This section continues a pattern from 5:17-38 where Jesus radicalizes the law. Yet this section also represents a shift as Jesus turns from the internal relationships of the alternative community toward how the community will relate to others, especially hostile others. Jesus turns the community toward the abusive others and suggests strategies that will break the cycles of violence perpetuated by their enemies while asserting the community’s own dignity as children of God.
The title of this section is Holy Resisting, not Spineless Acquiescing! Walter Wink has done some fine work on the meaning of these instructions.# Jesus assumes in this section that his audience consists of those being harmed whether by being struck, sued, or forced by someone else. How might they respond to the violence being perpetrated against them?
The first issue involves being struck. The law had allowed “an eye for an eye”. This allowance did not originally serve as a rallying cry for vengeance as it does today. This law placed limits on retribution. An eye for an eye meant one could not, for example, take another’s life for striking out their eye. Punishment could be commensurate with the offense and no more. But Jesus radicalizes this command as he has with the others. Jesus suggests responses to Roman violence. Acts of violence carry symbolic value that sometimes surpasses the physical pain involved. Slapping someone less powerful with the back of the hand would not hurt physically as much as a fist to the cheek would, but it carried a psychological element that put “lesser” people in their place. Jesus describes someone who is backslapped since they are struck on the right cheek in a culture that only used the right hand in public interaction [since the left had unclean functions.] When Jesus says, “Turn the other cheek”, he calls for a situation where one stands up to one’s enemy and requires him to stop the violence or to at least strike one as “an equal” [right hand fist or slap to the left cheek.].
We too assign different meaning to different acts of violence. We respond differently to a parent who spanks her five year old than we would to one who punches her. When I ask a male student if he would rather receive a knock out punch at a campus party or have an enemy take him over the knee and spank him in front of everyone, his answer is clear. Though the physical pain is less, the shame carried in the spanking makes the punch preferable. Likewise in Jesus’ day violent acts could carry shame. In one legal code that Wink describes, an unprovoked punch by one of equal status is subject to a fine of four days worth of wages; but a slap levies a fine that costs 200 days’ wages and a backslap even twice that amount! Jesus says that in an undesirable situation where someone, probably a soldier, tries to put people in their place, they should stand up and reassert their dignity without themselves resorting to violence.
Jesus raises a similar strategy in two other cases. If someone rich enough to loan money takes them to court demanding their last resort collateral [their coat] then they should let that person know how destitute he leaves them by handing over every stitch of clothing that they have on! He must see how he robs them of everything. If a soldier conscripts them to carries his pack to the Roman limit of one mile, then keep carrying it a second mile so that the soldier must beg for it back or suffer the wrath of his superiors who know that the populace can only be abused so far before they begin to rebel. [Soldiers who forced peasants beyond the official limits might suffer loss of pay, food, or rank. Most often they would be publicly whipped.]
In each of these examples Jesus describes ways to challenge the way things run by refusing to accept that which seeks to humiliate! The alternative community refuses to accept their dishonoring by the powerful, knowing that God has declared them blessed! But they also do not take up weapons of retaliation. They offer holy resistance rather than violent resistance.
The remainder of this section speaks of the need to love enemies. The faithful resisters will respect the humanity of their abusers and not stoop to their level. Jesus demands that their love move beyond the community in solidarity. They must have respectful regard of all people without discrimination since God is perfectly consistent in caring for all people. The justice that they hungered and thirsted for is this greater justice for all people. In their quest to care they must be perfectly consistent, like God, in caring for all!
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