SUNDAY, JULY 14 2024 - TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
July 14, 2024
Carolyn Smith
Turn the other Cheek
What a heavy topic. This idea has long had hurt people feeling guilty for holding onto pain and anger. I know, in our house, it’s the biggest F word of all. Jay, as you may know, has been on a healing journey for a long time, and he & I have facilitated groups for people and couples struggling with childhood trauma, so this was naturally a topic to have him join in on. We juggled the outline for today’s service a bit because there is a lot here, and it all matters. We hope you can leave here with assurance and a sense of heart-felt freedom, as well as pride in this Justice way that we walk together. The idea of ‘Turn the Other Cheek' has long had hurt people feeling like doormats, as if being Christian meant submissiveness or putting up with injury. #1, that’s not at all what Jesus meant, and #2 it has cost us a chance to heal more fully. It’s high time we picked this apart. Turn the other cheek. Give your cloak and the shirt off your back. Walk the second Mile. This sounds like asking for patience and virtue, to forgive and be the bigger person. To trust that God will bless us for our suffering. And no wonder some of us hear a teaching to be a doormat, to endure injury while we count on future Heavenly reward. Some of us have tried to be faithful and obedient. Some of us (and indeed MANY who left church decades ago) rejected this. What pain this has caused. Here’s the easy part to understand: it’s been 2000 years that have been translated and retranslated all that time, and the nuances of language, context, and slang are often lost in time. The harder part to swallow is that powerful entities: Empire, Patriarchy, The Church, & particularly in this case, King James who paid for his own King James version of the bible, made use of this passage & tweaked it on purpose to keep people submissive, servile & suffering to protect their power. I’m going to tell you today what Jesus meant, as best as scholars can, scholars who have studied history, laws of the time, and the context of that community… and you’re going to wonder why it has taken so long. In the context of Jesus’ humanity, in his fishing town and his efforts to stand up to oppressors, we’re going to learn from a scholar named Walter Wink, who cracked open this doormat forgiveness idea and instead energizes us for taking on Empire. Working for ‘Heaven on earth’ now, rather than a distant future. There are 2 big insights today - 1) First, to consider Forgiveness, you need some healing and refreshed spirit, not the other way around. And 2) Jesus was pioneering Methods of Non-Violent Action & Resistance, a way to stand up to power without unnecessary bloodshed. At the time, the Romans were taking charge across the region, and they had laws. The synagogue had laws too and believe it or not, these were quite forward-thinking. They knew, even if it wasn’t justice as we understand it, that there needed to be some balance. So ‘An Eye for and Eye’ meant that it was ‘fair’ that if I hurt your eye, you could hurt mine, but not worse than that. If I killed one person, you could kill me, but not the rest of my family. If I stole your cookie, you could make me give you a cookie in retaliation. This limit was a good improvement over angry vengeance, rather than creating more of a problem. The other thing to know is that The Romans colonized towns across Galilee and Judea to enrich the Empire, the emperor and his government. That meant the townsfolk and fishermen were at a real disadvantage, taxed too much, pushed around, and used at the whim of the Roman overlords. But the Romans had limits and rules about this too… after all, dead townsfolk didn’t make them money. Too much unrest led to frustrations and wasted resources, so the Romans kept a certain order and had agreements with the Synagogues and leaders. And the Synagogues had their rules too - the Purity laws and patriarchal laws like women and children submitting to husbands and who was pure enough to be allowed in the temple and in leadership. We don’t think of these rules right away, but here it’s critical to understanding what it means to “turn the other cheek.” I need 2 volunteers to come up and stand facing each other. 1) Person #1 – please hold up Your left hand. in Purity laws, left hand was off limits for lots of things. Why? (Because it was used for unclean things, such as the bathroom.) 2) So let’s use your right hand. 3) how do you strike the Right cheek? A backhand is an insult, humiliation, degrading, not a way to enter a dangerous fight. 4) A fist was violent, it became a fight and it wasn’t allowed by Roman law or synagogue, 5) and a fight is between Equals suddenly…. It’s angry, not demeaning and invites a fair fight. The oppressor who fights a peasant elevates that peasant to a threat, an equal. The Roman soldier who got into a fight with a peasant would likely be punished for unruly behaviour. So, if a Roman Soldier slapped a townsperson, it was right hand to right cheek. 6) What happens when that townsperson instead of cowering, finds their courage, realized they have nothing more to lose, and dares ‘turn their other left cheek?’ He defies authority, Empire, and forces the Roman into an awkward position. 7) Either a slap with an unclean left hand, OR a punch - violence, both punishable. The oppressor is out of options. And… 8) Who has the power now? —- The oppression stops working when someone rises up with dignity, integrity and forces the oppressor into an awkward place. SimilarlyIf a Solider was marching down the dusty road in the heat and was tired, he could, by the rules, haul up a peasant and have them carry his heavy knapsack for 1 mile. Not further: that would show weakness or cruelty or worse, it would prevent that peasant from earning his livelihood that provided good taxation for the empire. So - just one mile, or the solider would be punished, maybe fined, maybe whipped, maybe made to stand out in the heat for a day and a soldier didn’t want to be thought of as a troublemaker for his Commander. Imagine when that peasant, fed up with being treated poorly, walked the mile and then said loudly in front of others, ‘No worries Sir, I’ll go a second mile!” The solider was then called out and punished for breaking the rules. What if one person does it? What if 10 people do it? What if the entire town or countryside walks a second mile? And to be sued for your cloak: people wore 2 garments in those days and from a purity reason, no one except your spouse saw you naked. In fact, the shame was actually on any person unfortunate enough to see you naked! Like “I can’t unsee it!!” So, if some peasant owed you money and couldn’t pay, which is exactly how the system was rigged, (peasants could rarely pay,) you got to take them to court. Imagine a judge and people all around, watching you demand their cloak. What then, if they said, “here, have my underwear too” and stripped them off. Standing naked, and …yes, the shame and embarrassment is on you as much if not more than on the naked one! Jesus was preaching on the Mount, giving the sermon to townsfolk, peasants and fisherman fed up with Roman rule and insults, taxation and oppression, saying “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the meek, blessed are all you who are sick of being treated like garbage… The kingdom of God is about peace and justice and righteousness, not submitting to this Empire.” And Jesus knew to retaliate out of anger or frustration might lead to death and hopeless suffering. But to find another way, to display in front of everyone the unrighteousness of the might of Empire was to turn the other cheek and force the oppressor to see and feel all that was wrong with their system. It would be apparent that respect and relationship and more equality was a better way. More and more people doing standing up in this cheeky, brave way, and you, my friends, have a Revolution on your hands. Hosanna, Jesus, Save us. Part 2 – by Jay Smith The following thoughts are my own. St. Paul’s and the minsters are not responsible for anything I have to say. I will add a trigger warning and that this may contain things that are hard to hear so at any point if you feel like taking a break please do. Now that the disclaimer is clear, I’ll get into a topic I have spent a lot of time on. Forgiveness is talked about a lot in the bible. In fact, 117 times that I could find. It’s very appropriate since religion and forgiveness are both a paradox. They are simple and yet so darn complicated. Forgiveness is made to sound so simple. You just forgive…. What does the word forgiveness mean to you? Is it what a parent told you as a child? Is it what society says it means now? Is it what the bible tells you 117 times is is? Is it different for everyone? Is it a decision or a process? Is it needed or required? Is it an act of rebellion or claiming back the power that was taken from you? Who is it for if you get there? Simple and yet so complicated I have stood up here before and shared a little of my story. Today I thought I would share the part of my journey about forgiveness. I am a survivor of child abuse and being on the street in my teens. I ended up with chronic mental illness from it and in 2012 I started fairly intense therapy for it. As a part of that I started attending a peer support group at The Gatehouse where they help survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Part way through my second group I noticed that the topic for the next 3 weeks was forgiveness. This struck me as odd. The rest of the topics had only been a single week and this one was three. The first night I learned that at the Gatehouse forgiveness was often referred to as “the F-word” and I learned why. It’s so, so complicated. I worked on it for those three weeks and the topic stuck in my head. I became a peer facilitator at the house and over the next 10 years took many people through the three weeks of the F-word. I found that the forgiveness journey is incredibly individual, so these are my thoughts and a bit of what I walked through to get there. I had to do a lot of therapy, work and healing to get to the point where I could look at any of this. I started thinking and writing about the people who I felt had wronged me. The people who had used me and then thrown me away. The ones who did the damage that left me how I ended up, and I found a theme. That theme was that all of this was really, really heavy. So heavy it affected my daily life. Some days the weight made decisions for me or stopped me from doing things that I wanted to do. It was stopping me from moving forward. It was holding me in place and the reason why is that I was carrying a backpack with 27 tonnes of boulders in it. There was a boulder for each hurt that had been inflicted. A boulder for each sadness, five boulders for each hate and anger I carried around and I was exhausted from it. Some of the boulders were inflicted, and some I had caused but either way I realized that the only one who could put them down was me. I needed to let go of the rocks and find a way to forgive myself and others. This didn’t mean that I had to forget what was done. It didn’t mean I had to trust the one who caused the hurt and paid but it did mean letting go of that rock. To put down the weight from it and move on. As I started taking the boulders out of the backpack and honestly looking at them, I found I could do the work one at a time to put them down. To let go of what had been done. As I worked through the backpack, I also found that not all of them were boulders. Some were rocks and some were pebbles that had just been made bigger by everything else in the way. They were quicker and easier to put down. I also noticed that the more the backpack emptied out the quicker I could put the rocks down. I was figuring out what worked forgiveness meant for me. Forgiveness for me was letting go. To stop holding on to the weight of the hurt, pain, sad & anger at myself & others. I had the choice and the power to decide that this would no longer stop me from living. My way to rebel against those who had put the boulders there. To not forget but to let go. As I looked back at the boulders from my parents and my grandparents. I found the line of intergenerational trauma boulders that became so obvious. The ones that kept getting past along instead of getting put down. I think my father thought that one day he would get to the boulders in his backpack. But it was always later because it was going to really, really hurt to look at them. There was always later until there wasn’t. My father passed away in April still holding on to his backpack of boulders just as his mother had before him. I saw the weight that they had on his soul and the regret that was causing him so much emotional pain and hurt. The anger at the boulders my grandmother had passed along. He carried that to the end. I decided to leave those boulders behind. They weren’t going to be mine to pass along to my children. I don’t know what forgiveness means to you. I don’t know what walking a road of forgiveness would look like for you or if you have any want to go there. I decided to choose a healing road I could walk instead of the rocks choosing my direction for me. I chose to forgive. —————————- Carolyn: I’m fascinated, and I’m humbled by how different people define Forgiveness. Having heard that word from the Bible all my life, for me it has always been about: water under the bridge, freeing someone by clearing their tab, more directly related to the relationship between 2 people, like between Creator and a person. It gives it a different spin than Jay and others feeling freed by putting down a weight. Recently we had a sermon series on the Lord’s prayer where we pray: God, forgive us our sins/trespasses as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Sin is simply, by translation, missing the mark, turning away from God, and it’s healed by returning, trying again, reconciling. God is bigger and has all the room in the world to call us, to wait us out until we try again and return. That kind of redemption is worth everything. Do WE have that kind of graceful capacity? Sometimes. It’s something to strive for, to celebrate when transgressors truly reconcile. But not always easy. When we hear the recounting of Jesus on the cross saying “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do” = that came from a maturity, inner peace & strength, integrity of spirit, compassionately seeing human failing as pain to be healed. We can strive for such integrity, and we’re forgiven for not quite getting there. But is there better work than healing in spirit in that Way? The end of the scripture passage says, “be perfect.” The Greek word is ‘Telos’ – as a verb it means to perfect, to mature and grow into full capacity - that is something we can work on. Today, it means “healed” enough to rise above and forgive. And it gives us energy for the other part of today’s theme… to stand up in the face of injustice and turn the other cheek, to hold back on vengeance and instead, use a better way to free others and bring change. We’re all on a healing journey, working towards peace inside so we can work on it outside. More people like that = more in a position to turn the other cheek - May it be so. Amen.