“God’s Subversive Tactics” based on Matthew 5:38-42 (please read!)

The groundbreaking scholarship on this Matthew passage isn’t new, it was published in 1992 by Walter Wink in his book “Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.” I remember hearing it in High School, I’ve preached it before – here – and some of you have ridiculously good memories. But also, not all of you have heard me preach it before, and it is SUCH GOOD STUFF and so central to how we understand the entire Jesus movement. So, anyway, if you already know this stuff, prepare for an excellent review. And if you don’t, hold on to your pew – this is going to be fun.

Those of us who have heard this passage without Wink’s scholarship have probably heard it as an invitation to be doormats, right? “Don’t resist. Let someone hit you repeatedly. Be passive. Be… weak.” And, heavens that’s concerning, that anyone would teach such things in a church. What a way to empower domestic violence, maintain the status quo, and teach those in positions of less power (women, racial and ethnic minorities, children) that the Godly way is to accept the harm that comes their way.

However, if you accept a perspective that the choices are violence or nonviolence, I can see how you might conclude that following Jesus is NOT a violent way, so you have to pick passivity. BUT, this passage doesn’t mean that AT ALL, this passage is about a third way. This is about how to engage in nonviolent resistance to undermine the powers that oppress. This is Jesus speaking to people who lived lives of oppression. This is the way called nonviolent ENGAGEMENT.

It seems especially fitting on this day when we are also thinking about Juneteenth because when we celebrate the freeing of those who had been enslaved, it also makes sense to talk about the ways that people who were enslaved resisted. We sometimes read in history about slave rebellions, but there were lots of ways that people engaged in regular, consistent resistance of the oppressive power of slave holders too. They pretended to be ill. They worked slowly, and badly. They “lost” or “accidentally damaged” equipment. They took what they needed, or just what they wanted. Papers were displaced. Things caught on fire. I suspect a lot of individuals were geniuses at such work, engaging in subversive actions that created immense disruptions without ever seeming to be fault.

Slave holders tried to break the spirits of those they enslaved, but the core human dignity, the reality of imago dei (that we are all made in the image of God – ALL OF US), seems to be quite resilient. And I think that’s the core of what Jesus was talking about too.

Let’s unpack each of Jesus’s suggestions. “Turn the other cheek.” First thing to know – you didn’t use your left hand for anything in ancient society because toilet paper wasn’t a thing yet and left hands were used for “unclean tasks.” This was a hard and fast rule, even gesturing with the left hand was illegal and carried a strict punishment. So, we are talking only about right hand hits. Which means that a person who is hit on the right cheek has been backhanded, which was ALWAYS AND ONLY diminutive. It was a common and normal way of putting people in their place. “A backhanded slap was the usual way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves, husbands, wives; parents, children; men , women; Romans, Jews.”1 Most people would cower.

One did NOT backhand a peer, it was actually illegal.

But if people can only hit with their right hands, and one has already been backhanded on the RIGHT cheek, then to turn the other cheek – to invite another hit – is NOT to passively accept violence. It is to invite the person who is trying to humiliate you to either back down, or treat you like an equal. “This action robs the oppressor of the power to humiliate. The person who turns the other cheek is saying, in effect, ‘Try again, Your first blow has failed to achieve its intended affect. I deny you the power to humiliate me. I am a human being just like you. Your status does not alter that fact. You cannot demean me.’”2

Which, then, puts the one who hit into a conundrum. Which is EXACTLY Jesus’s point. (Can you now see how this advice fits the one who also told parables?) “In that world of honor and shame, he has been rendered impotent to instill shame in a subordinate. He has been stripped of his power to dehumanize the other.”3

The second image is to give cloak along with coat, right? We are going to call them the outer-garment and the inner-garment so we can track it. Note that impoverished people only had those two garments, their were not backups. And, Hebrew Scriptures provide for someone to be sued for their outer-garment:

If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them. If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down; for it may be your neighbor’s only clothing to use as cover; in what else shall that person sleep? And if your neighbor cries out to me, I will listen, for I am compassionate. – Exodus 22:25-27

Note that even in this passage it is clear that only a poor person would be in this situation, and it is so tenuous that you can’t even take the outer-garment consistently, you have to take it for only the day so they can sleep with it at night. It seems, even in this passage, that the creditor is being pretty severely demonized for deciding to demand retribution on the poor, right? (Matthew’s language is wrong in implying it is the inner-garment, just ignore that – Luke gets it right, it is the outer-garment.)

Back to Wink, “Indebtedness was endemic in first-century Palestine. Jesus’ parables are full of debtors struggling to salvage their lives. Heavy debt was not, however, a natural calamity that had overtaken the incompetent. It was the direct consequence of Roman imperial policy…. By the time of Jesus we see this process already far advanced: large estates owned by absentee landlords, managed by stewards, and worked by tenant farers, day laborers, and slaves. It is no accident that the first act of the Jewish revolutionaries in 66 C.E. Was to burn the Temple treasury, where the records of debts was kept.”4 And Jesus is talking to people at the bottom of this system. “Why then does Jesus counsel them to give over their undergarments as well? This would mean stripping off all their clothing and marching out of court stark naked! Imagine the guffaws that must have evoked. There stands a creditor, covered with shame, the poor debtor’s outer garment in one hand, his undergarment in the other. The tables have already been turned on the creditor. The debtor had no hope of winning the case; the law was already entirely in the creditor’s favor. But the poor man has transcended this attempt to humiliate him. He has risen above the shame.” You may remember that there was a taboo against nakedness in ancient Judaism, but it turns out the larger taboo was against SEEING someone’s nakedness, not being naked.

“Jesus provides here a hint of how to take on the entire system by unmasking its essential cruelty and burlesquing its pretensions to justice. Here is a poor man who will not longer be treated as a sponge to be squeezed dry by the rich. He accepts the laws as they stand, pushes them to absurdity, and reveals them for what they have become. He strips naked, walks out before his fellows, and leaves the creditor, and the whole economic edifice that he represents, stark naked.”5

The third one – the “second mile”. Roman soldiers had the right to require civilians to carry their heavy packs for a mile – a form of forced labor. People hated it. However, if they asked someone to carry it for MORE than a mile, they were subject to discipline, and the discipline could vary immensely, including really severe punishment. So the soldiers regularly demanded their packs be carried a mile, but ONLY a mile. As he has in the two prior examples, Jesus recommends to the disempowered that they reclaim their human dignity even in the midst of oppression.

Wink says, “Imagine the soldier’s surprise when, at the next mile maker, he reluctantly reaches to assume his pack, and the civilian says, ‘Oh no, let me carry it another mile.’ Why would he want to do that? What is he up to? Normally , soldiers have to coerce people to carry their packs, but this Jew does it so cheerfully, and will not stop! Is this provocation? Is he insulting the legionnaire’s strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to violate the rules of impressment? Will this civilian file a complaint? Create trouble?”6 By messing with the soldiers head, the pack-carrier has taken back their human dignity and reclaimed their own power to choose! Regarding the soldier “If he has enjoyed feeling superior to the vanquished, he will not enjoy it today. Imagine the situation of a Roman infantryman pleading with the Jew to give back his pack!”7

He continues, “Jesus does not encourage Jews to walk a second mile in order to build up merit in heaven, or to exercise a supererogatory piety, or to kill the soldier with kindness. He is helping an oppressed people find a way to protest and neutralize an onerous practice despised throughout the empire.” Now, one final note on these suggestions, all of them. “Such tactics can seldom be repeated. One can imagine that within days after the incidents that Jesus sought to provoke, the Powers That Be would pass new laws: penalties for nakedness in court, flogging for carrying a pack more than a mile! One must be creative, improvising new tactics to keep the opponent of balance. To those whose lifelong pattern has been to cringe before their masters, Jesus offers a way to liberate themselves from servile actions and a servile mentality. And he asserts that they can do this before there is a revolution.8”

That is, Jesus so deeply believed that everyone was created in the image of God and deserved to have utterly wonderful lives, that he took the time to assess the situations and come up with some really subversive answers to the problems people faced, solutions that restored their dignity. There is, you may have noticed, one more piece of advice, and it is one that is a challenge to many of us. “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” Wink says, “Such radical egalitarian sharing would be necessary to rescue impoverished Palestinian peasants from their plight; one need not posit an imminent end of history as the cause for such astonishing generosity. And yet none of this is new; Jesus is merely issuing a prophetic summons to Israel to observe the commandments pertaining to the sabbatical year enshrined in Torah, adapted to a new situation.” That is, for those who were poor to break out of the realities of staggering interest and taxes, they need to work together and not apart. They needed to overcome the stragety of divide and conquer with radical sharing.

In each of these recommendations in this tiny little piece of the gospel, Jesus recommends third ways. Neither passively accepting the oppression that dehumanizes the people nor fighting violence with violence. He recommends, wit, humor, solidarity, and making visible the problems that the system created. We don’t face exactly the same issues, but the SPIRIT of these commandments are a gift to us as a playbook for how to deal with oppression. Violence begets violence. Passivity in the face of violence changes nothing. But there are third ways, and I will say that I think God is really in favor of third ways and I’ve noticed that when I am stuck between two unacceptable options, and sit with them (and with God), God often nudges me toward a third way – a far more creative one that I could find on my own.

God calls the world from violence and oppression to peace and the radically embraced humanity of all. And the way from here to there, it turns out, involves creativity, wit, and humor. Let’s go! Amen

1 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992) p. 176.

2 176.

3 176-7.

4 178.

5 179.

6 182.

7 182.

8 182-3.

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

June 30, 2024