[Dialogue] 11/15/18, Progressing Spirit: Felton and Spong: A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 2 “On Revolutions and Relationships”
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Nov 15 07:33:59 PST 2018
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.yiv9354090223mcnImageGroupBlockOuter{ padding-top:9px !important;padding-bottom:9px !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnBoxedTextContentColumn{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnImageCardLeftImageContent, #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnImageCardRightImageContent{ padding-right:18px !important;padding-bottom:0 !important;padding-left:18px !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcpreview-image-uploader{ display:none !important;width:100% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 h1{ font-size:22px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 h2{ font-size:20px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 h3{ font-size:18px !important;line-height:125% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 h4{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 .yiv9354090223mcnBoxedTextContentContainer .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templatePreheader{ display:block !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templatePreheader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templatePreheader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateHeader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateHeader .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:16px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateBody .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateBody .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateFooter .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent, #yiv9354090223 #yiv9354090223templateFooter .yiv9354090223mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018.
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A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 2 “On Revolutions and Relationships”
Column by Rev. David M. Felten
February 21, 2018The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia, it has been edited for length and thematic focus.David Felten: Despite conflict and resistance, you’ve managed to help “move the needle” on a number of issues over the course of your career. Where do you think you’ve had the biggest impact?Jack Spong: Well, I think they’re all the same issue, but with different manifestations. The first one was race. We are ethnic people and the first thing we had to do was to get beyond racial identity.I grew up in the South in a very segregated world. I didn’t know how racist I was, but I was always uncomfortable with it. I remember when I was about three years old, my father hired two men to help him build a brick wall in the side yard. He told me I could help them and I looked forward to that. When the day came, the two men arrived, and they were both Negroes. Black men. One was an older black man, and one was a younger black man, his helper. During the course of that morning, as I was helping, this older black man said something to me. I don’t remember what it was. And I responded the way I’d been taught to respond to my elders: I said, “Yes, sir.” Or, “No, sir.” I don’t remember which.My father stopped what he was doing, hauled me physically into the house, sat me down and told me, “You do not say ‘sir’ to a Negro.” That was in the 1930s. I didn’t know what that meant. My father taught me to say “sir” to my elders. This man was my elder. I didn’t understand. There was truly something in that mix that I didn’t understand. And I did what people usually do: I filed it. And I thought to myself, “My father’s wrong.”That’s not a radical thing. Every child, by the time he’s 13, thinks his father is hopeless and wrong in everything.David Felten: But at age three, that’s pretty perceptive.Jack Spong: Something about that was just negative to me.Then I went to school. I didn’t know I went to segregated schools. It didn’t occur to me there were no black children there. But I had an experience when I was in about the fifth grade where I went over to another school in Charlotte. It was a black school with black teachers and a black principal. I just sat there with my eyes wide open: “Blacks do go to school. They just don’t go to my school.”I remember that we were in an assembly. We were honored guests of this black school. I think the principal who took us over there was pretty courageous. It was 1942 and the race question wasn’t raised in the South. They sat all of us honored guests on the stage and in the course of that morning, they went through their ritual: they sang the National Anthem, they said the Pledge to the flag, and they said The Lord’s Prayer together.Well, I knew all those things. But, so did all those black children. They prayed the same prayer I prayed to the same Lord. But we didn’t pray it together. I wondered why that was. It just didn’t make sense to me. And again, I didn’t know what to do with that, because I was about 10 years old.Later – when I was 15, 17, 18 – I was active in the Young People of the Diocese of North Carolina. I got to be elected President of the Young People and went to a church convention. There I met another person who told me he was the President of the Young People of North Carolina, the Episcopalians of North Carolina. I said, “How could that be? I was elected President.” But he was black – and that’s the first time I knew we had two systems, a black Young People and a white Young People. His name is Perry Leazer. He’s still a friend of mine.I went to my Bishop and said, “I think we ought to have a meeting, an annual convention (which they had every year of all the white Young People). But why don’t we invite Perry Leazer and the black Young People? (we called them ‘colored’ Young People at that point). And the Bishop looked at me and said, “You know I just don’t believe the people of North Carolina are ready for that.”Well, I was a person in North Carolina. And I was ready for that. I wondered who he was talking about – I remember wondering about that. The Bishop was a godly man. I had great respect for him. But I suddenly said to myself, “He’s like my father. He’s wrong. He hadn’t thought about that idea.”Well, those are just experiences of my youth. But that became a huge issue. I was in seminary when Brown v. Board of Education was passed and I knew that was going to dominate my life as I stayed in the South. And it did. I couldn’t do a thing in Lynchburg or in Richmond or in Tarboro (the three churches I served) that didn’t have to take race into consideration.Today we’ve got an African American presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church. It just makes my heart warm. He was also the Bishop of North Carolina, my diocese, before he was elected. That’s one revolution. And the heroes in that movement are Martin Luther King, and Jesse Jackson, and Desmond Tutu, and just impressive people that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.So that’s one revolution – and it’s not considered very revolutionary today. It’s been a long time. But that was an enormous revolution in consciousness. Now we’ve had a black President. I was so proud to have a black President.The second revolution is women. I didn’t know I was a sexist, a patriarchal sexist, but I was. But that’s the way I was raised. My mother used to never let me do anything in the kitchen except take out the garbage. That was man’s work. Everything else was women’s work. And I learned to cook, and I learned I was a good cook. And my mother never could understand that: “That’s not something men do.”In the church, women were the “auxiliary.” That’s the strangest thing in the world. We called them the “auxiliary” to the church. They weren’t “the church.” The church was male and women were auxiliary to the church.So, we had a great battle. I was in Richmond when it began. I remember appointing a woman to be a lay reader. That doesn’t seem like a very revolutionary thing today, but then it was just radical. She was an English woman who spoke beautiful English. She stood up and read the lessons and the congregation about fell over. When she administered the chalice at communion, nobody came to her side of the altar!Girls couldn’t be acolytes. Well, as a father of three daughters, I didn’t know why girls couldn’t be acolytes, so I appointed the first girl to be an acolyte and put her on at the 8:00 service (a service where only the holy few are there). I knew I was in trouble when she fainted dead away in the middle of the service – but I just knew we had to tap the leadership of women.We had never had a woman on the vestry of our church in Richmond. We tried several times. I’d get them to be nominated but they’d never be elected. So, I went to the richest woman in our church (whose pledge to the church was bigger than most people could think about) and I asked her if she’d be a candidate for the vestry. She agreed. I had her nominated and dared that church to turn down the biggest giver they had. And they didn’t. They elected her. She was, without a doubt, the worst vestry woman I’ve had. She was to the right of Attila the Hun. But she broke the barrier – and I gave thanks for her every day for breaking that barrier. And after that, we had a stream of good women who were of the generations they represented.And then to nominate women to be priests: I think I was responsible for women being priests – I know I was for England – I ordained the first English woman priest. When we brought African Bishops to my diocese while I was the Bishop, they would see women priests working. They’d go back home and they’d ordain women priests in Uganda and Kenya and in Liberia. I think I was responsible for having women enter the priesthood in those churches, too.And today, that’s not an issue. We’ve had a presiding Bishop who’s a woman. And even England, as slow as they are, now has significant women Bishops. They haven’t yet become the Archbishop of Canterbury, but they will. And that was the second revolution.We uncapped black Americans, and we uncapped white women, and black women, too. The new Bishop of our diocese is a black woman. And that’s a very important thing.David Felten: And the third revolution was the affirmation and inclusion of LGBTQ folks.Jack Spong: I was in the center of that, too. I don’t know how I happened to be in the center of so many! I don’t think it’s because I started out liberal. I was raised as homophobic as anybody. And I didn’t know what a homosexual was until I was 15, 16 years old. And then when I heard the word, and somebody told me what it meant, I assumed the definition of my church: If you were liberal, these are people we pitied – they were sick. If you were conservative, these are people that should be condemned because they’ve chosen an evil lifestyle.Well, I became convinced that to be a homosexual meant you simply were responding to a difference in your own internal being. Nobody chooses to be homosexual. You don’t choose to be heterosexual. As soon as that was clear, it was clear to me that we’d done something terrible to the homosexual population. I don’t remember knowing but one homosexual person before I was a bishop, and that was a sickly woman who fulfilled all the stereotypes that I’d grown up with. She was sort of sickly and that’s what I thought homosexuals were.Then I went to Newark and I experienced homosexuals in the priesthood and homosexuals in the lay leadership of my church. And they weren’t even ashamed! I couldn’t believe that that was true. So, I had to do some learning.I went to Cornell School of Medicine and talked to a doctor friend of mine named Robert Lahita. He invited me to come over and see what research they were doing on sexuality and I did. I worked with him for about six months. I met all the doctors over there and not-a-one-of-them thought homosexuality was evil. They just saw it was different. But red hair is different. Left-handedness is different. You can be different without being evil. They were all convinced it had nothing to do with choice – that people didn’t choose their sexuality.And when I got that through my head, then I had to act on it – ‘cause you can’t believe something and not act on it. And so I became open to the possibility of ordaining gay people. I ordained the first man – I was told that I had ordained the first homosexual man, but that was laughable – I ordained the first man who was living in a publicly acknowledged homosexual relationship. In the end, he didn’t turn out to be a very good choice, but he still accomplished the purpose.There was a revolution in the church: they fought – unbelievable. I had death threats and all sorts of things. And that was probably, emotionally, the most difficult of the three. But now that’s so over. Gene Robinson was elected bishop of New Hampshire and he was confirmed after a mighty revolution in the House of Bishops. This was three years after I retired. He became a great bishop and since then, we’ve had other gay and lesbian bishops. In New York, a lesbian ran second in the biggest diocese in our country, a lesbian ran second to the man who won, who just barely beat her out.I look at the church and the enormous revolution we’ve gone through: we’ve got gay people serving openly all over the church today – 35 in my diocese when I retired. I don’t know how many there are now. Probably a good many more than that. But they’re everywhere and it’s not even controversial.I remember when George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury came to the United States and addressed the House of Bishops. He said, “It’s time for the church to turn away from their concerns about sexuality and get around to preaching the Gospel.” And I stood up and said, “That is preaching the Gospel. You can’t separate people out like that.” George Carey eventually retired as probably the most unsuccessful Archbishop of Canterbury we ever had.But the church has moved passed that. And that gives me great courage. I look back and see heroes in the church who were hiding in their closets and doing great work and serving in places where heterosexual couples wouldn’t like to go. They’d be in the inner cities transforming those cities.So, we’ve come a long way in those three revolutions and I think the church is more whole, it’s more holy, it’s truer to its nature, in those things. And I really was glad to be a part of all three of those revolutions.David Felten: And every one of them involved doing the hard work of educating yourself.Jack Spong: That’s right. And educating the people, too. You couldn’t do that if you weren’t committed to the institution. It was in the institution that I had the people and I educated the people. When I was the Bishop of Newark, we had a lecture series called “New Dimensions”, and three or four times each year I’d bring to that diocese one of the great leaders of our church, it was just a wonderful series. And they would do a day of lectures. There was this constant stream of new ideas coming in and changing the way people think. We raised up a whole new generation of people.And that’s what has to be. You can’t run the church for the benefit of those who are in it, you run the church for the benefit of those who aren’t in it. And you keep opening the doors and cracking the structures and bringing people in. And sure, they get upset. You can’t be a Christian without being controversial, I’m convinced. But you go ahead and be controversial. It’s important that you love people while you’re doing this. That’s the key. I loved even the people who disagreed with me the most – and I made sure that they knew that they were loved.But that was a hard thing to do. Other people were thrown out for doing the same thing that I did, but I don’t think I ever came close to being thrown out of the church.David Felten: And what do you attribute that to?Jack Spong: Well, because I took my other role seriously. When I went to Richmond, I got a list of all the sick and shut-ins. Our parish was a great big church: about 1,800 members. I got a list of our sick and shut-in people and I made a strong effort to go see every one of them and to drink tea. I have drunk more tea than you can shake a stick at. And I’d listen to these people tell me the history of that church. It was the history of the Confederacy, by-and-large, and I cared about those people and I learned from those people.And when I’d do something that some considered crazy, people would go up to them and ask, “What do you think, you reckon?” And they’d say “Well, he’s a little ahead of himself, but he comes by and he drinks tea with me.” And that was all that mattered.They wanted a relationship and I gave them that. And I loved doing it because they gave me a great deal. I’ve got wonderful stories of people 80 and 90 years old. I was all of 38 when I went to Richmond.There was this one little maiden lady who died when she was about 90. She left instructions in her will that she was not to be embalmed. Well, that was an interesting thing. She said the reason was that no man had ever seen her naked and she didn’t want any man looking at her when she was dead. I just loved that, it was hilarious. I don’t how the undertaker managed that, but he did (at least I hope he did!)Remember, the Richmond church was very much a Confederate church. And during World War II, some sailors from Norfolk got into a battle in downtown Richmond with some local characters from Richmond. They started throwing rocks and some sailor threw a rock through the Robert E. Lee window. The federal government came to our church and said they were sorry, that this was a conscript of the United States Navy, and they’d be glad to pay the repair bill. This woman rose up in our church and said “No federal money ever went into the Lee window and no federal money will go into the Lee window now.” And she paid it herself. Those are great stories.Today I’m looking at that church from the vantage point of a person sitting in the pew. It has a significant black population, has a black senior warden, and the President of the University of Richmond, who’s a black man, is a member of St. Paul’s. I’m so proud of it.In Tarboro, I served two Episcopal churches, one block apart. One was white, one was black. Bringing them together was hard, but today they are very much together. In the summertime, they close one church and all the people worship at the other for four weeks in July and then they go to the other church for four weeks in August. And friendships are formed and this just gives me so much pleasure, to see the changes that are taking place.David Felten: What would you say is the next revolution? What’s the fourth revolution?Jack Spong: For years I thought it was climate, but I’m afraid we’re not going to ever address climate. We have to. Climate is one of those things where you can’t do it alone. You’ve got to do it together. And it means some people are going to have to sacrifice for the thing to become real. Individualism is not going to solve climate change.But at one and the same time, I think the Christian church has got to see itself in a different way. I think Jesus was a boundary breaker and I think every time there’s a boundary that sets one person off against another, I think the Christian faith has to break that boundary down. That’s the salvation of the church. If we can do that, we can keep relevant.David Felten: So the next boundary to be broken may be a theological boundary – a breaking of the theistic focus?Jack Spong: Yeah, I think we ought to break every boundary. You’ve got to break the boundary around the creed, the literalism of the creed. You’ve got to break the boundary around theology. You’ve got to break the boundary around practice: who’s in, who’s out class warfare. Christianity can’t live in a world that’s got boundaries that sets one person off against another person. So we’re always going to be controversial, we’ve got to be controversial. By our very nature we’re controversial. And if we ever cease to be controversial, we’ll cease to be Christian – and that’s not easy for people to embrace. But that’s where we are.David Felten: But that’s not the message that most people hear growing up in American churches – in fact, it’s just the opposite.Jack Spong: You’re exactly right, it is the opposite. Now to counter that, you’ve got to be examining the story and look at what Jesus did: he was always bringing the outsiders inside. Whether they’re Pharisees on one side or prostitutes on the other. He was always bringing them inside. And that’s what the Christian church has got to do.In the last installment of “A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong,” Felten & Spong will discuss Liberals, Conservatives, and the Way Forward.~ Rev. David M. Felten
Click here to read online and to share your thoughtsAbout the Author
Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David and his wife Laura, have three children. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Judy
I just finished "Unbelievable" and found many things in the book that I was unaware that I believed. I am curious to know how you feel about/reconcile people who are truly evil or unrepentantly evil like child abusers/pornographers. I can deal with people whose belief systems are different than mine but not with people who purposefully hurt other people, especially children. Some even believe it is their right to do so.
How can we love these people wastefully?
A: By Fred Plumer
Hi Judy. Thank you for writing. Your question is one I have had to deal with many times over the years. It is one of the hardest things to practice in the entire Christian tradition, but I still find it mystifying that so many Christians in our world today do not take this issue seriously. In fact, it seems sometimes they believe being a Christian gives them the right to hate or at least dislike anyone who disagrees with them. Certainly that is not the way Jesus expected his followers to behave, nor is it the way Bishop Spong expects us to behave if we actually want to learn and experience what it means to walk the Christian path. We know that and most of us do pretty well with “most people.” However, if we take “loving everyone wastefully” there are some things we must address to make it work with others, or as you put it, people who are truly evil, or unrepentant child abusers/pornographers.
First, you must not think of this “love” in the same way that you love your children, a spouse, or a best friend. Marcus Borg probably explained this as well as anyone I know or have ever read. In his book, Meeting Jesus for the First Time, Again, 1995, Borg, addresses this difficult issue. He explains the word “compassion” in Hebrew (as well as in Aramaic), is usually translated in the plural form of the noun. In its singular form, however, the word means “womb.” In the Hebrew Bible, compassion is both a feeling and a way of being that flows out of one’s sense of compassion. It is frequently linked to its association with womb: a woman feels compassion for the child of her own womb; a man feels compassion for his brother, who comes from the same womb. For Borg, compassion is a spiritual shift and is a result of some pretty hard work for most of us.
According to Borg, there are four different types of compassion. Reflective (thinking), emotional (feeling), active (doing), and contemplative (experiencing). While our goal, according to Borg, is to integrate all four of these at some point, he admits that this is a challenge. He explains we are called as followers of Jesus to show compassion (love-as a mother loves her unborn child). I think this means you may not know your child, who she is or he is going to be, but you still “love” or feel compassion for her/him. My suggestion is that you at least can love or have compassion for the kinds of people you describe but it might be limited to a thinking type if that is the best you can do. This does not mean you must run up to one of those of these incorrigible people and tell them how much you “love” them. But you could take the time to wonder what kind of childhood they had and what kind of an early life they had to endure.
You might wonder what kind of early influences made them so sick. Most serious studies indicate that the significant number of these very sick people were abused, sexually and in other ways, as children. I know this is, in Borg’s words, reflective or thinking compassion but it can bring you to another place that might feel better for you. It might even help you feel some compassion for this person.
Let me close with a personal story. My wife recently retired from her job as a nurse and director in the county health department. For the first five years of her job, she was required once a month to go a prison on an island in our area that held unrepentant child molesters that have been deemed by Washington State judges as incorrigible. They will never be healed nor will they ever be let out of prison. When she first went there she was disgusted and nervous working around them. But she was in awe of how kind and “loving” most of the nurses who worked there regularly were toward these men. My wife never felt comfortable asking these nurses how they did it but she watched closely. My guess is that most of them saw something in these men through the eyes of “god” rather than the judge who put them there. This would be, I believe, something of Borg’s idea of reflective or thinking compassion. My wife learned many lessons from these nurses, as have I.
I hope this helps.
~ Fred Plumer
Click here to read and share onlineAbout the Author
In 1986 Rev. Plumer was called to the Irvine United Congregational Church in Irvine, CA to lead a UCC new start church, where he remained until he retired in 2004. The church became known throughout the denomination as one of the more exciting and progressive mid-size congregations in the nation. He served on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC) for five years, and chaired the Commission for Church Development and Evangelism for three of those years.In 2006 Fred was elected President of ProgressiveChristianity.org (originally called The Center for Progressive Christianity - TCPC) when it’s founder Jim Adams retired. As a member of the Executive Council for TCPC he wrote The Study Guide for The 8 Points by which we define: Progressive Christianity. He has had several articles published on church development, building faith communities and redefining the purpose of the enlightened Christian Church. His book Drink from the Well is an anthology from speeches, articles in eBulletins, and numerous publications that define the progressive Christianity movement as it evolves to meet new challenges in a rapidly changing world. |
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This Rabbi On That Rabbi
A modern Portland, Oregon rabbi explains Jesus’s messages in a 6-Part Video Series. View this exclusive video content below
ReLOVEution - Jesus the Revolutionary: How to fight power without fighting or resorting to violence Jesus and anger. Following is the summary of Part 2.
Resisting oppression with neither violence nor anger
When we’re feeling oppressed, we feel the urge to turn towards violence. That is human nature. When we feel like we’ve been violated, we want to right that wrong. Like many other species, when we feel threatened, we are inclined to retaliate by being hurtful, angry, and violent in our behavior.
I am in favor of overcoming the oppression of tyrants. But the question is how should I do that?
Jesus gave three strategies for resisting the Roman empire and the Jewish leadership around him. In our contemporary world, we might think of ‘our empire’ as the economic and social forces all around us, the overpowering American corporations that confront our daily life, or in a mythical sense the Star Wars cosmic struggle we have moment by moment with our spiritual “dark side.”
How do we, as a human being, resist the lure and power of the empire?
Jesus gave us three different strategies to resist oppression with neither violence nor anger.
- Turn the other cheek
- If somebody asks you for your coat, give him your second one, too
- If you are asked to walk a mile, take the time and walk the second one as well
....Matthew 5:38-41
....You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’
....But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on
....the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone
....wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.
....If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.
One, two, and three
Jesus was suggesting revolutionary, clever, non-violent approaches to being violated.
Clever? Yes. Very clever.
When Jesus urged his followers to be non-violent, he wasn’t suggesting that they were to be passive. No. Jesus’s three suggestions are also about demanding the full respect of one’s oppressor – in a sense saying, “If you are going to insult me, I demand that you really insult me.”
Turn the other cheek
If somebody slaps you, Jesus said to turn the other cheek.
Escalating violence with violence brings violence. As we heard from Martin Luther King Jr.,
....“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
....Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Turn the other cheek.
This is good advice.
But there is more to the words than turn the other cheek. Jesus taught, “If they slap your right cheek, present them your left.”
This detail of which cheek is being slapped is important. Ancient Near East, like every culture, had its mores and norms. Slapping someone on the right cheek was insulting because it meant that you were slapping them with the back of your hand. (Left-handed people would have to wait millennia for respect. All insult-slapping in the ancient world was done with the right hand.) So, Jesus was saying, “If they slap you as though you weren’t worthy of a full slap with an open hand, force them to strike you on the left cheek like they would do to anyone else of more prominent status.” In doing so you will be removing the shame from their aggression.
If somebody asks you for your outer coat, give him your inside one as well.
Jesus said that if somebody asks you for your first coat, you should give him your second one, too.
In the time in which Jesus lived, people had two garments. There was an inner garment and an outer garment. The former was what you wore during the day. The latter was similar to our underwear.
If someone asked for your outer garment, they were attempting to take your warmth, your protection. Jesus was saying that you should give them that garment, and then offer your inner garment, as well.
This is a very snide response, and it’s also somewhat humorous.
Because if you tell me you need my overgarments, I am going to tell you, by my actions, that I assume you are so desperate that you’ll need my undergarments, as well.
And by doing this – giving you my underwear – I will be standing there naked before you. And I will be then breaking my Jewish societal mores because of you. The fault is on you. You, my oppressor, will be the source of your own embarrassment at the sight of my nakedness. It is clear that Jesus is addressing this strategy to the Jewish leaders who were also oppressing the peasants of Jesus’ day.
In a sense, by giving you my second coat, I am saying to you,
“I am going to take your oppression to its obvious next level and make you the one responsible for my culturally-taboo state – standing there naked, without any clothing.”
Jesus was telling his followers that by their actions they could engage in non-violent revolution and say, “If you are going to oppress me, oppress me all the way – and even then, you will not crush my feeling of love – my innate connection to the ways of the Kingdom of Heaven protects me from your wicked ways My nonviolence protects me from incurring guilt and places it where it rightly belongs..
If you are asked to walk a mile, take the time and walk the second one as well.
In the days of the Roman hegemony of Israel, centurions were allowed to order people to carry their belongings. The oppressor could order the oppressed to make oppression easier for them!
Roman centurions produced so much bad blood by forcing people to carry their things that Rome made a law forbidding the centurions from asking people to carry something for more than one mile.
Once again Jesus was saying to do more for the oppressor and thereby place the guilt and shame on them as their burden to carry instead of yours to carry, and all without resorting to violence in doing so.
....“If we continue to carry the centurion's belonging after the first mile,
....the centurion will have to ask us to stop. If we still don’t stop, the
....centurion will have to beg us to stop! How funny is that! Make
....them beg us to not help them oppress us!”
Jesus was not just saying be passive. He was saying be passive and smart. Put the guilt on them for their oppression. Turn the other cheek, give the second coat, forgive someone, walk another mile after the first.
Oscar Wilde and John Lennon added their words millennia later:
....Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. - Oscar Wilde
....When it comes down to having to use violence then you are
....playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you,
....pull your beard, flick your face to make you fight. Because
....they’ve gotten you to be violent, they know how to handle you.
....The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.
....-John Lennon
Rabbi Brian’s gloss on non-violence and non-anger.
The only way to win a fight against whomever or whatever is oppressing us is to turn the other cheek. As long as we know we are connected to the Ein Sof (the one without end), as long as we know that we live in the Kingdom of Heaven, then we can take the abuse without being crushed by it.
Fight back, certainly – but don’t lose your inscrutable, internal choice to live a blessed life.
A bit about Jesus and Anger.
Jesus preached turning the other cheek – certainly. And, in our society, we think of Jesus, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King Jr. as our icons of what it means to fight violence with nonviolence.
But Jesus is not a two-dimensional character who never got angry.
In fact, Jesus got angry, furiously angry, when he was in the temple.
This is recorded in multiple gospels
Mark 11:15-17
On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.”
Luke 19:46
Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those who were selling there. He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Matthew 21:12-13
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
....Luke 19:46
....Then Jesus entered the temple courts and began to drive out those
....who were selling there. He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My
....house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
....Matthew 21:12-13
....Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying
....and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers
....and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said
.... to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are
....making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Let’s look at why he got so mad. What was the context? What was so upsetting to Jesus?
(Note: Bruce Chilton’s book Rabbi Jesus goes into far more detail than I will.)
He was furious because the temple was being used for something other than its purpose.
The purpose of the temple was to help connect God and people. However, the temple authorities, in a political move of power consolidation brokered by Rome {need fact check on this}, moved the selling of the animals for sacrifice from outside of the temple to inside, to increase their control over this commerce. Think of it as a big box store coming into town and ruining local merchants, only worse...like the big box store has a slogan “Making great communities greater.” (This analogy isn’t quite right, but it gives you a sense of the outrage.)
This decision by the temple authorities was unimaginable to Jesus.
How could a place, an institution that’s supposed to be standing up for the common good, align itself with the oppressors?
Jesus quotes the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.
Isaiah 56:7
These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.
Jeremiah 7:11
Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.
He said that God’s house had become a den of robbers.
Rabbi Brian’s gloss on anger
Everything from the above about non-violence and non-anger is true.
But there is only so much that any son or daughter of man can bear.
We are all going to get angry.
Yes, resist oppression with non-violence and non-anger as long as we can.
But there are times when we feel so much moral outrage that we should allow ourselves to be angry – at the right time, in the right place, at the right people, and for the right reasons.
Finally, let me end here with a modern adaptation of the beautiful words of Jesus from the end of this fifth chapter of Matthew
....Anyone can love people who love them. Even the most heinous
....people love their own. You must love better than that! You must
....love even those who persecute you; you must love even your
....enemies. Love with perfect love, as you know God loves you.
With Love, Rabbi Brian
Rabbi Brian is the C.E.O. of Religion-Outside-The-Box, an internet-based, non-denominational congregation nourishing spiritual hunger. Find out more about newsletter, podcasts, videos, and other good ROTB.org is doing for thousands every week.
This Rabbi on That Rabbi is a co-production of Religion-Outside-The-Box and Progressing Spirit. This is a 6-part video series also available for purchase here, it is made available to our subscribers to purchase as a gift or for a study group - the course contains six videos and audios along with their written companion PDFs. |
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