'If anyone...' It's the sort of thing your teachers says to you before they leave the room on some errand threatening the general populas that if they step out of line before teacher returns there will be punuishment exercises all round. If Jesus was speaking like this as he preached the sermon on the mount all he would be doing would be offering some playground rules and general wisdom for good Christian behaviour. But Jesus was doing anything but.
Okay, let's not seem to be quite so certain because I don't suppose we can be. But there is a very diferent way of approaching what Jesus said here. Whenever Jesus said, 'If anyone...' his listeners knew exactly who he was talking about. These weren't general rules for good behaviour but a comment towards those who lauded power over the poor.
'If anyone slaps you on the right cheek...' is not something that best friends did each day as way of saying 'Good Morning' but the way a slave owner treated a slave. And if you turned the other cheek then you humiliated him. You had to hit someone in the right way. Turning the other cheek meant the owner had to hit you on the wrong cheek and illustrate that he was not in control. Read more about that here.
And so on with the list of 'If anyone's' Jesus offers. He's rebalancing the order between the poor and the powerful without a sword being lifted or even a word being spoken. This is Jesus at his coolest, clearest and most radical.
It is a bit of a different world now however and the bigger question for us is how we respond to injustice that rebalances a world tipped towards those with power: as a church how do we illustrate injustice and that we will no longer accept? How do you turn the other cheek?
Suggestions?
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