Loving with Cheeks, Tunics and Mileage, Eleventh Monday (II), June 16, 2014

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Bernadette Parish, Fall River, MA
Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
June 16, 2014
1 Kings 21:1-16, Ps 5, Mt 5:38-42

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• At first glance, today’s readings are bound to make us physically and spiritually nauseous. In the first reading, we encounter the story of Naboth, whose vineyard Ahab, the king of Samaria, coveted. Ahab told Naboth, “Give me your vineyard to be my vegetable garden, since it is close by, next to my house. I will give you a better vineyard in exchange, or, if you prefer, I will give you its value in money.” But Naboth refused, not because of selfishness, but because he believed that it was God who had given that land to him and his family to be treasured almost as a covenantal relationship: ““The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral heritage.”  Ahab was so disturbed and angry he lay down on his bed and refused to eat. When his wife Jezebel asked why he wasn’t eating and found out the reason, she set herself on a plan of calculated evil to obtain the vineyard, writing letters in the king’s name and with his seal calling on the “elders and nobles” to secure two scoundrels to frame Naboth for the capital crime of having “cursed God and king.” The nobles went along with this abomination, Naboth was stoned to death, and Jezebel told her husband to go and acquire Naboth’s familial vineyard.
• This morning in the Vatican Pope Francis said that what we witness in that scene is the terrible ugliness and wickedness of corruption, of people in leadership abusing their office in order to trample on those who impede their insatiable will to have more power, popularity, and property. “This story is continuously repeating itself,” Pope Francis said, among the ranks of those, who wield material, political or spiritual power. Corrupt politicians, businessmen, even clergy begin to look out for number one, and then “with well-being, money, power, vanity, pride, everything becomes possible, even killing.” And the ones who pay the price for their corruption are the poor and defenseless, the “modern Naboths who pay the price for the corruption of the haughty.”
• And yet, when we read the first reading through the prism of the Gospel, it seems at first glance that Jesus is calling us not to resist this corruption and injustice but to enable it. Jesus tells us, “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.” It would appear that Jesus is saying, when an evil corrupt King asks you for your ancestral land, give it to him, and give him your house, and your clothes and everything else besides. That’s certainly the way some people have misinterpreted this passage, but that’s not what Jesus is affirming. Jesus’ message is highly challenging all the same, but he’s not telling us to become a punching bag or become defenseless victims before those who would seek to harm us or others.
• To grasp Jesus’ message, we first need to see the way he introduces it. He cites the “law of talion,” something that goes back to the Hammurabi Code of the 23rd century BC, but that was incorporated into the Mosaic law: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This was an ancient limit on vengeance, against a tribal notion of vendetta, that would prevent the escalation of an offense. Prior to this principle becoming popular, if someone killed your ox, your whole family would have a vendetta against that person’s whole family and there was a risk that much worse would be done and for generations. Jesus, however, wanted to give us a different principle for the limitation of vengeance, one based on what we were discussing yesterday on the Feast of the Holy Trinity: love in imitation of the sacrificial, other-centered, merciful love of God in whose image we were made. When Jesus tells us to offer no resistance to one who is evil, he’s telling us not to be consumed with fighting back. If someone backhands us on the right cheek, rather than strike him in the solar plexus, Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, a maneuver that would prevent him from backhanding the other side and affirm our dignity without hurting someone we’re supposed to love, even if he’s not loving us. When he tells us to give our cloak to someone who wants our tunic, he’s telling us to sacrifice for him out of love even what we would need (Jews would have a second tunic, but not a second cloak). When he tells us to walk a second mile rather than just one in compulsory service in delivering packages, he tells us not to do so with resentment but to volunteer to go a second mile out of love. When he instructs us “Give to the one who asks of you and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow,” he’s forming us to imitate his own divine generosity. Jesus’ principle was not merely to prevent the escalation of violence, but to respond to evil with good, to respond to selfishness with selflessness, to respond to provocation with pardon, to respond to want with beneficence. This is, of course, what he himself did. When the Roman soldiers slapped one cheek and mocked him, he didn’t retaliate. When they stripped him of his clock, he gave them his tunic and all his other clothes as well. When they pressed him to carry the cross, he carried it not only to Calvary but carries it still through time. When people asked of him, he gave a full measure, packed down, overflowing into his lap. In this, he calls us to follow him, to love others as he has loved us first.
• So back to Naboth, Ahab and Jezebel and to all victims of corruption and violence today. Is Jesus telling us to let the mafia, or terrorists, or megalomaniacal public officials run wild and take whatever we have? No. In Naboth’s case, that would have been violating the covenant he had made with God. But he is telling us not to let a worse evil beset us than even losing what is rightfully ours: missing the opportunity to love, to forgive, to become more and more like our Trinitarian God. As we’ll be hearing tomorrow, Jesus calls us to retaliate to those who have made themselves our enemies with love, to those who are persecuting us with prayer. Even if people seek to take our lands, clothes, and time and to take advantage of our generosity, they can’t take our soul unless we give it to them, and that’s what’s most at stake in any such circumstance that Jesus describes. If we’re going to defend our rights, we should do so not out of selfishness but real care — love — for others who are hurt by selfishness or physical abuse against others or using others or manipulating others for what they don’t need.
• Today’s passage in the Gospel shows us that living as Christians is not easy and we need God’s help in order to live up to his standard of Trinitarian love. That’s why we come each day to be fed by him in his word and to enter into a loving communion of persons with him and others through Holy Communion so that he can help us in every way learn how to love others as he has loved us first.

The readings for today’s Mass were: