2000 years ago, Jesus popped up and offered people a new perspective for seeing and understanding the human experience and the divine. He spent three years teaching his disciples a way to live so they could see for themselves if his perspective was true or not for them. Being a disciple today is no different. Jesus perspective is challenging now as it was then and he still means for us to try living it to see whether it is true or not. Jesus never intended anyone to take his word for it. He expected people to be intrigued enough to come and see, to try it out for themselves.
According to Jesus, nonviolent resistance to injustice is both THE lens for understanding God and the human experience, and THE practice to live in the world. Non violent resistance is how God is, how we are most fully ourselves, and the pathway to making the world the way God intended. Everything else Jesus taught hinges on that and we are expected to try it out to see if it is true or not.
Unfortunately, this teaching has gone largely untried by most Christians and has instead been watered down to a more milk toast approach where nonviolent resistance to injustice becomes "be a doormat," an unassertive victims, a martyr to the will of others who are less faithful. No wonder people doubt Christianity!
Jesus' teaching on nonviolent resistance to injustice is actually much more nuanced than being a doormat and requires much more thoughtful situational adeptness with life on a case by case basis. Jesus’ understanding of justice is not about getting even, achieving dominance, revenge or punishment. Biblical justice is a word that means even or equal, as in weighing the same in the scales of justice, as in we all weigh the same as beloved children of God. The full implications of what Jesus teaches us this morning are not readily apparent to a modern audience who does not understand the cultural context of the situations Jesus uses as examples.
Walter Wink, in his book Jesus and Nonviolence. A Third Way, first showed me what Jesus was really getting at. In all the cases Jesus raises, his intent is to demonstrate through nonviolent resistance the injustice of the perpetrator. As Wink writes: "Jesus' teaching is a kind of moral jujitsu, a martial art for using the momentum of evil to throw it." Contrary what we think martial arts are about, breaking boards, kicking people in the head, ju jitsu is about harnessing the energy of an aggressor and using it to move the aggressor in the direction you want to go, the direction of justice.
For example, the turning of the other cheek was not giving in, but standing up. In 1st century Jewish culture, being hit on the right cheek implied a backhanded slap, which was culturally understood as the blow of a superior upon an inferior. Injustice. By turning the other cheek, the turner is saying, "I do not give in as an inferior. Hit me as an equal." Justice. The implication being that being hit as an equal has already erased the underlying cultural injustice of the original blow.
Or offering up your last stitch of clothing to the person who sues you for your cloak? Injustice. Well, having done so, what are you left with? Nothing. Your nakedness makes clear the rapacity of the suitor through a form of theater of the absurd. Justice.
Roman soldiers could legally commandeer Jewish peasants to carry their packs for one mile. This right implied superiority and dominance. Injustice. By offering to go a second mile, the cultural inferior asserts equality, or at least lack of dominance. Justice.
And giving to anyone who begs points out to anyone who is watching the injustice of a society that creates beggars…more theater of the absurd if you will.
Wink writes, "Jesus did not advocate nonviolence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a means of opposing the enemy in such a way as to hold open the possibility of the enemy's becoming just as well. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies' transformation, and to respond to ill-treatment with a love that not only is godly but also, I am convinced, can only be found in God." Transformation. Win-win. The perfection, as God is perfect, which we seek through nonviolent resistance is this wholeness of love as opposed to the brokenness which constant jockeying for superiority brings with is.
The two most famous practitioners of nonviolent resistance to injustice in recent history are Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Because we live at a historical and geographic remove from their struggles, we might trivialize their achievements against absolutely overwhelming odds. If we lived in Bombay in 1930 or Montgomery in 1950, we would be amazed at what they achieved through nonviolent resistance. How did they do it? By getting arrested, by the dozens, hundreds and thousands until the system could no longer cope and was unmasked as unjust. It also cost each of them their lives, like Jesus, so this is not for the faint of resolve.
But what about us? How might we dip our toes into the practice of non-violent resistance to injustice in our day to day lives? How might we find out if Jesus is true? If as followers of Jesus we seek justice, not everyone ends up in the same place but everyone gets the same start, where do we see inequality in our society that we should want to resist as an experiment in the truth of Jesus’ teaching? How about wage inequality, which is now extreme in our society? We work and make enough to live, but many of our neighbors also work full time and cannot afford to support themselves on the wages they earn. As Christians, we believe in working for a living, the 4th commandment, and we also believe in being able to live on the wages of our work. If we can support ourselves on our wages, so should everyone else who works. If a person works 40 hours a week, she or he should be able to afford the basics of life: food, housing, clothing, health care. I’m not saying everyone make the same amount, just that everyone be able to live off of their work, which is not the case in our country right now.
The problem is that this issue has become hotly politicized as a question of higher minimum wages or jobs, if the minimum wage is raised there will be fewer jobs and small businesses will fold. Inaccurate polarity:
Big business pays low wages - big businesses with big profits and big executive compensation
According to The Nation, admittedly a leftist periodical, reports:
the biggest abusers of low-wage labor are. Walmart, for example, employs 1.4 million Americans, and a vast majority of them at wages under $10 per hour. The highest-paid executive, however, earned over $18.4 million last year. Other key offenders are Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC), McDonald’s, Target, Sears, Doctor’s Associates Inc (Subway), TJMaxx and Burger King.
Amazingly, one in four American jobs pays less than $10 per hour (26 percent), according to the study. And it’s not just those workers who suffer—big businesses that pay collectively pay millions of workers low wages set a basement for the rest of the wage scale and depress earnings above $10, too.
Now the truth is that we not only buy these companies' products, but we also subsidize their business model of low wage labor. How so? A huge number of these low wage workers who are working more than 40 hours a week in different jobs qualify for food stamps, section 8 housing, highly subsidized health care, and so on, not to live in luxury but just to make ends meet. And who pays for food stamps, section 8 housing, public health insurance, etc.? We who pay taxes, that’s who. In other words, Walmart, Taco Bell, McDonalds and all the rest are not really practicing free market capitalism but a form of state sponsored surreptitious corporate socialism.
If these millions of our fellow citizens were making a living wage, they could pay taxes, afford housing, live more stress free lives, which would lead to declines in criminality, social decay, bad health and improvements in childhood educational performance. In a word, transformation. Win- win, except for the folks making $18.4 million who are going to have to be persuaded to change.
So what could we do to try out non-violent resistance to this injustice? How could we discover if Jesus is true for us, by which I mean, how could we discover if nonviolent resistance to injustice can transform us and our world? And how can we discover if justice is really better than injustice? We could boycott these companies in the same way Gandhi’s supporters boycotted British cloth and salt manufacturers or King’s supporters boycotted the busses in Montgomery, thus creating change. Any of us who wanted to try out Jesus' perspective could just boycott these companies and encourage our neighbors to do the same, while informing the company leadership of what we are doing and why. We could harness their desire to do business with us and transform it into a just business with which we would do business.
I’m not as clever as Gandhi or King who might have come up with something more original. There are many of issues of grave injustice in our country which you could choose to resist. But with this one, you can find out for yourself if Jesus is true, if injustice or justice is better, if it is better for millions of our working neighbors to be able to support themselves. Or not, and if not, what that means for all of us. And you can find out for yourself if you can be an agent of that change, be a practitioner of spiritual jujitsu.
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