Last revised: September 30, 2011
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SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY --
YEAR A
RCL: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18; 1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23;
Matthew
5:38-48
RoCa: Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew
5:38-48
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Resources
1. N. T Wright, Surprised
by
Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission
of
the Church, p. 143. In chapter 9, concerning the time we
find
ourselves
in, namely, the time between ascension and parousia,
he writes,
...the task of the church between
ascension and parousia
is
therefore set free both from the self-driven energy that imagines
it
has to build God’s kingdom all by itself and from the despair that
supposes it can’t do anything until Jesus comes again. We do not
“build
the kingdom” all by ourselves, but we do build for the kingdom [the topic in
chapter 13]. All that we do in faith, hope, and love in the
present, in
obedience to our ascended Lord and in the power of his Spirit,
will be
enhanced and transformed at his appearing. This too brings a note
of
judgment, of course, as Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 3:10-17.
The
“day” will disclose what sort of work each builder has done.
Reflections and Questions
1. Is there anything more crucial in building for the the kingdom of God
than
learning the way of nonretaliation and of loving enemies?
Matthew 5:38-48
Resources
1. "My
Core
Convictions:
Nonviolence
and
the
Christian Faith," Part II,
"Nonviolence as the Heart of Jesus' Faith" (updated February
19,
2011, to include Douglas
Campbell's
thesis
about
Rom.
1:18). This is the central
portion of my "Core Convictions" and begins with a quote from
Martin
Luther King, Jr., "It is no longer a choice, my friends, between
violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or
nonexistence....
I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will
to
come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the
old
Negro spiritual, 'We ain't goin' study war no more.'" I believe
that
the heart of Jesus' faith is nonviolence because he meets, and
shows to
us, a Heavenly Father who is completely nonviolent. And he does
this
knowing the consequences of going against the stream of
100,000 years of an anthropology that projects gods of wrath who
demand
sacrifice. Matthew 5:38-48 anchors the nonviolent ethic which God
has
sent in Jesus and the Spirit to save us from our violence. More on
this
below under the "bottom
line" to conclude the citations from Girard's
work.
2. Richard Rohr, Jesus' Plan for a New World: The
Sermon on
the Mount, see especially pp. 129ff. Rohr combines
three
perspectives that are immensely helpful
to me: Catholic spirituality in the tradition of Thomas Merton,
the
Emerging Church, and Girardian anthropology (the only footnote in
the
entire book, p. 4, acknowledges his gratitude to the work of
Girard and
Gil Bailie). Rohr divides the major portion of the Sermon on the
Mount
(5:20-7:11) into fourteen triads -- triads that give us the
following
structure: "Traditional challenge of a religious culture"; But,
the
problem is:"; "The Way of Transformation."
Matthew 5:38-42 constitutes the fifth triad, of which he writes:
The mechanism of bondage here is
violent
resistance. The whole problem is in the inner attitude. Jesus’
great
transforming initiative is, “Turn the other cheek: Let him have
your
clothes as well. Why even play the game? If he asks you to go one
mile
with him, go two with him.” In Jesus’ time, a conscripted soldier
was
allowed to ask any person to carry his armor for one mile. That’s
the
image Jesus is building on. He’s saying, “Just don’t get into the
tit-for-tat game; carry it two. Create your own loving set of
rules,
which will blow the system apart. You take the initiative and
change
the rules, the expectations and the outcome.” (p. 156)
Matthew 5:43-48 comprises the sixth triad, of which he writes:
Traditional piety says to love your
neighbor, love the in-group. Loving and greeting only those who
love
you, Jesus says, is simply a mechanism of bondage. It’s keeping
you in
a small world of warm fuzzies, but actually inoculating you from
the
often dark and daring world of real love. It actually protects and
perpetuates the world of scapegoats, victimization and projection.
This sixth triad is considered the most radical, demanding and
truthful
of all of Jesus’ teaching. Until there is love for enemies, there
is no
real transformation, because the enemy always carries the dark
side of
your own soul. Normally those people who threaten us carry our own
faults in a different form. The people who really turn you off are
very
much like you. Jesus offers not just a suggestion; you’ve got to love your enemy to
grow up.
Jesus rightly puts it in the imperative form: Do it!
Also, what we don’t like about ourselves is our inner enemy, in a
certain sense. We must learn to love and forgive that enemy, too.
Sometimes that takes great humility and great compassion, but if
we
learn it internally, we will be prepared for the outer enemies.
And if you save your greetings for
your
brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Do not even the
gentiles
do as much? You must therefore set no bounds to your love, just as
your
heavenly Father sets none to his. (Matthew 5:48; NJB)
This sixth triad is one long but dramatic verse: If you greet only
your
brother, what’s so great about that? The ultimately alienating
process
is that if we stay inside our religious/ethnic group, wars and
racism
continue. That’s just staying inside a kind of magnified
self-love. The
key is always to love the stranger at the gate. Love the one
outside of
your comfort zone, the outsider, the other. Until you can enter
into
the outsider and the other, Jesus says, you really have not loved
at
all. What’s his motivation for doing this? The all-inclusiveness
of the
Father.
What Jesus suggests is a kind of imitatio
Deo, an imitation of God. If that’s who God is and that’s
the
way God loves, then that’s how we want to love. God rubs off on
people
who hang around God. If God “sets no bounds,” then we have to stop
keeping score and weighing worthiness.
The final imperative is well translated here by the New Jerusalem Bible. The
common
translation, “be perfect” (teleios)
is
a
later
abstract, Greek concept which Jesus would never have used.
He spoke in concrete and descriptive Aramaic metaphors, never like
a
cerebral philosopher or even a theologian. He is, however,
admitting
that this most demanding commandment is going to ask a great deal
of us
— boundlessness and magnanimity. (pp. 157-58)
3. René Girard, Things
Hidden
Since the Foundation of the World, pp. 197-99. In a
section entitled "The Preaching of the Kingdom," he writes:
Look again at the Sermon on the
Mount.
We can see that the significance of the Kingdom of God is
completely
clear. It is always a matter of bringing together the warring
brothers,
of putting an end to the mimetic crisis by a universal
renunciation of
violence. Apart from collective expulsion — which brings about
reconciliation because it is unanimous — only the unconditional
and, if
necessary, unilateral renunciation of violence can put an end to
the
relation of doubles. The Kingdom of God means the complete and
definitive elimination of every form of vengeance and every form
of
reprisal in relations between men.
Jesus makes all of this an absolute duty in everyday life. It is
an
obligation without counterpart, which makes no condition that it
must
be reciprocated:
You have heard that it was said,
‘An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do
not
resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right
cheek,
turn to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and
take your
coat, let him have your cloak as well (Matthew 5:38-40).
Modern interpreters certainly see that everything in the Kingdom
of God
comes down to the project of ridding men of violence. But because
they
conceive of violence in the wrong way, they do not appreciate the
rigorous objectivity of the methods which Jesus advocates. People
imagine either that violence is no more than a kind of parasite,
which
the appropriate safeguards can easily eliminate or that it is an
ineradicable trait of human nature, an instinct or fatal tendency
that
it is fruitless to fight.
But the Gospels tell quite a different story. Jesus invites all
men to
devote themselves to the project of getting rid of violence, a
project
conceived with reference to the true nature of violence, taking
into
account the illusions it fosters, the methods by which it gains
ground,
and all the laws that we have verified over the course of these
discussions.
Violence is the enslavement of a pervasive lie; it imposes upon
men a
falsified vision not only of God but also of everything else. And
that
is indeed why it is a closed kingdom. Escaping from violence is
escaping from this kingdom into another kingdom, whose existence
the
majority of people do not even suspect. This is the Kingdom of
love,
which is also the domain of the true God, the Father of Jesus, of
whom
the prisoners of violence cannot even conceive.
To leave violence behind, it is necessary to give up the idea of
retribution; it is therefore necessary to give up forms of conduct
that
have always seemed to be natural and legitimate. For example, we
think
it quite fair to respond to good dealings with good dealings, and
to
evil dealings with evil, but this is precisely what all the
communities
on the planet have always done, with familiar results. People
imagine
that to escape from violence it is sufficient to give up any kind
of
violent
initiative, but
since
no one in fact thinks of himself as taking this initiative — since
all
violence has a mimetic character, and derives or can be thought to
derive from a first violence that is always perceived as
originating
with the opponent — this act of renunciation is no more than a
sham,
and cannot bring about any kind of change at all. Violence is
always
perceived as being a legitimate reprisal or even self-defence. So
what
must be given up is the right to reprisals and even the right to
what
passes, in a number of cases, for legitimate defence. Since the
violence is mimetic, and no one ever feels responsible for
triggering
it initially, only by an unconditional renunciation can we arrive
at
the desired result:
And if you do good to those who do
good
to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the
same. And
if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit
is that
to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
But
love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in
return
(Luke 6:33-35).
If we interpret the gospel doctrine in the light of our own
observations about violence, we can see that it explains, in the
most
clear and concise fashion, all that people must do in order to
break
with the circularity of closed societies, whether they be tribal,
national, philosophical or religious. There is nothing missing and
there is no superfluous detail. This doctrine is completely
realistic.
It envisages perfectly all that is implied in going beyond the
‘metaphysical closure,’ and it never falls into the associated
errors
of modern fanaticism, which misunderstands the ambiguity and the
ubiquity of violence, and invariably limits its indictment either
to
the loss of sacrificial order or to the presence of that order,
either
to unruliness alone or to rules alone, in the belief that to
triumph
over violence is simply a matter of violently eliminating one or
other
— either by curbing individual impulses or by taking the opposite
path
and ‘liberating’ them in the expectation that this act will
establish
peace in our time.
Because they have no knowledge of violence and the role that it
plays
in human life, these commentators sometimes imagine that the
Gospels
preach a sort of natural morality that men, being naturally good,
would
respect of their own accord if there were no ‘wicked’ people to
prevent
them from doing so, and sometimes they imagine that the Kingdom of
God
is a kind of Utopia, a dream of perfection invented by some gentle
dreamer who was incapable of understanding the ground rules upon
which
humankind has always operated.
No one can see that the true nature of violence is deduced with
implacable logic, from the simple and single rule of the Kingdom.
No
one can see that disobeying or obeying this rule gives rise to two
kingdoms which cannot communicate with one another, since they are
separated by a real abyss. Mankind can cross this abyss, but to do
so
all men together should adopt the single rule of the Kingdom of
God.
The decision to do so must come from each individual
separately, however; for
once,
others are not involved.
In order to free oneself from
sacrifice, someone has to set the example, and renounce all
mimetic
retaliations: ‘turn the other cheek,’ as Jesus says. To learn
about the
role of mimetism in human violence helps us to understand why
Jesus’
teachings in the Sermon of the Mount are what they are. They are
not
masochistic; they are not excessive. They are simply realistic,
taking
into account our almost irresistible tendency to retaliate. (pp.
203-4)
But in Evolution and Conversion,
Girard
says
a
lot
more about what he means by conversion.
Species
of
hominids
died out previous to homo sapiens
because the scapegoating mechanism and religion of sacred violence
had
not yet effectively moved into place. The latter has been the key to
our survival as a species thus far. But it's only been around
100,000
years; and now that we have created weapons of mass destruction only
God's way of peace in Jesus Christ will save us. We must be moved by
the Spirit to open ourselves to imitation of Christ's nonretaliatory
forgiveness and love of enemies. We must be moved to conversion to
the
Way.
Interestingly, a little further on in Evolution and Conversion,
Girard
cites Gandhi as one who was converted, not to the Christian
religion,
but to the way of Christ in terms of nonretaliation:
Certainly, the mimetic theory does
not
exclude the possibility that a given society or religious group
could
reach a form of radical awareness of the violent nature of human
beings. Because of that awareness, groups like the Jains were
strongly
persecuted in the past: being against the sacrificial order often
entailed being scapegoated. Jainism probably reached that stage of
awareness and proposed a form of radical anti-sacrificial
asceticism,
which is compatible with a Christian understanding. Gandhi saw a
connection between Jainist philosophy and Christianity, but
eventually
he opted for the kind of political action that is more compatible
with
the latter. Christianity suggests a political dimension. It
entails an
intervention in worldly matters, not in the form of sheer
proselytism,
as it is commonly believed, but in the form of a personal,
individual
conversion, by proposing Christ as a model to imitate. (pp.
212-13)
A particularly enlightening discussion about conversion occurs
several
pages later (Girard's dialogue partner's response are in italics):
Desire is always mimetic, but some
human beings resist desire and being carried away by mimetic
violence.
When Jesus says: ‘scandals must happen’ (Matthew 18.7-8) he is
talking
about communities. In communities, there are so many people that
it
would be statistically impossible for mimetic violence not to be
present, but the individual isn’t bound hand-and-foot to mimetic
desire. Jesus himself was not. To talk about freedom means to talk
about man’s ability to resist the mimetic mechanism.
Hence, the only freedom we have
is to
imitate Jesus, that is, by not joining the mimetic cycle.
Or to imitate someone like Jesus. Remember what Paul said to the
Corinthians: ‘I urge you to imitate me’(1 Corinthians 4.16). He
did so
not out of personal pride or self-righteousness but because he
himself
imitates Jesus who, in turn, imitates the Father. He is just part
of an
endless chain of ‘good imitation,’ non-rivalrous imitation, that
Christians try to create. The ‘saints’ are the links of this
chain.
Therefore, our free will is
given by
the choice we have of accusing others or having compassion for
them.
I don’t see why the idea of this imitation would imply the
accusation
of those who don’t practise it. All accusation is the attempt to
get
out of the game at the expense of a scapegoat. It is what Christ
never
does. The Gospel of John says: ‘You are the son of Satan because
you
don’t listen to my voice’ [see John 8:43-47]. There are two
arch-models: Satan and Christ. Freedom is an act of conversion to
one
or the other. Otherwise, it is a total illusion. That is why Paul
says:
‘we are in chains but we are free’ [see Romans 6:18]. We are free
because we can truly convert ourselves at any time. In other
words, we
can refuse to join the mimetic unanimity. As we already explained,
conversion means to become aware that we are persecutors. It means
choosing Christ or a Christlike individual as a model for our
desires.
It also means seeing oneself as being in the process of imitating
from
the very beginning. Conversion is the discovery that we have
always,
without being aware of it, been imitating the wrong kind of models
who
lead us into the vicious circle of scandals and perpetual
frustration.
(pp. 222-23)
Here's the bottom line on the significance
Girard's work, summarized in the title of Evolution
and
Conversion: the fact that homo sapiens evolved with
the
scapegoating mechanism under the guise of institutionalized
religions
of sacred violence and saved us from interspecies 'apocalyptic'
violence so far, does not
mean that it will continue to save us. In fact, the Lamb of God has
taken that Sin, which lies at our origins as a species, away from
us.
We now have the means to destroy ourselves and the whole planet with
weapons of mass destruction and a global economy bent on consuming
the
earth. Two thousand years ago the true God intervened in our history
to
give us the only ultimate way to peace. This time it will take
conversion to save us. Evolution will come too late. Either we learn
the way of non-retaliatory forgiveness that even loves enemies, or
we
will destroy ourselves. In his last book, Battling
to
the
End, Girard was not too optimistic about our
prospects. His only hope lies anchored in the history of the
continuing
gracious work of Christ and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, not in
human history.
4. Raymund Schwager, Jesus
in
the Drama of Salvation.
5. Anthony Bartlett, Virtually
Christian: How Christ Changes Human Meaning and Makes
Creation New.
There
is
two
places at which Bartlett cites this Gospel text. The first
is in the context of defending the merits of Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ
(while
also admitting the flaws). Bartlett writes,
It is certainly possible to see many
things wrong with Gibson’s depiction: he short-circuits Jesus’
ministry
and teaching, concentrating myopically on the last twenty-four
hours of
his life; he merges Mary Magdalene with the woman taken in
adultery;
from a historical point of view he allows the Roman governor and
his
officers to take absurdly minimal responsibility; and this
imbalance
feeds the impression the Jewish authorities were the main agents.
But
what is never acknowledged in the rush to judge the movie is
Jesus’
unimpeachable attitude of forgiveness and nonviolence evident
throughout. One of the few flash-backs to Jesus’ actual teaching
ministry gives the crucial Sermon on the Mount commandment of love
for
enemies. In the course of the actual crucifixion Jesus twice prays
to
his Father to forgive his persecutors, and one of the times
emphatically in the face of priests and leaders of the people. It
is
this reaction by Jesus which simultaneously thrusts the violence
back
on the viewer — we are in fact not permitted to fantasize revenge
on
the perpetrators — and invites us into that unimaginable pit of
forgiveness. (p. 83)
The second citation of this passage comes within the chapter on the
postmodern church, in a section titled "Reprogramming Our Signs,"
raising questions especially about biblical interpretation. Bartlett
gives a glimpse of the possibilities of what this website hopes to
persuade readers, namely, the value of an anthropological reading.
Here
it is valuable to quote a little bit bigger slice:
A key of interpretation that shows
progressively changed meaning may be called an anthropological
reading
of the text. By its means we see the bible as a developing
register of
signs and symbols, moving from the ones more easily understood to
the
wonderfully new ones the first would draw behind them. Let us
think for
a moment how this might work in practice. For example, the God of
Exodus brings down the plagues on the Egyptians, culminating in
the
slaughter of their firstborn. What this succession of events
enabled
was a huge reversal of meaning for a group of Hebrew slaves. They
were
at constant risk of their lives in a world history which would
never
give their deaths a second thought. In contrast, the death of the
firstborn said plainly that they were of equal value to all
Egyptians,
up to and including the divine son of Pharaoh himself. For another
more
powerful god was prepared to prove it! Was the God of the bible
then
responsible for the death of the firstborn? Not in any sense
beyond
allowing death in the world in the first place. What God was
responsible for was the first stage in a shift of meaning within
the
minds of his people. What God intended and brought about was a
critical
new perspective that saw the marginal, the dispossessed, those
abandoned by fate or the gods, as a group who were central,
blessed and
loved. At the point of origin of the tradition, even on the most
literalist reading, it’s hard to miss the literary and constructed
character of the narrative. The steadily mounting crisis, the
hardening
of the Pharaoh’s heart, the supremely countable number of plagues,
the
dramatic finale, all suggests a rehearsed liturgical format. Here
is
meaning arising as a story and the story is the most potent of
signs.
Essentially, therefore, a bunch of escapee Hebrews were
theologically
inspired to read a series of catastrophic events as a story of
meaning,
one in which God sides with the weak and oppressed.
The writing of the tradition explicitly understood the whole thing
in
terms of sign. The word is used frequently in both Exodus and
Deuteronomy, referring to God’s deeds: for example ‘I will
multiply my
signs and wonders in the land of Egypt’ (Ex.7:3). The events are
never
simply a brute exercise of power but are embedded as meaning in a framework of
meaning. They point to the law and the covenant, constructing an
on-going dynamic of relationship, one which entailed that if the
Hebrews were liberated from oppression it was so that they would
not
oppress each other. Thus any purported act of violence on the part
of
God already means much more than that; it means in fact the
overturning
of the rule of violence!
By the time then Second Isaiah came to write his prophecy the
tradition
of sign is understood and valued for itself and the overturning of
meaning is enacted consciously from within. The prophet saw a
second
Exodus about to take place, returning the Jews from exile. This
time,
however, instead of a charismatic prophet leader, or a king or
priest,
it would be the Lord himself who would lead them, and the
relationship
that before had appeared contractual and violent would appear as
compassionate and without violence. ‘I, I am he who comforts you’
(Isaiah 51:12). Then in the absence of the classic agents of
violence,
the king and national army, another figure comes to focus, the
Servant,
marked explicitly by nonviolence (‘I gave my back to those who
struck
me,’ 50:6). It was through this figure that God’s will would be
done
and ‘many’ (an indefinite number) be made righteous (53:11). The
overturning of meaning has become exponential, while in the
process
losing its anthropological residue of violence. With this sign of
the
Servant, the high wire of the humanly new had been strung, between
the
oppression of Babylon and the miraculous powerless return. And so,
finally, upon this thin-air narrow wire, it becomes possible for
Jesus
to walk out, moving toward his definitive forgiving encounter with
the
combined agencies of human violence: empire, temple, crowd and
faithless friends.
This then is a way of reading the main narrative thread of the
bible —
as construction of new meaning. But it is possible to read just
about
everything in the bible in this mode of progressive strands or
signs.
You could call it an ophthalmic approach, a bit like the optician
slipping different lenses in front of your eyes until you get
twenty-twenty vision. The lucid eyesight we’re looking for is that
of
Jesus, he who said six times ‘You have heard that it was
said...but I
say to you,’ the so-called antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount.
Especially relevant in this sustained claim to a new perspective
is the
last one: ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your
neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your
enemies and
pray for those who persecute you...’ (Matt. 5: 43-44). In this one
saying Jesus undid the great violent arc of his own scriptures,
from
the military defeat of peoples who stood in the way of Israel’s
entry
to the land, through the conquest itself, through the multiple
wars of
the various kings, all the way to the brewing rebellion against
the
Romans happening in his own time. With these words his message
becomes
truly universal. For the mission to the Gentiles is surely implied
here, and if bible believers see that the gospel reaches beyond
national boundaries they must also see the radical human
implication of
nonviolence. Really the formal gospel proclamation deeply affirms
nonviolence. For once Jesus had challenged and changed all human
parameters by non-exclusion and nonviolence, and fulfilled his own
teaching with the witness of his own life, there could only be two
consequences — calamitous failure or astonishing resurrection! If,
therefore, the disciples actually had the courage to go out and
proclaim a risen Jesus it must be because something had in fact
affirmed Jesus’ impossible message. Indeed who, if anyone, could
conceivably be the firstborn from the dead if not the one who
defined
and produced in himself truly new humanity, the one who taught a
love
that makes forgiveness of the enemy as holy as any contemplation?
The biblical trajectory of transforming human meaning leads step
by
step to resurrection and any small group reading the scriptures as
reprogramming of the human sign system points unwaveringly in that
direction. Reading the bible in this way the small group will find
itself confronted again and again with the ancient sign value of
violence and then be prompted by its pivotal place in the overall
biblical journey to see how it has been overturned and made into
something amazingly, totally new. Steeping itself in this reading
can
lead only to the Crucified Risen One, the truly new human, the
first
born of many sisters and brothers. (pp. 210-13)
6. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discenrment and Resistance in a
World of
Domination (and
other
books). Wink's best material is on this Gospel passage. He coined
the
term "Third Way" to mark Jesus' Way of nonviolent resistance as an
alternative to the other two 'ways,' fight or flight. Passed on to
me
is Bishop Catherine Waynick's
of
the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis succint summary of
Walter Wink's reworking of this week's Gospel text for Epiphany 7A.
There are also YouTube videos of Wink himself presenting on this
Gospel.
7. Tom Truby, member of Theology & Peace,
used
Girardian insights to offer a sermon
in 2011, titled "The
Contrast
Continues."
Reflections and Questions
1. This week's Gospel
Reading is too important for the Seventh Sunday after the
Epiphany. It
may be one of the only serious errors of the lectionary. By my
accounting of the calendar, in 2011 this is the first time I've
seen
Epiphany 7A since 1990! But by a fluke of the way we figure the
date of
Easter -- and hence the point at which Lent cuts off the
Epiphany
season -- we have a late Easter again in 2014. And so Epiphany
7A will
see two cycles in a row after missing six cycles in between 1990
and
2011.
But Matthew 5:38-48
deserves to be read in the assembly every year! Is it worth
creating
another "Lesser Festival", perhaps the Sunday after Trinity
Sunday,
which could feature our call to be peacemakers ala Matthew
5:38-48?
2. In 2011 we are in
the
midst of another incredible peace movement won by nonviolent
resistance. The Egyptian people, through weeks of peaceful
demonstrations, have succeeded in ousting dictator Hosni
Mubarak. And
it has had a 21st century technological twist: the protests were
spontaneously organized through social networking. And when the
regime
closed down Facebook, it forced people out into the streets even
more.
A CBS news story said,
The Facebook page was called "We are
all
Khalid Sayid" [after a young man who had been beaten and killed by
police in June 2010]. Soon hundreds, then thousands of others
began
sharing photos and video of abuse and mistreatment. Within months,
the
number of followers on Facebook grew to half a million, and when
Wael
Ghonim and other organizers posted the dates and locations of
protests,
people started showing up and posting Internet videos. Many of the
organizers never met in person. Their primary interaction was
online.
Yet these cyberspace
protesters were also willing to put their lives on the line.
Ghonim was
imprisoned for several days; he was quoted as saying he was
willing to
die for the cause. Asked if he wanted to see Mubarak brought to
trial,
Ghonim replied,
At the moment, I don't care. Revenge
is
not the thing I want. For me, what I care about right now, I want
all
the money of the Egyptian people to come back. There are billions
and
billions of dollars that were stolen out of this country. You
cannot
imagine the amount of corruption that was here. ... But for me,
what is
more important, we want the money back. Because this money belongs
to
the Egyptians, and they deserve it. The people who were eating
from the
trash, that was their money.
3. The momentum of nonviolent resistance and revolution in the
modern world began with a Hindu man, Mahatma Gandhi, who took the
Sermon on the Mount much more seriously than the average
Christian. The
1982 motion picture Gandhi (my all-time
favorite
movie) has a scene in which Gandhi is walking down a street with
Anglican priest Charlie Andrews. Menacing youths appear in their
path.
Andrews is about to suggest they change routes, but Gandhi wants
to
press the issue:
Charlie: Perhaps we should...um...
Gandhi: Doesn’t the New Testament say that ‘if your enemy strikes
you
on the right cheek offer him the left’?
C: I think maybe the phrase is used metaphorically. I don’t
think...
G: I’m not so sure. I have thought about it a great deal, and I
suspect
he meant you must show courage, be willing to take a blow, several
blows, to show that you will not strike back nor will you be
turned
aside. And when you do that it calls on something in human nature,
something that makes his hatred for you decrease and his respect
increase. I think Christ grasped that, and I have seen it work.
My favorite scene in the movie is when Gandhi is fighting apartheid
in
South Africa, early in his career. He organizes a rally in a theater
packed with willing protesters. Gandhi outlines features of new
laws:
mandatory fingerprinting for People of Color, only Christian
marriages
are to be considered legally valid (all the Indians are either Hindu
or
Muslim), and police may enter their dwellings without permission.
There
are outcries from the crowd promising violent resistance, ending
with
someone shouting out: “For that cause I would be willing to die!” To
which Gandhi responds:
I praise such courage. I need such
courage, because in this cause I, too, am prepared to die. But, my
friend, there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
Whatever they do to us, we will attack no one, kill no one. But we
will
not give our fingerprints, not one of us. They will imprison us,
they
will fine us, they will seize our possessions. But they cannot
take
away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.
A person in the crowd interjects: “Have you ever been to prison?
They
beat us and torture us....” Gandhi continues:
I am asking you to fight. To fight
against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow.
But
we will receive them. And through our pain we will make them see
their
injustice. And it will hurt, as all fighting hurts. But we cannot
lose.
We cannot. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me.
Then, they have my dead body. Not my obedience.
We are Hindu and Muslim, children of God, each one of us. Let us
take a
solemn oath in His Name that, come what may, we will not submit to
this
law.
If our world is to survive, we need more people to imitate Gandhi
who
imitated Christ. Link to a 2011 sermon,
"Do This in Imitation of Me!"
4. In the Fall 2011, we
went off the lectionary for a series on the Lord's Prayer, based on
the excellent book by John Dominic
Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering
the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer. For
the second week's theme of "Your Kingdom Come," I chose Matthew
5:38-48 for the Gospel Reading, and Daniel 7:1-14 for the First
Reading. But the central image came from the Children's Object
Lesson, namely, the illustration of 3-D technology, especially 3-D
glasses I obtained from the local movie theater. Being able to see
God's kingdom through the call to nonviolence and the love of
enemies is like putting on 3-D glasses. More specifically, I
elaborated three crucial dimensions of the Christian faith: (1) the
personal dimension, that is, personal salvation/transformation; (2)
the socio-political or prophetic dimension, that is, socio-political
transformation within history; and (3) the spiritual dimension, that
is, living one's life plugged into the love of God.
The latter generations of the Christian faith, in which many of us
were raised, has been rather one-dimensional, focused on the
personal dimension -- and narrowed even further in terms of the
afterlife. Salvation has been seen in terms of a person's soul being
saved for eternal life in heaven. There's all kinds of problems with
this latter focus, but here I developed it in terms of three
necessary dimensions of the Christian faith, two of which have been
lopped off in the latter generations. So the latest generation -- those in
their 20's -- are fleeing the church in huge numbers. They are
seeing the fruit of a one-dimensional faith focused on heaven,
namely, a relinquishing of making a difference in the world today.
And the underlying reason for becoming so comfortable in a
one-dimensional faith is that the second dimension is contrary to
the imperialistic politics of Christendom. A one-dimensional faith
allows us the luxury of not being challenged to change our politics.
My sermon points to the pivotal nature of Daniel 7 for 1st century
Jews as expressing the second dimension, the socio-political
dimension of faith. They carried hope for transformation within
history: namely, that beastly imperialist politics would someday be
replaced when the Son of Man comes to enact God's justice. Crossan's
book very much brings forth this second dimension of faith -- which
also transforms the personal dimension by placing it in the context
of socio-political transformation. One's personal faith is
transformed to participate in the coming Kingdom of God.
Yet the third dimension is also necessary. Crossan points to this by
talking about a "Spirit
transplant" (p. 26). I believe that Matthew 5 points to the fact
that the socio-political dimension will be truly transformed by
God's noviolent power of love. In my recent explorations of
contempative spirituality, I have been reading Richard Rohr's Falling Upward: A Spirituality for
the Two Halves of Life. In the introduction, Rohr
quotes the Dalai Lama: "Learn and obey the rules very well, so you
will know how to break them properly." Isn't this exactly what Jesus
is expressing in Matthew 5? Learning to break the rules properly
means learning how to break them in the direction of God's
unconditional love for the world. So here is the concluding
paragraph of this sermon on
"Your Kingdom Come":
If we are to put on 3-D glasses for
eyes of faith [putting on 3-D glasses one more time], we need to
go far beyond the last five hundred years of Protestant-Catholic
faith. We are going to need to learn the ways of the mystics, the
way of the spiritual dimension of seeing everything in love, the
way of living one's entire life in the power of God's
unconditional love for the world. That's the deepest meaning of
praying together to see the coming of God's kingdom. "Our Father
in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your kingdom
come..."
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