Dear Parish Family,
Today’s Gospel reading continues the Sermon on the Mount from last week. It is as we saw the part known as the “antitheses”: “You have heard that it was said ... but I say to you.” Here two antitheses are drawn out. The first is taken from the Torah: “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” (Lev 24:19). The second is a maxim that combines the commandment to love the neighbor from our first reading with an injunction not found anywhere in the Old Testament but representing much of what is taught or assumed there, namely, that one should hate the enemies of God and of Israel.
Jesus is not contradicting the Old Testament but is radicalizing it, going much further though in the same direction. For the “eye for eye” injunction was not meant to sanction revenge but to restrict it. Now Jesus rules it out altogether. Jesus’ injunction was probably formulated in opposition to the policy of the Zealots or their predecessors, who advocated armed rebellion against the occupying Roman power. Concluding his reinterpretation of the commandments, Jesus paints three scenes in which one disciple humiliated by another is urged to forego retaliation. Looking at them in the cultural context of Jesus’ day, we can grasp their timeless impact wherever the Gospel will be preached.
In a mainly right-handed world, a slap across the right cheek is back-handed, and in first-century Palestine a back-handed slap was meant not so much to inflict physical injury as to dishonor the person slapped. If someone dishonored you with the demeaning back-handed slap, you were expected to reclaim your honor by responding in kind. Thus Jesus' suggestion would, in that context, be a surprising move, indicating that you simply refuse to be dishonored so easily.
Having to resort to courts in the Middle East is very shameful. Arguments should be settled long before this stage. Jesus’ recommendation to yield more (the tunic) than the plaintiff asks (the cloak) is astounding. The cloak was absolutely essential not only as a piece of clothing but as a sleeping bag. To give this up too would leave one naked, a shameful condition to say the least. When Jesus suggests handing over the cloak as well, he is saying, in effect, “When you hand over your other garment, your nakedness will expose not only your flesh but also the extent of your adversary's oppression.”
Lastly, it was legal and customary for soldiers to force citizens to carry their military gear or supplies for one mile. Remember the instance of Simon of Cyrene being forced to carry the cross in the place of the ‘criminal Christ’ on the way to the place of execution. In first-century, occupied Palestine, this soldier frequently was a fellow Israelite who turned mercenary. Carrying the gear was humiliation enough; being forced to do so by a traitorous fellow citizen was even more humiliating.
Thus, these sayings of Jesus are not new rules, but examples of nonviolent response to oppression. Rather than actions to be imitated literally, they were examples meant to stimulate similar forms of creative nonviolence. These teachings of Jesus inspired Mahatma Gandhi to his famous salt march, exposing the oppression of British taxation. Closer to our own time and place, these teachings of Jesus led Martin Luther King, Jr., to his creative nonviolent practices of bus boycotts and restaurant sit-ins.
Ordinarily, a person given to evil will become worse and worse if he thinks he can hurt others with impunity. That is why to threaten him with reprisal is to tug him back from his own moral destruction. But sometimes a person is so sunk in evil that no threat of punishment would deter him. And then your best bet is to let him hit you again. If he does, he may finally understand the evil in himself and hate it. Attention to the contexts of today's readings help us realize that Jesus’ challenge to nonviolence and love of enemies is profoundly challenging, but not impossible.
Fr. Tom Kunnel C.O.