A Year-Long Exploration of the Sermon on the Mount: Week 21

Chapter 21 – Nonresistance

 

An email came across my computer this week from the local Rainbow Resource Center. The headline was “Joy is Resistance. And Together, We Make It Possible.” Within the body it states, “Every day, I witness the transformative power of safer, affirming spaces – and the joy that blossoms when 2SLGBTQ+ people are seen, celebrated, and supported. … queer joy is resistance. In a world that too often tries to silence or erase us, choosing joy is a bold act of defiance. It’s a declaration that we belong, that we matter, and that we will thrive”

 

Many Christian denominations are pacifist, believing that Jesus calls for nonresistance – no violence, no fighting back, etc. I can stand behind that for the most part. Violence should never be the answer, certainly not the first answer, when needing to defend ourselves. As Howard Thurman says, “No one ever wins a fight.” (p. 133) However, pacifism doesn’t need to equate no resistance. Resistance doesn’t need to be violent. As is said in the email I received, joy, celebration, showing support, not keeping silent – these, and many more, are all ways to show resistance to injustices and unfairness.

 

As Harry Emerson Fosdick states, if Jesus was simply nonresistant, why bother crucifying him?  Jesus stirred up so much intense loyalty that people were willing to die for him. And he caused a hatred so fierce that others wouldn’t rest until Jesus was dead. (p. 133) Is this the Jesus of nonresistance?

 

The verse for this chapter is Matthew 5:38, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.” People have used this verse to justify revenge – you did something to me; I’m going to do it back to you. But is this really the Jesus that we know and love? Amy-Jill Levine writes about this verse in her book The Bible with and Without Jesus. She says that the issue here is justice after a crime has been committed. She goes on to say that the Torah, to which Jesus is referring, is speaking not of actual practice of trading a limb for a limb, but of a legal principle known as lex talionis in Roman law, which is “the law of equals.”

 

From the book, “It appears in the classic Roman law code The Twelve Tables, table 8, law 2, which stipulates, ‘If a man broke another’s limb, the victim could inflict the same injury upon the wrongdoer, but only if no settlement was agreed upon.’” Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has taken Torah law and extended it so that people take things further. If we were to continue that pattern, Jesus would have gone beyond eyes and teeth to other body parts or simply told people to do nothing in retaliation at all and simply let it go.

 

However, he does nothing of the sort, moving instead to public humiliation. We will expand on this further in week 22.

 

Footnote: “The Bible With and Without Jesus” by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler. Published by Harper Collins Publishers in 2020. The discussion above is found in pages 201-202.