Showing some cheek, or PKPK

11^th Week OT: 2 Cor 6.1-10 and Matthew 5.38-42
Fr. Philip N. Powell, OP
St Albert the Great Priory

[NB. This is a revised version of this morning's homily preached at the 7.15 Conventual Mass.]

Neither Paul nor Jesus would pass the “Does he look and sound Presidential?” test. I take it a as a given that neither of them owned a blue suit, got $300 haircuts, or capped their teeth. More telling for their short futures in American politics is their wimpy policies of international appeasement. Reminds me of one of my college friends, Tim. During the 1984 Presidential election, we were watching the debates between Reagan and Mondale on the dorm TV. Anytime the camera rested on Mondale, Tim would shout at the screen: “Come on, dog! Roll over!” If Tim had been among the disciples the morning Jesus taught them to offer no resistance to evil but to turn the other cheek…well, I’m afraid Tim might have shown our Lord some cheek and walked off, looking for a more realistic education among the worldly. I won’t take a poll, but when it comes to today’s gospel reading, I’m willing to bet that there are more Tim’s here this morning than most of us would like to admit. . . .

The very idea that we must restrain our resistance to evil is strange. Wouldn’t we expect Jesus to be telling the disciples to get out there and battle evil! To get out there throwing out demons, casting devils into hell, slinging righteous anger left and right?! Isn’t there a spiritual war being waged right now? Why are we being taught to “offer no resistance to one who is evil”? I think we might find part of an answer in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. He writes, “Brothers and sisters: as your fellow workers, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain […] We cause no one to stumble in anything, in order that no fault may be found with our ministry…” In other words, having fruitfully received God’s grace, Paul and his co-workers demonstrate the fruitful reception of God’s grace by doing nothing out of vengeance, nothing out of hatred that would soil the pristine message of the Good News. In the midst of “hardships, constraints, and beatings,” they endure with the “weapons of righteousness,” that is, they persist in “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God[…]”

Paul gets it. The very point of being an apostle, a preacher of the Word is to go out and proclaim the Good News. What do you do when the inevitable opposition flairs and you are confronted by those who would silence you? You could 1) shut up and retreat; 2) preach louder and advance fighting; 3) compromise the message and avoid conflict by sucking up to the Enemy; or 4) keep on preaching and advancing, using every instance of ridicule, violent opposition; every attempt at suppression or persecution, turning any and all challenges into occasions to serve the needy, to teach the ignorant, to show how mercy is done, how compassion is done; to press on in purity, knowledge, patience and kindness.

Why would it ever occur to us to become the Enemy in order to witness faithfully to the Enemy? We are lost when we exchange the supernatural, unfeigned love of Christ for a grubby infatuation with the toxic-plastics of our secular culture’s spiritual landfill—a dump polluted with Gameboy warfare and Instant Message diplomacy; with the torn bodies of our infant future, sacrificed to calculated utility, the Greater Good, and our need for cosmetic immortality; polluted with all the human debris leftover after we’ve solved our inconvenient worries with a judicious (and legal!) application of merciful-death; polluted with the ugly offal of ornamental celebrity and silicone-beauty and the horror of an adolescent wasteland of desperate girls who cut themselves and starve themselves b/c the Hollywood Barbies shun the fat and poor; a cultural and spiritual landfill polluted with the machines and chemicals and processes of abandonment, rage, betrayal, and sorrow. . .How can we be authentic witnesses against the Nothingness that would consume us if we ourselves worship the Idols of Nothingness and consume everyone, everything we claim to love?

Therefore, you have heard it said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. Offer, instead, purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness.

Photo credit: http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Marjory