth out, the most you can do is remove
one of his teeth. (Glad my brother never got me back for my knocking out one and half
of his teeth!) Moses said retribution needed to be proportional, not exceeding the original
injury or damage. Jesus says the best thing to do in these cases of these types of injuries
or accidents, or social slights, is to do nothing. No response. We aren’t to give up on
justice, but neither are we supposed to go through life constantly vigilant, lest someone
ever gets away with something on us. Every last person that looked at us cross-eyed, by
golly, is gonna git there’s, that’s fer sure! Pretty soon we’re the Hatfields and McCoys
and people are getting hurt.
Jesus is telling us our first and best response is not looking out for #1, but looking out
for others. You know how so many technological things have a “default setting” they fall
back to for normal operating? Jesus says our default setting is “shalom” that is, making
peace wherever we go. Yet that does not mean we tolerate injustice or wrong-doing. Instead we are to be what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “surprising people” that is, we do the
totally unexpected. We don’t tolerate wrong-doing. We don’t escalate the conflict either.
Instead, we make peace. We correct the situation.
For instance we have these sayings, that at first glance seem not quite right.
If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.
If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give him your cloak as well.
If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.
Unless we know, what all the hearers of Jesus knew, these seem confusing, but everyone who heard it knew the exact situations Jesus was talking about. And their understanding of these situations are far from how we modern people have made our own
sense of them. We think of them as advocating acquiescence, not active resistance, and
certainly not setting anything right.
Walter Wink, a Bible scholar and first century sociologist, has done extensive research
on these situations and discovered just what was being said. To understand what Wink is
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talking about you have to know the social customs of the Jewish homeland of the first
century. Here it is.
“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Can I have a volunteer? First off, it specifies that a person has been struck on the right cheek. How can you
be struck on the right cheek? You can only be struck on the right cheek by an overhand
blow with the left hand or a backhanded blow from the right hand. (try it.)
But in that world of the first century, people did not use the left hand to strike people.
It was reserved for “unseemly” uses. (Like when you used the bathroom. Or took out the
garbage. Or touched unclean, yucky things.) Therefore, being struck on the right cheek
meant that one had been backhanded with the right hand. Given the social customs of the
day, a backhand blow was the way a superior hit an inferior, whereas one fought social
equals with fists. So the situation is a master backhanding a slave or servant. What
should the slave or servant do? “Turn the other cheek.” What effect would that have?
The ONLY way the master could continue hitting the slave would be an overhand blow
with the fist, which would mean the master would have to treat the slave as a social
equal. (Did Jesus disapprove of slavery? Yes, I think this is proof, or at least proof he
did not approve of the abused that often happened.)
Perhaps this would not have stopped the hitting. But for the master it would have
been very disconcerting, as he could only continue hitting if he treated the slave as a social equal. He will not be allowed to destroy the humanity of this person even though he
or she is a slave or servant. The slave is in effect saying, “You have now crossed the line
by hitting me. I am your equal. I refuse to be humiliated anymore.”
“If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give him your cloak as well.”
Under civil law at that time, a coat could be confiscated for non-payment of debt. For
the poor, the coat often also served as a blanket at night. In that world, the only other
garment typically worn by a peasant was an inner garment, a cloak. So, if they take your
coat, Jesus says, give them your cloak as well. The person would therefore be stripped
naked. You would be showing everyone what the system was doing to you. Moreover,
in that world, nakedness shamed the person who observed it, not the person who did it.
So your oppressors would be shamed by seeing you, and shamed into possibly considering that they had taken too much from you, as you could not even pay your debts and had
nothing to share to pay back the debt. Taking the coat was therefore, unfair and oppressive.
Next: “If someone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”
The hated Roman law governing the Jewish state at that time permitted soldiers to
force civilians to carry their gear for one mile, but because of frequent abuses, it was
stringently prohibited to have a civilian carry your gear more than one mile.
If they ask you to do it, go ahead, Jesus says. But then carry their gear a second mile.
Put them into a disconcerting situation: either they risk getting into serious trouble with a
superior, or they will have to wrestle their gear back from you, before you go the second
mile.
These sayings are seemingly mild-mannered aren’t they? But they are really hitting at
the common social abuses of that society, that tried to view some folks as somehow sub-
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human. And we know, from seeing what Hitler and others down through history have
done countless times, once you see someone or some social class or group as subhuman,
you can then do what you want with them with impunity.
You can think of how Jesus might apply these ideas in the 21st century. It was the new
law of retaliation: the novum lex talionis. The best way to retaliate was to set the situation right, not get revenge, but partner with God to create a new and better society. It was
radical. The word radical comes from the Latin “radix” or “root”. So these radical sayings cut to the root of the problems of that society. The underclass, those who are unemployed or underemployed, those who are poor, those who cannot pay because they have
nothing, those who are physically or emotionally abused, and taken advantage of or put
down simply for being who they were, what would Jesus say about them?
One older gentleman in my last church, came with his family to America during the
Turkish Armenian Genocide. Haven’t heard of that? It happened from 1914 to 1923.
The Ottoman Turks were driving out the ethnically Turkish Greeks and killing them, simply because they wanted their land and possessions. All told, something like 4 million
were slaughtered: men, women, children, all because they were Armenian Greeks and the
government ordered it.
These kinds of abuses horrify us. What would Jesus have us do? Do we stand by and
allow the abuse like this to happen, even on a small scale? Or do we step in, and defend
their full humanity because we will not allow God’s image in this person to be distorted
and destroyed by abuse or injustice? I believe you know the answer. Quite often, loving
God actually means loving your neighbor and your neighbor’s neighbor. This is how the
kingdom is made and expanded. Amen.