turn the other cheek

In today’s gospel, we not only hear Jesus say to “love your enemy and do good to those who hate you,” we also hear “turn the other cheek.”  This is, perhaps, one of the more misunderstood phrases of the gospels.

Theologian Walter Wink in the late 1980’s provided some insight into this passage that helped to transform how we might read something like this.

Wink said that in the ancient world of Jesus, masters and people in authority would use a “backhand slap” (from the right hand to the right cheek) against those in a lower position.  While this would surely hurt to get slapped, it was also meant to humiliate someone and put them in their place.  The “appropriate” response to getting a back hand slap was to look down in shame.

Jesus and his followers were oppressed people living under Roman rule.  They knew all too well the experience of the backhand slap – either from direct experience or from witnessing it.

So he tells them to “turn the other cheek.”  Far from being an act of submission, this is an act of resistance because the one in authority now has to face you as an “equal” if they are going to strike you on the other cheek (which, in effect, would “humiliate” the one in authority).

Jesus also knew that if you struck back at a person in authority, one would certainly get a greater beat down.  So he offers a “third way” of responding that is neither submission nor retaliation and forces the oppressor to confront their own violence.

Same thing with his counsel to give the tunic.  If someone like a Roman soldier demanded your coat (as a way to exert their dominance) giving your tunic as well would leave you essentially naked in front of them.  Offering the tunic in addition to the coat was a way to reveal the injustice of the situation without directly fighting back and causing further harm.

Jesus’ concern was to get the world back into right relationship.  That cannot happen when we live in a world of masters and slaves, oppressors and oppressed, and so often when we “fight back” against oppression we use the methods and thinking of the masters. Justice requires us to see each other as equals, and Jesus insightfully offers those subjected to power a way to preserve their own dignity without becoming like the oppressors themselves.  But Jesus also offers those who might be exerting power or oppressing a way to be transformed as well by revealing their own participation in these systems of violence.

Jonathan Matthew Smucker is a Mennonite peace activist who has reflected a lot on the words of Jesus that we hear today and is a national leader in helping us to think more creatively about nonviolence and nonviolence resistance.  He says that Jesus’ counsel is not only strategic, but transformative. He says, “The fundamental thing for me on this is that, if you want to make change, you have to have an invitation for people to be able to step into change; to be able to step into a better version of themselves. [You want them to] not be in a corner but to have a way forward: a path that they see themselves in, in an aspirational way. And if you attack people, [focusing on] the thing that you hate about them, you don’t allow that. I think loving our enemies allows us to imagine that path of transformation.” (From https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2018/10/05/loving-our-enemies-in-the-work-for-social-change-an-interview-with-jonathan-matthew-smucker/)

May we all work to lean into this kind of change.