Dcn Tom Lindell

Greetings my brothers and sisters,

Todays Eucharistic lectionary is from Luke 6:27-38. Within that passage, verse 29 stands out and speaks volumes If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Walter Wink offers a cogent perspective in a small book about Jesus and non-violence.[1]

Picture if you will, someone who is not your peer, strike (slap) you on your left cheek. Instead of retaliating, turn your face to offer your right cheek. Culturally, it is unacceptable to use your backhand, and if your adversary did strike you, it would land on your nose. (Using one’s left hand or your fist is anathema.)

The second part of verse 29 depicts a poor man in court for failure to pay what he owed. He is ordered to give up his coat in payment, however, by Jewish law, it would be returned to him at the end of the day because he would need it for warmth overnight. If he gave up his shirt also, he would be standing in the courtroom stark naked. Nakedness was taboo in Judaism, and shame fell not on the naked person, but on the person viewing or causing one’s nakedness.

Mathew 5:41 goes one step further: …and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. It was common under Roman occupation for a soldier to conscript a man to carry his pack (65-80 pounds) but only for one mile. (Roads were lined with mile markers.) To offer to carry the pack for an additional mile would incur severe military penalty to the soldier. From a situation of servile impressments, the aggrieved has thus seized the initiative; taken back the power of choice.

Wink is suggesting that Jesus is counseling nonviolence as a means of retaliation; the effect being humiliation or shaming of the oppressor but recovering the initiative by asserting their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. In an occupied country, the rules are Cesar’s, but not how one responds to the rules—that is God’s, and Caesar has no control over that.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King were very effective proponents of nonviolence. As difficult as it is to enact, the oppressors are ultimately shamed by their violent retaliation. At the end of the day, the strategy is an effective means towards justice for the oppressed, although it can often take years to achieve.

—Dcn Tom

[1] Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way, Augsburg Fortress, Minneapolis, 2003, pp. 15-24.