epiphany 7
the gospel of luke 6:27-38 psalm 37:1-11, 39-40
for St. Paul’s House, a Lutheran Life Community, February 24, 2019
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Beloveds, grace and compassion to you from God our Creator, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s Gospel text is a continuation of Jesus’ sermon on the plain. Last week, we heard blessings for the marginalized and woes for the privileged. Jesus has been setting up a series of reversals – upheaving the social order of the day in favor of God’s compassion. Leveling the playing field by raising up those dismissed by society – people who are poor, who are weeping, who are hungry. The good news Jesus is bringing, news of God’s expansive and radical love, applies not only to the rich, to those society has blessed, but to all, and especially to those society has not blessed.
Jesus continues calling for reversals in today’s text. He tells the crowd, the disciples, and by extension, us, to react to violence with non-violence, to give generously without expectation, and to pray for our enemies instead of to curse them. These are unexpected reactions.
Jesus is asking a lot of us here. He is asking us to act in ways that center God’s compassion working through us. Jesus is calling us to act in God’s image, to go beyond the good things that ‘even sinners’ do. Jesus is teaching us to do the hard thing, to not only reciprocate good with good, but to reciprocate bad with good.
I wrestle with this teaching.
Unlike the blessings and woes of the Beatitudes, this section of Jesus’ sermon on the plain hasn’t help up as well historically. This passage has been used to justify abuse, to encourage people to passively accept violence, to love those who have no respect for their full humanity, loving those who are actively perpetuating harm and who aren’t willing to be accountable or work towards transformation.
I don’t believe that those misuses are the core of what Jesus is teaching here, though. This is an extension of the blessings and woes. God wants us to live into the full glory of God’s Kingdom, to be in community, and to be in relationship. God is not teaching us to passively accept abuse or marginalization. We can love people in ways that ask them to do better, and can love people in ways that respect our own boundaries and safety.
And text can also be read as a text of resistance. Broderick Greer, a contemporary queer, Black, Episcopal priest writes: “”turning the other cheek” is going to whatever length possible to force your oppressor to look you in the eye and acknowledge your humanity”. In Christ’s time, ‘turning the other cheek’ would force the person to strike for the second time with either a closed fist, which is the mark of fighting an equal, or with the left hand, which would be culturally inappropriate. And if you give your shirt after your coat, the person taking from you would witness you naked, which was a shameful act for the viewer.
Jesus is calling us to responses that assert our full humanity in the face of oppression. Those on the margins might be considered less-than-human by those society has blessed, but Jesus knows and teaches that in God’s good creation, we are all beloved children of God.
Here, the reversal is that the shame is transferred from the marginalized who are experiencing harm to the privileged who are enacting it. Contested identities, poverty, mourning, hunger – those things are not shameful for those who are experiencing it. Those who perpetuate the violence and dehumanization, and who allow it to happen, carry the shame.
But in order for nonviolent and creative responses to violence to be transformative and an act of resistance, not just for those who are claiming full humanity, but for wider society – those with power and privilege need to be able to experience shame, and to let that shame change them. Sometimes, when I experience shame, my first reaction is to keep it to myself, to avoid engaging with the hard work of transformation, instead of letting shame be a pivot point to acting in line with God’s compassion. Unlearning systems of power is hard, and the feeling of shame can be a driving force, if we let it, to learn and internalize that those we might consider on the margins are just as human, just as complex, just as blessed, as those with some security and power.
For people who have been marginalized, it is an act of faith to trust that our nonviolent responses can provoke change, when it seems like the weight of history is against that belief. Putting good into the world with the assurance good will come through God is an act of faith. Giving freely with the assurance that abundance will come through God is an act of faith. Believing that people’s preconceived notions and prejudices can be transformed through God is an act of faith. One way of embodying our faith is acting with compassion for others, even those who harm us, as God is compassionate. This compassion can heal us.
Encountering this text, I find that Jesus is asking us to respond with transformative nonviolence, to bring forward the sins of the oppressor, and that he’s also encouraging us to ‘pay them no mind’, a quote from Marsha P. Johnson, one of the transgender women of color who sparked the gay rights movement at Stonewall. Jesus wants us to spend our energy on community, to forgive, to act non-judgmentally, to give abundantly to bring about the Kingdom of God. He doesn’t want us to get all tied up in the violence of oppression, or to respond in-kind instead of responding in faith. This is reflected in our Psalm as well: “Do not fret because of the wicked…for they will soon fade like the grass. Trust in the Lord and do good.”
This Gospel of ours, the story of a God who became fully human, a God who moves in breath and flesh, can be messy. This is one of the messy passages. It can be a text of resistance and compassion, and it has also been sorely misused. It is a continuation of Jesus’ teachings on blessings and woes, at the core raising up the oppressed and bringing down those who abuse their power.
Turn the other cheek, love abundantly, so that the person harming you is made to consider you a full person, to consider their own actions against a fellow child of God, transforming, and spend your energy on your community of care.
I am grateful to be here in community with you all as we practice Godly compassion, allowing ourselves to be changed through God’s love, transformed so that we can meet each other’s full, complex, beautiful humanity.
Reed Fowler 