The Power of Saints

Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31

November 4, 2007, All Saints Sunday

In the movie Gandhi, towards the end, we see the following exchange. A Hindu leader comes to the bedside of Gandhi, who is fasting. He begs him to stop the fast. Gandhi reiterates what he has said before, that he will stop his fast when the Hindus and Moslems stop their fighting and killing. In the eyes of the Hindu man you can see hatred for the Moslems and he declares he will keep fighting. He tries to explain why by telling how the Moslems took his little boy and crushed his head. Then he relates how in revenge he took a Moslem boy and killed him in the same way. Then, in a voice filled with agony and sorrow he says, “I have been living in hell.”

You see Gandhi thinking and hurting with him, and then he says in a gentle voice, “I think I know a way out of hell.”

The Hindu man leans forward to capture the words, and Gandhi says, “Go and find a boy similar to the son the Moslems killed. Take him into your home as your son…and raise him as a Moslem.”

Gandhi was inviting the man to return to life, but to do so in a way that chose life and living, over dying and destruction,

That is what Jesus is asking of us today in our passage from Luke. Now some, or even all of you, may ask what this has to do with All Saints’ Sunday. I think it has everything to do with our celebration today, because if you look at the lives of the saints you will see they chose to live alternative lives that sought life, and blessing of others, not death and destruction. But we need to understand how they did it, how they got their power to do it, and that is what we get in our passage today.

It is easy to read Luke’s Sermon on the Plain as a suggestion to become a doormat for the destructive forces of our lives. But to do so is to totally misunderstand what Jesus is saying.

For the following I am indebted to Dr. Walter Wink, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. Walter has been a Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, and has written many books. Best known is perhaps The Powers that Be, and, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination.

When Jesus says, "Do not resist one who is evil," there is something stronger than simply to resist. It is “Do not resist violently.” Jesus is indicating “Do not resist evil on its own terms. Don't let your opponent dictate the terms of your opposition.” If I have a hoe and my opponent has a rifle, I am obviously going to have to get a rifle in order to fight on equal terms, but then my opponent gets a machine gun, so I have to get a machine gun. You have a spiral of violence that is unending.

Jesus is trying to break that spiral of violence. “Don't resist one who is evil” probably means something like “Don't turn into the very thing you hate. Don't become what you oppose.” The earliest translation of this is probably in a version of Romans 12 where Paul says, "Do not return evil for evil."

Jesus gives three examples of what He means by not returning evil for evil. The first of these is, "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Imagine if I were your assailant and I were to strike a blow with my right fist at your face, which cheek would it land on? It would be the left. It is the wrong cheek in terms of the text we are looking at. Jesus says, "If anyone strikes you on the right cheek..." I could hit you on the right cheek if I used a left hook, but that would be impossible in Semitic society because the left hand was used only for unclean tasks. You couldn't even gesture with your left hand in public. The only way I could hit you on the right cheek would be with the back of the hand.

Now the back of the hand is not a blow intended to injure. It is a symbolic blow. It is intended to put you back where you belong. It is always from a position of power or superiority. The back of the hand was given by a master to a slave, or by a husband to a wife, or by a parent to a child, or a Roman to a Jew in that period. What Jesus is saying is in effect, "When someone tries to humiliate you and put you down, put you back into your social location which is inferior to that person, turn your other cheek."

Now in the process of turning in that direction, if you turned your head to the right, I could no longer backhand you. Your nose is now in the way. Furthermore, you can't backhand someone twice. It's like telling a joke a second time. If it doesn't work the first time, it has failed. By turning the other cheek, you are defiantly saying to the master, "I refuse to be humiliated by you any longer. I am a human being just like you. I am a child of God. You can't put me down even if you have me killed." This is clearly no way to avoid trouble. The master might have you flogged within an inch of your life, but he will never be able to assert that you have no dignity.

The second instance Jesus gives is, "If anyone takes you to court and sues you for your outer garment, give your undergarment as well." The situation here is dealing with collateral for a loan. If a person was trying to get a loan, normally they would use animals or land as collateral for the loan but the very poorest of the poor, according to Deuteronomy 24:10-13, could hock their outer garment. It was the long robe that they used to sleep in at night and used as an overcoat by day. The creditor had to return this garment every night but could come get it every morning and thus harass the debtor and hopefully get him to repay.

Jesus' audience is made up of debtors -- "If anyone takes you to court..." He is talking to the very people who know they are going to be dragged into court for indebtedness and they know also that the law is on the side of the wealthy. They are never going to win a case. So Jesus says to them, "Okay, you are not going to win the case. So take the law and with jujitsu-like finesse, throw it into a point of absurdity. When your creditor sues you for your outer garment, give your undergarment as well."

They didn't have underwear in those days. That meant taking off the only stitch of clothing you had left on you and standing nude, naked, in court. As the story of Jonah reminds us, nakedness was not only taboo in Israel. The shame of nakedness fell not on the person who was naked, but on the person who observed their nakedness. The creditor is being put in the position of being shamed by the nakedness of the debtor. Imagine the debtor leaving the courtroom, walking out in the street and all of his friends coming and seeing him in his all-togethers and saying, "What happened to you?"

He says, "That creditor has got all my clothes," and starts walking down to his house. People are coming out of bazaars and alleys, "What happened? What happened?" Everyone is talking about it and chattering and falling in behind him, fifty-hundred people marching down in this little demonstration toward his house. You can imagine it is going to be some time in that village before any creditor takes anybody else to court.

What Jesus is showing us in these two examples so far is that you don't have to wait for a utopian revolution to come along before you can start living humanly. You can begin living humanly now under the conditions of the old order. The kingdom of God is breaking into the myths of these people now, the moment they begin living the life of the future, the kingdom of God.

Jesus' third example is "If one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two." Now these packs weighed 65 to 85 pounds, not counting weapons. These soldiers had to move quickly to get to the borders where trouble had broken out. The military law made it permissible for a soldier to grab a civilian and force the civilian to carry the pack, but only one mile. There were mile markers on every Roman road. If -- and this is the part we have left out -- the civilian were forced to carry the pack more than one mile, the soldier was in infraction of military code, and military code was always more strictly enforced than civilian. So Jesus is saying, "All right. The next time the soldier forces you to carry his pack, cooperate. Carry it and then when you come to the mile marker, keep going."

The soldier suddenly finds himself in a position he has never been in before. He has always known before exactly what you would do. You would mutter and you would complain, but you would carry it. As soon as the mile marker came, you would drop it. Suddenly, this person is carrying the pack on. The soldier doesn't know why, but he also knows that he is in infraction of military law and if his centurion finds out about this, he is in deep trouble. Jesus is teaching these people how to take the initiative away from their oppressors and within the situation of that old order, find a new way of being.

The power of the saints is that they take the initiative and find a new way of being in the world. They find a way to choose life not only for themselves, but those around them as well.

I started with a story from Gandhi’s life. I would like to end with a quote from him. “What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?,” and I would add, religious and moral purity.

As the saints of old who charted a new course, and gave hope to the masses, we, the saints of today must be about the business of choosing life and giving hope to the masses today, to the Christian, the Moslem, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Atheist, the cult member, to all of God’s people.

Amen

© 2007 Rev. Dr. Thomas T. Peters