If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer them the other, one thing we know is that slapping is more about insulting someone’s honor or dignity, than it is about actually trying to take them out. Nothing has changed, slapping throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, it’s always about public shaming. Public shaming, but what does a slap on the right cheek mean, whenever the right cheek’s mentioned, you’re being slapped on your right cheek from someone facing you and if they’re slapping with their right hand, which would be their dominant hand, it’s a backhand slap. A backhanded blow to the right cheek did not imply shattered teeth, it was an insult, the severest public affront to a person’s dignity. God’s prophets sometimes suffered such ill treatment as Jesus would himself, yet though this was more in affront to honor, a challenge rather than a physical injury. Ancient near eastern societies typically provided legal recourse for this offense within regulations.
So in real true honor, shame societies, where your social rank is your and your family is kind of like life, it’s really a severe public offense, but you’re actually putting someone down a rank, you’re asserting dominance with the backhanded slap. So if that’s the case, then not backing down, not walking away, but standing right there and then just looking in the eyes of the person who did that and then offering him your other cheek isn’t doing nothing, what your requiring them to do is slap you again, but this time with an open hand. An open palm slap is symbolic of a social equal, backhand is shaming, but the open hand is how you would slap someone of equal rank, almost like a challenge, you’re forcing them to re-evaluate you and so you are not resisting in kind, it’s resistance, but it’s not resisting in kind. It is in effect to say, why is it that you think that you need to treat me as lower or higher than yourself, what is this whole system anyway that you think you need to do this, to assert who you think I am, it’s in a way stating that I am not controlled by your attempt to put me in a social rank.
It’s almost a demonstration, my honor is not determined by the way you treat me, it’s rooted in something deeper, but there’s so much wisdom there, it requires training, it’s like retraining our instincts, because that is not intuitive. Loving and blessing your enemies, they have to be next to each other, because who else would be slapping you and suing you and forcing you to go an extra mile, it would be your enemy, someone that feels like your enemy, so it’s almost like you get the first response of what not to do, not to resist in kind and then the last saying, the hope is a relationship of love and blessing. It’s changing the game, the response is one that scrambles the system, that it just doesn’t acknowledge the system of value, honor, injustice, that these practices uphold, naming what’s wrong and then moving towards the offender in a bid for a different kind of relationship. The bully, they’re trapped in a whatever mindset or social system that makes them think that they need to behave like this to have their own dignity or maintain order, which is its own kind of different kind of prison.
If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also, so there’s no way this will land, the way Jesus meant it in our cultural setting. Standard dress is Jesus’ day, you basically have two garments and probably just have one pair of each, if you’re wealthy you have a hand full of each, most people in Jesus’ class would have one set, your tunic and that’s next to your skin, it’s your shirt. Whereas your outer garment, what we call the coat is heavier, thicker, that keeps you warm, keeps out the elements. Coats are made of wool, they’re sturdy, you want it to last a long long time, which means they’re valuable, because it often was in Galilee, especially at night, other than summer, spring, it’s cold at night. Jesus assumes this is a legal case, someone suing you, but what he’s appealing to is actually a network of laws in the Torah, laws that are aimed to prevent exploitation of poor and day laborers especially, that if somebody owes you money and all they have anymore, the most valuable thing they own is their outer cloak, you can take that as a pledge of them paying you back, but you have to give it back every night, Exodus 22:25-26.
The picture Jesus is painting is of somebody suing you and taking not your cloak, your outer coat, but your shirt, the thing next to your body, all you have left is your cloak and whoever is doing this, it’s a wrongful suit. So if somebody’s in that space where they think that’s what they need to do, then see him one more, give him your coat and notice what Jesus is recommending here, is that you end up handing over all of your clothes, which means you’re standing there in public naked, with this person holding all your clothes. What Jesus is saying, is go for shock value, draw attention, if they’re going to take your shirt, then kindly offer to them, they’re not demanding here, here friend, hand it to them, you clearly need my stuff more than I do, have this too.
Then your standing there naked, everyone is watching and that person is holding all of your clothes, but if your using generosity to subvert the whole system by which they are wrong, this legal system allows them to do this thing to you and your exposing it for what it is, but its through generosity you give. In theory, to really be in a position where this is the option before you and you choose generosity, but also you’re trying to shake things up, you’re certainly not being a doormat, you’re trying to almost shock the person’s conscience of who’s wronging you. It’s not doing nothing, but it’s not resisting in kind. Respond in a way that you are able in a creative nonviolent way, but don’t resist in kind.
If someone forces you to go one mile, offer to go another mile, that phrase “force you to go” is a technical term and it’s used to describe how Roman soldiers could force Imperial subjects to carry their gear, they carried a lot of stuff around. Their armor, their packs, this is the word used to describe when Jesus is carrying his cross and as he was walking up the street, the soldiers forced Simon, they forced him into service, they were using their right as soldiers, you, carry this. But the Roman Empire knew this would be prone towards abuse, assuming it wasn’t already abusive, but they put limits on how far they could make you their pack animal, one mile. You’re with your family on a picnic and Roman soldiers come by and then the soldier just picks the father out and all of sudden made to do that. Think of the relational dynamics of what a father now feels, Jesus wouldn’t name it unless it was something all his listeners, I know that.
Within their power, they can only do one mile, notice the subversive generosity move, similar to the giving of the cloak, you offer, so they exerted their power, asserting who they are in the rank and who you are and then the moment that mile’s over, generosity can redefine the relationship. They can treat you like a pack animal for one mile, but the moment that mile’s done, you have an opportunity once they’re done treating you like an animal, it’s almost becomes synonymous with bless your enemies and it’s generosity, because usually the kinds of people who offer to carry things for others, are people you care about or your friends.
A subjugated ethnic religious minority group before an Imperial power, that’s the setting of all these sayings have that as the context and so there wasn’t any hope of changing the system overall, the points is, how can we respond in a way that reflects the justice and generosity of God that exposes injustice and then also can affect change, but unlike the level of real change, which is relationship, somebody who has been the victim of an abuser time and time again, this is not what Jesus is talking about in the same type of context, a lot of it has to do with what kind of context is assumed that we would apply these words. One aspect of the goal of the shock value, just knowing the heart of Jesus that’s displayed in his teachings, it isn’t just to make the person feel humiliated as such, but it is to expose into name and to show, trusting that eventually at some point the perpetrator themselves could come to see that they’re just as trapped. Violent resistance simply will not solve our most intractable entrenched problems in the human story, it cannot and it’s not even just that it can’t, but that only generosity can, this is what Jesus is after here.
So in real true honor, shame societies, where your social rank is your and your family is kind of like life, it’s really a severe public offense, but you’re actually putting someone down a rank, you’re asserting dominance with the backhanded slap. So if that’s the case, then not backing down, not walking away, but standing right there and then just looking in the eyes of the person who did that and then offering him your other cheek isn’t doing nothing, what your requiring them to do is slap you again, but this time with an open hand. An open palm slap is symbolic of a social equal, backhand is shaming, but the open hand is how you would slap someone of equal rank, almost like a challenge, you’re forcing them to re-evaluate you and so you are not resisting in kind, it’s resistance, but it’s not resisting in kind. It is in effect to say, why is it that you think that you need to treat me as lower or higher than yourself, what is this whole system anyway that you think you need to do this, to assert who you think I am, it’s in a way stating that I am not controlled by your attempt to put me in a social rank.
It’s almost a demonstration, my honor is not determined by the way you treat me, it’s rooted in something deeper, but there’s so much wisdom there, it requires training, it’s like retraining our instincts, because that is not intuitive. Loving and blessing your enemies, they have to be next to each other, because who else would be slapping you and suing you and forcing you to go an extra mile, it would be your enemy, someone that feels like your enemy, so it’s almost like you get the first response of what not to do, not to resist in kind and then the last saying, the hope is a relationship of love and blessing. It’s changing the game, the response is one that scrambles the system, that it just doesn’t acknowledge the system of value, honor, injustice, that these practices uphold, naming what’s wrong and then moving towards the offender in a bid for a different kind of relationship. The bully, they’re trapped in a whatever mindset or social system that makes them think that they need to behave like this to have their own dignity or maintain order, which is its own kind of different kind of prison.
If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also, so there’s no way this will land, the way Jesus meant it in our cultural setting. Standard dress is Jesus’ day, you basically have two garments and probably just have one pair of each, if you’re wealthy you have a hand full of each, most people in Jesus’ class would have one set, your tunic and that’s next to your skin, it’s your shirt. Whereas your outer garment, what we call the coat is heavier, thicker, that keeps you warm, keeps out the elements. Coats are made of wool, they’re sturdy, you want it to last a long long time, which means they’re valuable, because it often was in Galilee, especially at night, other than summer, spring, it’s cold at night. Jesus assumes this is a legal case, someone suing you, but what he’s appealing to is actually a network of laws in the Torah, laws that are aimed to prevent exploitation of poor and day laborers especially, that if somebody owes you money and all they have anymore, the most valuable thing they own is their outer cloak, you can take that as a pledge of them paying you back, but you have to give it back every night, Exodus 22:25-26.
The picture Jesus is painting is of somebody suing you and taking not your cloak, your outer coat, but your shirt, the thing next to your body, all you have left is your cloak and whoever is doing this, it’s a wrongful suit. So if somebody’s in that space where they think that’s what they need to do, then see him one more, give him your coat and notice what Jesus is recommending here, is that you end up handing over all of your clothes, which means you’re standing there in public naked, with this person holding all your clothes. What Jesus is saying, is go for shock value, draw attention, if they’re going to take your shirt, then kindly offer to them, they’re not demanding here, here friend, hand it to them, you clearly need my stuff more than I do, have this too.
Then your standing there naked, everyone is watching and that person is holding all of your clothes, but if your using generosity to subvert the whole system by which they are wrong, this legal system allows them to do this thing to you and your exposing it for what it is, but its through generosity you give. In theory, to really be in a position where this is the option before you and you choose generosity, but also you’re trying to shake things up, you’re certainly not being a doormat, you’re trying to almost shock the person’s conscience of who’s wronging you. It’s not doing nothing, but it’s not resisting in kind. Respond in a way that you are able in a creative nonviolent way, but don’t resist in kind.
If someone forces you to go one mile, offer to go another mile, that phrase “force you to go” is a technical term and it’s used to describe how Roman soldiers could force Imperial subjects to carry their gear, they carried a lot of stuff around. Their armor, their packs, this is the word used to describe when Jesus is carrying his cross and as he was walking up the street, the soldiers forced Simon, they forced him into service, they were using their right as soldiers, you, carry this. But the Roman Empire knew this would be prone towards abuse, assuming it wasn’t already abusive, but they put limits on how far they could make you their pack animal, one mile. You’re with your family on a picnic and Roman soldiers come by and then the soldier just picks the father out and all of sudden made to do that. Think of the relational dynamics of what a father now feels, Jesus wouldn’t name it unless it was something all his listeners, I know that.
Within their power, they can only do one mile, notice the subversive generosity move, similar to the giving of the cloak, you offer, so they exerted their power, asserting who they are in the rank and who you are and then the moment that mile’s over, generosity can redefine the relationship. They can treat you like a pack animal for one mile, but the moment that mile’s done, you have an opportunity once they’re done treating you like an animal, it’s almost becomes synonymous with bless your enemies and it’s generosity, because usually the kinds of people who offer to carry things for others, are people you care about or your friends.
A subjugated ethnic religious minority group before an Imperial power, that’s the setting of all these sayings have that as the context and so there wasn’t any hope of changing the system overall, the points is, how can we respond in a way that reflects the justice and generosity of God that exposes injustice and then also can affect change, but unlike the level of real change, which is relationship, somebody who has been the victim of an abuser time and time again, this is not what Jesus is talking about in the same type of context, a lot of it has to do with what kind of context is assumed that we would apply these words. One aspect of the goal of the shock value, just knowing the heart of Jesus that’s displayed in his teachings, it isn’t just to make the person feel humiliated as such, but it is to expose into name and to show, trusting that eventually at some point the perpetrator themselves could come to see that they’re just as trapped. Violent resistance simply will not solve our most intractable entrenched problems in the human story, it cannot and it’s not even just that it can’t, but that only generosity can, this is what Jesus is after here.