Luke 6:27-38

A mom in a congregation I served told me that she’d stopped one of her preteen kids from hitting her sister back. She was pretty sure that’s what Jesus would want. The girl’s response was frank disbelief, something along the lines of, “What, are you nuts? Why wouldn’t I hit back? If you don’t hit back, you’re a wimp.”

Is this our culture’s approach to problem-solving and violence in a nutshell? The mom was stumped because what the kid said kind of made sense. Hitting back, and hitting in the first place, just feel reflexive. Yet in the face of that reflex, we have Jesus’ words in this Luke passage: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Most of us remember the translation, “Turn the other cheek.” These are perhaps some of Jesus’ most quoted but also most misunderstood words. Generally they have been understood as teaching non-resistance. In other words, be a wimp. If they hit you on one cheek, turn the other and let them batter you there too, which has been bad advice for battered women and oppressed people generally, and good news for bullies.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Biblical scholars explain that the reference to the right cheek means Jesus is saying that turning your face deprives your attacker of a second opportunity to hit you with a backhanded slap with his right hand. One reason we know this is that no ancient Middle Eastern person would strike a person with his left hand, which was used only for “unclean” activities. The backhanded slap was a sign of the hitter’s superiority and intended to humiliate the victim. As Gandhi said, “The first principle of nonviolent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating.”

These cultural specifics aren’t as obvious in Luke’s version, which doesn’t mention a right cheek, only a cheek. But regardless, as Walter Wink writes, “Jesus resisted evil with every fiber of his being.” What Jesus means here is “don’t turn into the very thing you hate. Don’t become what you oppose.” As Paul put it, “Do not return evil for evil.”

It is Black History Month. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and ‘60’s was successful not because of a lack of resistance, not because the people in the movement were wimps, but because their resistance was nonviolent. It is seldom lifted up that Martin Luther King Jr. based his nonviolence on his Christian faith and Scripture, on Jesus. King said, “Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Those of us who remember the Civil Rights Movement can testify that nonviolent resistance is not the way of wimps. It requires enormous dedication, courage, and hard work, all of which may culminate in failure, including injury to or even the death of resistors.

In the 1986 movie, “The Mission,” the new Portuguese rulers of eighteenth-century South America order an attack on a local tribe and the Jesuits protecting them. It becomes a massacre. The pope’s messenger confronts a government official, saying, “You have the effrontery to tell me this slaughter was necessary?” The governor says he had no alternative. He did what he had to do. He says, “We must work in the world. The world is thus.” The papal envoy replies, “No, Señor Hontar. Thus we have made the world. Thus I have made it.”

“Mom, why shouldn’t I hit back?” Maybe the way to answer is with another question: “What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind of world do you want to make?”

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.