June 14, 2010
Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
“…[O]ffer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.” Matthew 5:39-40
Piety
Hear my words, O LORD; listen to my sighing. Psalm 5:2
Perhaps we are groaning because we do not want to let go of our human ways of doing things. Instead, we persist in our ways and remain anchored in our comfort zone instead of turning to the ways of the Lord. However, we know that we can enter the Lord’s house because of the Lord’s great love for us. Father, continue to guide me in your justice and make straight your way before me.
Study
“I can't believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.” Lou Holtz
Saturday, my college classmate John Giblin posted the above quote by former Notre Dame Football coach Lou Holtz on Facebook. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this weekend of extraordinary things.
Everyday, we get up and go to work. Unlike when Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jay Leno show up at their desk, no one breaks into applause when we do the very ordinary thing of showing up to work every day. But we are not there to show up. We are there to shine. It’s what we do and why we do it that transcends the ordinary.
If we were to head down to the courthouse on any given day (city, county, state or federal), there would be defendants and lawyers forcefully presenting and pleading their case before judges and juries. It is just natural (ordinary) in our Perry Mason/Jack McCoy world to idolize the successful defense attorney.
How different are these ordinary trials from the trial that happened more than two thousand years ago in Palestine? That Jewish defendant, turned over by his own religious leaders, stood before the Roman leader and then the local ruler and refused to plead his case. His closest friends were probably shocked at the scene playing out right before their eyes. Yet, right here in his own words as quoted by St. Matthew, we can read and hear the basis for his very unusual defense (or perhaps you would call this a non-defense).
Offer no resistance to one who is evil.
When someone strikes you on (your) right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.
If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.
Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.
Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow.
These are not ordinary directives. These are extra-ordinary precepts which require extraordinary fortitude to accomplish. Such accomplishment will not come if we act alone but only when we act consistently for life under the wings of a loving God who sent his only son to support us and the Holy Spirit to carry on his work.
Action
Clearly these directives are aimed at turning the tables on how people behaved in society. Jesus sought out change. Change by us. Change for us. Change in us.
He wanted us to change from the quid pro quo, eye-for-an-eye system. Not much is made of the term resistance these days. Instead, our culture of death concentrates on armed conflicts.
We fail to recognize the peaceful resistance in the American South which brought about the advent of civil rights for all people…bought by the blood and broken bones of those who demanded change. We fail to recognize the peaceful success of the Solidarity trade union in Poland whose members refused to cooperate with an unjust system and that system was overturned. Nelson Mandela refused to cooperate with the apartheid system in South Africa and this week the world celebrates the World Cup being hosted by Mandela’s country women and men…all of them.
All of these movements were inspired by the Gospel as well as by the resistance model lived out by Mahatma Gandhi in India. In fact, it was Gandhi amplified the message of Matthew 5 with the quote, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Change can and does happen without force.
What change is Jesus seeking in your heart with the words of today’s Good News? Offer no resistance to that change.
