In the
Ancient World everything was a whole.
God was the
ruler of it all.
Religion’s
business was to seek God’s will
in all things.
The modern world put God in smaller box.
The box was constructed mostly by John Dewey
who gave us the decimal
system.
He liked everything in its place
and God’s space
was very small.
Most of
modern life is entrusted to secular ideologies
of politics, economics, and
sociology.
Religion is
relegated to the realm of
our inmost personal feelings.
But
occasionally someone reads today's lessons
which cover everything from real estate to the legal system
to employee rights.
Occasionally someone notices that
the Bible is about the whole human project,
and Jesus did not restrict his mission
to the private and the personal.
If you asked
Jesus whether his teachings
were about personal or public life,
he would not have understood the
question.
It was all
one life.
Occasionally someone tries to figure out Jesus public
mission
and they usually get it wrong.
Reza Aslan’s
book Zealot portrays Jesus
as a revolutionary concerned about
the social,
economic, and political condition of
his people.
So, the
argument runs, that he must have been
part of the Zealot party,
advocating a violent nationalist
insurrection.
That runs
against the modern God in a small box notion
of Jesus as a heavenly
minded spiritual teacher
who either hadn’t noticed or didn’t
care that his people
were an occupied,
oppressed, and exploited nation
with the boot heel of
Rome on their neck.
Responsible
Biblical scholarship says both versions
of Jesus are wrong.
Jesus was
concerned about real social, economic, and political issues –
but in a personal way, not with an
ideology like modern politics
He was a
revolutionary.
But he was
not a Zealot working for a nationalist insurrection.
He was after
a much more radical revolution than that.
Jesus knew
that you can’t change the power structure of the world
using the same violent methods that
created
that power structure to begin with.
Revolutions,
invasions, wars of liberation and so forth
do not have a good track record in
history.
This week we
mark the 90th birthday of Robert Mugabe.
He led the
violent insurrection that ousted Rhodesian President Ian Smith
and made Mugabe President of the new
nation, Zimbabwe.
For 33 years
he has ruled with an iron hand
using military force and militias to
protect his power.
Mugabe’s
approach is the opposite of the way
Jesus taught his followers to act in
the world.
Turn the
other cheek, go the second mile, if someone sues you
for your coat give him your cloak
too.
It sounds
like giving up, being a doormat.
If we search our hearts honestly,
we may be more inclined to the way of Robert Mugabe
than the way of Jesus.
But maybe Jesus isn't really about surrender.
Maybe Jesus was teaching a more human way
of changing the structures of human
life,
a more personal approach than mere
politics
New Testament
scholar Walter Wink today’s explains today’s lesson
as a clever form of mischief.
Our text,
properly translated says
if anyone strikes you on your right cheek,
turn to him your left.
To strike
someone backhand on the right cheek
is how the master strikes the slave.
To strike
someone forehand on the left cheek
is how one strikes an equal to
challenge him to combat.
If someone
sues you for your coat he just gets your coat.
But if you
give him your cloak too,
you are standing naked in front of
him,
and in that culture the person who
sees the nakedness
of another is the one
who is disgraced.
The one who
could make you carry his load for a mile
was a Roman centurion.
He could
press any civilian into duty carrying his pack for a mile.
But if the
civilian carried the load one step further,
the centurion got court martialed.
So carry the
load an extra mile.
Jesus was
teaching non-violent ways of resisting oppression.
Let’s
compare Robert Mugabe’s violence
that led to war and finally
dictatorship
with the story of Nelson Mandela.
In his book,
Invictus, John Carlin says
the peaceful transformation from
apartheid
to a free South Africa happened
because of rugby.
It
happened this way:
While Nelson
Mandela was in prison,
he learned some things that grew
into his
strategy for changing South Africa.
Mandela had
a simple problem.
The food was
all served at once in the morning.
So his
evening meal was cold.
He wanted a
hot plate.
But the
Afrikaner guards wouldn’t talk to him.
Mandela had
no way of getting his hot plate.
So he
listened to the guards to find out what
they talked about.
It was
rugby. Afrikaners are just obsessed with rugby –
which is why Black South Africans
hated rugby,
had nothing to do with it, and knew
nothing about it.
But Mandela
had library privileges.
So he
devoted himself to learning everything
there was to know about rugby.
Using that
knowledge, he enticed the guards
into talking with him – not about
his concern –
but about what
interested them – rugby.
Before long
he had his hot plate.
That was the
beginning of Nelson Mandela’s new way
of dealing with people.
He made it
his principle to treat every human
being,
friend or foe, with basic dignity
and respect.
When people
were opposed to him,
Mandela’s response was curiosity.
He wanted to
understand their viewpoint.
What did
they know that he didn’t?
He assumed
they were children of God
and people of intelligence,
so there must be something in what
they say.
He wanted to
understand it.
His old
revolutionary friends were confused.
They were as
hell-bent on a bloody civil war
as the Afrikaner militias.
He had to
engage them in conversations
which were sometimes harder than his
conversations
with the Afrikaners.
But he kept
at it.
And he won
them over.
Over a
course of years,
he built personal relationships, something akin to
friendships,
with the Afrikaner power structure
starting with the prison guards and
working his way up
to the President, F. W.
de Klerk.
It started with the guards giving him a hot plate.
It culminated in de Kerk giving him a nation.
In case a
story from Africa is to far away,
let me tell you one from our own
history.
After the
Republican Convention of 1860 nominated
Abraham Lincoln for President,
his political rival Edwin Stanton
stomped out, saying,
“I will have nothing to do with that
gawking ape.”
Lincoln’s
friends said, “Don’t worry. When you’re President,
you can destroy him.”
But when
Lincoln took office,
he appointed Stanton as Secretary of
War,
the most important and powerful post
in the government.
When people
said to Lincoln, “What are you thinking?”
he said, “If I make my enemy into a friend,
have I not destroyed my
enemy?”
When Lincoln
died, it was Stanton who placed the coins
on his eyes, and said,
“Now he belongs to the ages.”
Now is this
about how we practice our politics
or how we live our personal lives.
Moses,
Jesus, Mandela, and Lincoln saw it all as one life,
a life guided by God’s ways.
Jesus’
mission was to overthrow the ways of the world,
the violence, coercion, one-up-man-ship,
and greed.
He wanted to
overthrow it all and replace it with God’s ways.
God’s ways
belong in our homes and in the public square alike.
The problem
isn’t religious that people engage in public life.
The problem
is people carrying a religious banner
but abandoning God’s ways for the
world’s ways
when they enter the
public square.
We have seen
far to much of that in recent decades,
worldly power players using our
name.
Frankly, we
are all too ready to practice the world’s ways
in our private lives too.
But it’s all
one life.
It’s all
God’s life.
Jesus taught
us how to live it.
He showed us
the way.
And thanks
be to God
people like Lincoln, Mandela, Martin
Luther King,
and so many of the
saints
have shown us it isn’t
just a dream.
It is a good
way to live, a winning way to befriend each other,
and a powerful way to change the
world.
