Ephesians 1.11-23, Luke 6.20-31
The Last Sunday after Trinity, 30 October 2022, Austwick
Preliminary to the talk: with the help of a member of the congregation we demonstrate Walter Wink's interpretation of ‘turn the other cheek’ / ‘give up your coat as well’. [1]
- these are actions of defiance, rather than defeat in the face of a bully; these are actions of protest rather than passivity in the face of an oppressor.
“May you know the hope he has called you to, the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.”
Today we honour those people who live lives of hope, who demonstrate what hope means in the face of challenge and hardship.
We honour those who refuse to put on despair and defeatism, cynicism and pessimism - but who push on in hope.
We honour those who avoid the pitfall of unthinking optimism, the dream that everything will work out all right in the end; we bless those who refuse to rest in the acceptance that we’ll be ok in heaven - but who rather live actively hopeful lives in the here and now. For
… despair, defeatism, cynicism and pessimism, and, I would argue, optimism, are the opposites and opponents of hope. What these enemies of hope have in common is confidence about what is going to happen, a false certainty that excuses inaction. Whether you feel assured that everything is going to hell or will all turn out fine, you are not impelled to act. They undermine your participation in life. They are generally both wrong in their analysis and damaging in their consequences. Not acting is a luxury those in immediate danger do not have, and despair is something no-one can afford. [2]
We give thanks for those who have carved a hopeful path between the two extremes of crushing despair and impotent optimism, and who have acted to bring hope into our world.
We give thanks for those who have taken to heart Jesus’ words spoken directly to them: and in light of today’s reading and today’s world situation we give thanks particularly for the poor and hungry, who, knowing themselves to have his blessing, refuse to believe the lies of the better-off who tell them that their poverty is a result of their laziness and incompetence; who act defiantly to challenge employers who block their job applications because their address is in a deprived area; who protest against landlords refusing to rent to tenants on benefits; and who raise objections to their children being given different advice on education and careers from that given to their more privileged peers. [3] For such are the actions of those who live in hope, who are motivated by hope, and whose actions increase the amount of hope there is in the world so that others can grasp it too.
Jesus invites us to see the world in a wholly different way from the hopeless picture we’re usually presented. Where we are told that all that maters is economics, Jesus teaches us to sit lightly to money and things - if you’ve got it, give it away, he says; if you’ve lost it, don’t be anxious to get it back. What is more important is the relationships you have with those you deal with - even your enemies, those who’ll sue you for everything, those who keep on putting you down even when you’re at your lowest ebb: for if you keep on praying for them you’ll learn how to love them in a way which will dignify you both.
Jesus invites us to live hopefully on the basis of the simplest and most profound of instructions: do to others as you would have them do to you. We give thanks and we celebrate those who show us the way in this: those who refuse to cooperate with anything which humiliates them; [4] those who despite having violence done to them respond peaceably in love; those who sing a new song because, despite their poverty, they know the hope God calls them to, and ‘the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints’.
Notes
[1] Walter Wink, from "Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus' Nonviolent Way":
"If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Why the right cheek? A blow by the right fist in that right-handed world would land on the left cheek of the opponent. An open-handed slap would also strike the left cheek. To hit the right cheek with a fist would require using the left hand, but in that society the left hand was used only for unclean tasks. Even to gesture with the left hand at Qumran carried the penalty of ten days' penance. The only way one could naturally strike the right cheek with the right hand would be with the back of the hand. We are dealing here with insult, not a fistfight. The intention is clearly not to injure but to humiliate, to put someone in his or her place... A backhand slap was the usual way of admonishing inferiors. Masters backhanded slaves; husbands, wives; parents, children; men, women; Romans, Jews. We have here a set of unequal relations, in each of which retaliation would be suicidal. The only normal response would be cowering submission. Part of the confusion surrounding these sayings arises from the failure to ask who Jesus' audience was. In all three of the examples in Matt. 5:39b-41, Jesus' listeners are not those who strike, initiate lawsuits, or impose forced labor, but their victims ("If anyone strikes you...wants to sue you...forces you to go one mile..."). There are among his hearers people who were subjected to these very indignities, forced to stifle outrage at their dehumanising treatment by the hierarchical system of caste and class, race and gender, age and status, and as a result of imperial occupation. Why then does he counsel these already humiliated people to turn the other cheek? Because 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 failed to achieve its intended effect. 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." Such a response would create enormous difficulties for the striker. Purely logistically, how would he hit the other cheek now turned to him? He cannot backhand it with his right hand (one only need try this to see the problem). If he hits with a fist, he makes the other his equal, acknowledging him as a peer. But the point of the back of the hand is to reinforce institutionalised inequality. Even if the superior orders the person flogged for such "cheeky" behaviour (this is certainly no way to avoid conflict!), the point has been irrevocably made. He has been given notice that this underling is in fact a human being. In that world of honour and shaming, he has been rendered impotent to instil shame in a subordinate. He has been stripped of his power to dehumanise the other. As Gandhi taught, "The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.”
[2] Rebecca Solnit, Why climate despair is a luxury. New Statesman, 19 October 2022. Altered.
[3] Lizzy Davies, Make poverty discrimination illegal like racism or sexism, official to tell UN. Guardian, 26 October 2022.
[4] Mohandas Gandhi, "The first principle of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.” quoted in Walter Wink in"Beyond Just War and Pacifism: Jesus' Nonviolent Way".
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