Matthew 5:38-42
April 10, 2011
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
You know, there’s a fundamental problem with both Christianity and Christ’s teachings. And it’s a problem that most non-Christians easily recognize, and that most Christians grapple with. What’s the problem? It’s that Christ’s teachings, and therefore Christianity’s teachings, go so much against basic human nature that we have a really, really hard time living them out. Throughout the Bible there are just too many teachings that conflict with the ways we naturally think. And our passage for today is one of those teachings. How could Jesus have taught “turning the other cheek” in the face of the realities and practicalities of the world?
The fact is that we don’t live in a “turn the other cheek” world, nor has anyone ever lived in one. For Jesus to expect us to act like this when it would make us sacrificial lambs is unfair and unrealistic. The Jewish and Muslim faiths seem to be much more in tune with our basic human nature because they teach “an eye for an eye.” It’s not just they who live according to that nature. The realities of international affairs agree with this idea. If you attack my country, I’ll attack yours. If you shoot at me, I’ll shoot at you. This is the reality of human life. This is how humans were created to think. In fact, thousands of years ago when “an eye for an eye” was coined, it was an enlightened view. You don’t take both eyes for your loss of one eye. You respond in a measured, equal way.
Everything I’ve just said is absolutely true. Jesus’ teachings completely go against our basic human nature, and seem unrealistic in the face of the world’s realities, but so what? Living out of our basic human nature is important only if our goal in life is to live a basic human life. If our goal is simply to live as people normally live, and not live an exceptional life, this line of thinking is right on target. The problem is that both Christianity and Christ want us to live exceptional lives, and “turning the other cheek” is central to living an exceptional life.
What does it mean to live this kind of exceptional life? Let me show you. Back in 1960, Dr. Robert Coles, who has spent a career at Harvard as a psychiatrist, was a psychiatrist working for the U. S. Air Force at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was six years after the landmark Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. the Board of Education, which ordered the desegregation of all schools. In 1960 a federal court in Louisiana ordered that the schools of the New Orleans area had to immediately desegregate. Protests erupted. Being a psychiatrist with an interest in social issues, Coles decided to drive down to the William T. Franz School in New Orleans to see what was taking place.
He arrived thirty minutes before school ended to see an angry crowd gathering. He asked some people what was happening, and they responded, “She’s coming out in half an hour.” “Who’s she?” he asked. They responded by cursing and shouting about this evil girl who had disrupted their quiet lives.
Then came the anticipated moment. The crowd erupted in fury as a little, seven-year-old African-American girl named Ruby Bridges came out of the school, surrounded by federal marshals. The crowd erupted, cursing her, shaking their fists and baseball bats, and threatening her with violence. Through it all Ruby walked calmly between the federal marshals.
Coles decided that this would be a good opportunity for him to do some good while also studying a unique situation. He went to visit with Ruby and her family. They lived in a shack in a poor neighborhood. Coles came to his first visit, armed with all the latest psychiatric techniques. Sitting down at the kitchen table with her he asked, “How are you doing, Ruby?” “I’m okay,” she replied. He looked at her mother, “Mrs. Bridges, how is Ruby doing?” “Doctor, she’s doing fine.” “Is Ruby sleeping okay?” “Oh yes, Ruby’s sleeping fine.” “How’s Ruby’s appetite?” “It’s fine.” “Are you sure she’s eating well?” “Yes, doctor.” “How do you think Ruby’s doing with her friends when she comes home from School?” “Ruby’s fine when she comes home. She plays and sometimes reads from the books they give her at school. She’s just in the first grade, learning how to read, you know.” “Yes, I know. But doesn’t she seem upset at times?” “No doctor, Ruby doesn’t seem upset.”
Mrs. Bridges’ responses baffled Coles. According to all of his training, Ruby should be exhibiting some sort of adjustment reaction to her situation. Perhaps it was due to Mrs. Bridges ignorance in not knowing what to look for because of her lack of education.
Coles kept tabs on Ruby for the next few months. Nothing much changed in their responses to him. Were they in denial, or just repressing? He wondered. One day he interviewed Ruby’s teacher, who said, “You know, I don’t understand this child. She seems so happy. She comes here so cheerfully.” Coles asked her if she ever saw anything out of the ordinary in Ruby’s reaction to the situation surrounding her. The teacher told him that the only thing she noticed was that Ruby often paused, close her eyes, and spoke to the crowd as she walked by. This was the tidbit Coles had been looking for. Obviously Ruby was cursing the crowd back. That was how she was dealing with the stress of the situation.
Coles sat down with Ruby and her family again to zero in on this symptom: “I was talking to your teacher today, and she told me that she saw you talking to the people on the street.” “Oh yes,” Ruby said, “I told her that I wasn’t talking to them. I was just saying a prayer for them.” Coles responded, “Ruby, do you pray for those people on the street?” “Yes,” she said. “Why do you do that?” “Because they need praying for.” “Do they?” “Oh yes.”
Coles then talked to Ruby’s mother about it, and she said, “We tell Ruby that it’s important to pray for those people.” She then said that they had the people on a list and prayed for them every night. Ruby had learned to pray for them in Sunday School. Coles responded, “You know, it strikes me that ‘s a lot to ask of Ruby. I mean, given what she’s been going through.” Mrs. Bridges looked at Coles and said, “She does it herself, even when we don’t want to pray for them ourselves. Don’t you think they need praying for?”
Coles didn’t know what to say. Prayer had not been discussed in any of his psychiatric training. He turned to Ruby and said, “Ruby, when you pray for those people on the street, what do you say?” She replied, “My minister told me that Jesus went through a lot of trouble too, and when people shouted at him and said bad things to him, when Jesus was on the cross, he prayed for those people. So I pray for them too.” “Ruby, what do you say when you pray?” “I say, ‘Father forgive them, because they don’t know what they are doing?”
Ruby, a seven year-old girl, understood turning the other cheek. It means neither responding with violence, nor backing down. In many ways, Ruby was living out what was being taught at the time by Martin Luther King, Jr., which is that the world can be transformed by turning the other cheek. King, who based the Civil Rights protests both on the Sermon on the Mount, and the experiences and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi (who, himself, was trying to apply the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount).
King believed and taught that when we face our enemies and turn the other cheek, we hold a mirror up to them so that they can see the injustice and evil of their acts. King made a very clear distinction about the bigots of his day who wanted to maintain segregation. He believed that the practice of segregation was evil, and that the people defending it, as well as those shouting epithets at little girls like Ruby, were doing evil but were not evil. He saw these people as churchgoing folk who wanted to do right, who were trying to do God’s will, but who couldn’t distinguish good from evil. He wanted to transform them from enemy to friend, from evil acts to good acts. He knew that the key to this transformation was to change our behavior first. He called the Christians of the Civil Rights Movement to be transformed from basic human reactions in the face of evil to exceptional reactions. In essence, he was saying that by massively turning the other cheek in the face of bigotry, the bigots and the nation could be transformed, but the first step was transforming the protestors. They would turn the other cheek.
The difficulty for us is that we aren’t in the Civil Rights Movement, but that doesn’t meant that turning the other cheek has no role in our lives. For us the question is how we “turn the other cheek” in practical places, such as the workplace and elsewhere, where fighting for yourself and getting respect from others is really important. I think the basic problem is that people don’t really understand what turning the other cheek means. It doesn’t mean being weak. It means being stronger than those who are afraid of losing power. When we turn the other cheek, we are standing our ground. We are saying to others, definitively, “I will not run away from you, nor will I hurt you, but I will also not let you dominate me. I am going to be your equal. If you decide to hurt me, I’ll take your hurt, but I will not treat you the way you are treating me. And in the end I hope that we will find a way to work together—that we will become friends, colleagues, and companions.”
In the workplace it means that I will neither let you treat me disrespectfully, nor will I treat you disrespectfully. If you criticize or hurt me, I will not run away, nor will I hurt you back. I will stand before you and with you until you are willing to treat me in a way that allows us to work for what’s best. These same principles apply in every other relationship—friendships, marriages, parenting, and more. Turning the other cheek creates healthy relationships.
I learned about this aspect of turning the other cheek back in sixth grade. I remember that one of the other kids, Bruce McWilliams, got very angry at me for some reason, and wanted to fight. Being a bit of a strange kid at the time, I had chosen Martin Luther King, Jr., as my role model. He had been shot three years earlier, and I was captivated by what he did, as well as by what Mahatma Gandhi did in India. Most kids chose athletes or astronauts as their heroes. Mine were “turn-the-other-cheekers.” So trying to channel my inner MLK, Jr., I stood before Bruce and told him I wasn’t going to fight. He tried to hit me, and I grabbed his arms as he fell on top of me. I kept telling him that I wasn’t going to fight, but I wasn’t afraid. He just got more and more frustrated. But eventually he got off of me, and I saw then and there that my response puzzled him. I think that my not fighting with him actually allowed us to become friends.
Turning the other cheek doesn’t just mean standing our ground. It also means bringing about cooperation between others and us. When I think of this aspect of turning the other cheek, I think of Nelson Mandela. Here was a man who was imprisoned in hard labor for over 25 years by the Apartheid regime in South Africa, but when he was set free and then eventually became president, he turned the other cheek in a way that allowed the country to come together. With a black population that outnumbered the white population almost 17:1, he very easily could have promoted revenge. Yet when he became president he refused to act in any way other than graciously, showing through speech and behavior that he was willing to diminish his will in order to promote unity and cooperation in the nation. For a great example of this, see the film, Invictus. It wonderfully shows how turning the other cheek on a grand scale can unite people.
Finally, turning the other cheek forms and restores relationships. When we are willing to turn our cheek in the face of anger, it overcomes division and promotes connection. I had an experience of this last summer. I was driving down a road near our house, and as is sometimes the case, I was driving way too fast. As I rounded a curve, I passed a group of people standing outside while working on a house. One of the men, furious at my speed, came running towards my car, threw something at it, and yelled at me. My natural inclination was to do one of two things: to stop and yell back while thrusting the appropriate finger in the air, or to just keep driving with my finger out the window. I normally don’t do these things, but I always feel like doing them. Instead, I stopped and slowly backed up, winding down my window. I immediately said to him, “I know I was driving too fast. I’m really sorry.” His face changed from purple to normal, and he said, “No, I’m sorry. I’ve seen so many people driving so fast around that curve, and I lost my temper.” I said, “No, you’ve had every right to do that. I was going way too fast, and I know I have to slow down on this road, so you’re helping me.” We both kept doing our best Chip and Dale act, insisting that it was me, not the other, who was at fault. In then I apologized one more time and drove away. We’re able to wave and say hi now each time I pass. And it’s due to both of us turning our cheeks to each other.
When I think about turning the other cheek, I don’t only think about it in terms of protest. I think of it in terms of how we manage our lives. Turning the other cheek basically says that I am going to live a life that’s focused on love, respect, cooperation, and letting the Christ in me meet the Christ in you. I won’t back down, I won’t strike back, but I will look for a way to meet you in the middle. I just wish that this was something our politicians could learn.
Amen.
