A Poem and Reflection for the Sunday after All Saints St. Andrew’s, Nags Head, N.C.
November 3, 2019 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy
Daniel
7:1-3,15-18 Psalm
149 Ephesians
1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31
Turning
The Other Cheek
Today is the Sunday after All Saints Day and one of the things we will do today is to re-affirm our Baptismal Covenant. It is when we remember who we are, Christians living the dream of Jesus. It is the Day we remember those people in our lives who made a difference in this life with us but are now on the “Other Shore”, away from our sight but never away from our love. This is a day when we remember that we are Saints.
Fellow Saints . . . Now I can see that some of you are looking at me as if I was laboring under the misapprehension that I or you are perfect beings. No, I know that you and I are far from perfect in our actions, thoughts and desires. I am aware that all of us have violated at least 6 of the 10 Commandments in the last week by thought, word or deed. I know you want to rationalize that you at least did not kill someone, but remember the phrase “by thought, word, or deed”. Yet you are a Saint. Wilson’s definition of a Saint comes not from a behavioral viewpoint, what you do, but from an ontological viewpoint, what is your state of being, who you are, like it or not.
Who are you? We like to use terms that limit us like sex, race, gender, age, family, political affiliation, nationality, mental health status, economic class or system preference. Yet none of those tell us the core of our being. The Biblical view of Saint is any dog-faced person who has an awareness that they are creatures of something greater than themselves. When Paul in the New Testament writes to the “Saints” living in Ephesus, Corinth, Rome or wherever, he is writing to each member of that Christian Community in that area, good or bad.
We have a choice on how closely we pay attention to that awareness, but in each of us, the images of God, there is the implanted seed of the holy; of that no one has a choice. Each of us, good behaving or bad as all get out, is loved by the Holy. Holy Love has nothing to do with approval of behavior. God is bigger than any creed or doctrine.
During the time Jesus is living, the Roman Occupying forces make it difficult to love them. The soldiers will march wherever they like. If a Roman Soldier commands a Jew to pick up the Roman Soldiers’ pack, under the law the Jew must carry the pack for a set distance. If a Roman soldier slaps you on the face to get you out of the way and you stand up to him and slap him back, then you would be killed for striking against the majesty of Rome. If a Roman Soldier demands your coat it will become the soldier’s property, or you will be arrested and thrown in jail. This is what it is like to live in an occupied territory by a hated enemy. This is the reality of everyday life for the followers of Jesus in 1st century AD Judea. How can you love someone who is your enemy? How can you love someone who doesn’t even to seem aware of the fact that he or she has the seed of the holy about them?
Jesus suggests that there is a way if we can change our way of thinking. If we think that everything seems to belong to us for our own happiness and to build up our prideful egos; then we are missing the point about being a saint and steward who lives by a belief that all life is a gift and the response is meant to be: “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own do we give back to you.”
If you see your enemy as a beloved of God who has just forgotten who she or he is, then the response to an enemy is to lovingly call him or her back to a proper relationship with themselves, with neighbor, and with God. So how do we respond to the soldier who strikes us on the cheek? Since the way we usually strike someone on the cheek if we have contempt for them as less than a real human being, an object not a subject, is to use the back of our hand as a slap. If you are not thinking like the Saint you are, there seems to be two choices, 1) fight back and lose bigtime, or 2) hate yourself for your own weakness and carry bitterness in your heart. Jesus suggests that Saints have a 3rd choice; that you take this attempt at humiliation as an opportunity to give a new perspective on reality. He suggests that we stand up and say something. “Excuse me my brother, out of your arrogance, you have dismissed me as a human being, an object not a subject, I want you to treat me as an equal and slug me with your fist. You do not take anything from me, but I give you my other cheek. It is my gift out of love.” It might not help you, but if enough people do it the soldier might be tempted to be less full of arrogance down the line.
How about the coat demanded by the soldier? Take the power of arrogance away from him and strip down to your skivvies or less and give them away to him. It will be his shame and not yours, your love not his hate, your blessing not his curse that will be remembered.
How about the pack for the certain distance, say a mile? You will say, “That was the requirement of the law but out of love, I will carry it a second mile.” No one can deprive you of what you have already decided to give away for God’s Kingdom.
For those of us who lived through the 1960’s we saw this in action during the Civil Rights struggles. Instead of one White bigot who slaps a Black person off the sidewalk because the Black person did not follow an unjust law and the Black person carried the shame. But now, the protesters say; “The law which you live by is contemptuous toward me and my family. Instead of my chocking it down in shame, I will proudly sit down before you and you will have to arrest me to call this injustice, to your attention. There will not be enough room in the jails, enough time in the courts, enough stomach in the people who pay you to put up with this shining a spotlight on the hate you live by. I will pray for you as I give myself, as a steward of my own body, into your care out of love for you.”
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a vision of non-violent confrontation and he expressed and lived the dream. Daniel in the Hebrew Testament lesson for today turned to dreams to live into the hope of the future today. Jesus taught a dream of love by Saints so that Society can be changed wherever and whenever we find ourselves.
Fellow Saints, how can we respond in love to be in solidarity against the arrogance of our society we live with now and which we support by our silence? Tell, and live, the truth about a reality where everyone of God’s creatures has the seed of the Holy within them. Think about turning the other cheek as a matter of stewardship; being an example of how to live without arrogance. Hold on to the dreams and visions to give us examples from the past, strength for the present and hope for the future. Saints are the ones who wake up to remember and hold on to their dreams. As the song goes: “(F)or the saints of God are just folk like me and I mean to be one too.”
Turning
the Other Cheek
He
asks me to be steward of my enemies?
My
enemies can take care of themselves,
I
don’t want to do all things Jesus compels,
like
turning the other cheek as my penalties
for
following, knowing I’ll get other slugged.
He
wants me to be as vulnerable as he was,
to
give love a chance to change the old laws
of
eye for eye to be abandoned, shrugged.
I’m
to let the enemy know all of me fully,
seeing
me not as an object, but a subject
proclaiming
all be treated with respect
even
if they seem to act to me as a bully.
We
need freedom from old ways of thinking
to
grow in peace with arms and lives linking.
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