My Problem With Suburban White Jesus

Before I took my first ministry job Sami and I briefly attended a large, wealthy, "status" church in the suburbs of Louisville. We honestly loved it there. They had programs for just about every group imaginable, while avoiding the almost frighteningly impersonal size of a mega-church. With not-too-tightly polished rock and roll "contemporary" worship, a wide variety of small groups and other ministry opportunities, and an open and welcoming warmth, this church was the opposite of the small country church we had been married in. And, after the disappointing end to our time there, it seemed just about perfect for us.

We even started going through the process of transferring our membership there, meeting with the pastor and attending new member classes. Then I saw an ad in the paper. A local church - where a friend of mine served as pastor - was looking for a new youth minister. And I was looking for a new career. It was a perfect fit. So we left our suburban paradise, after worshipping there for only a couple of months.

I hadn't thought much about that church, or the distance between my understanding of a good and healthy church then and my understanding now, until the other day when I was flipping through the channels on my TV, lying on the couch, sick and bored. To my surprise and delight, one of the local access channels was showing their weekly worship service.

While much of the staff had changed over the last seven years, the service was just as I'd remembered it. Clean, neat, and polished. But not too polished. A technical masterpiece, but not so precise that it felt stale or stiff. The pastor was clearly well educated, as evidenced by the many subtle literary and theological references in his sermon. But he was also at least as charismatic, with a passionate yet eloquent delivery.

The message itself would have been at least mildly challenging to the congregation. A meditation on the incarnation, it focused on Jesus' standing on the margins of his society. In noting that Jesus was a poor Jewish peasant, probably not formally educated, neither politically, economically, nor religiously powerful. He used this to argue for God's concern for those on the margins. And I was totally with him.

But then I started paying attention to the specific phrases he was using. He alluded to ideas from liberation theologies, but his specific language was considerably less radical, less challenging. Then, as he was summing up, he said this, in the context of the incarnation as evidence of God's concern for all persons, especially those on the margins:

Jesus came for the rich, and for those who will never become rich.

Of course, this statement (assuming that one can say that Jesus "came," which rests on a particular understanding of Jesus and the incarnation) is true. It speaks both to God's concern for all persons without regard to their economic status, and to the fact that some (MOST) of us will never become rich. But said as it was to a wealthy suburban church, I had a real problem with it.

First, it didn't name the poor as poor. There were only two kinds of people: the rich, and everyone else. This, to me, defeated the intended focus of the message. While the pastor was imploring his congregation to be aware of a whole host of humanity that usually escapes their attention, he could not bring himself to use a designator for them. Of course, he could argue that he avoided dehumanizing the poor by labeling them purely by their economic status. He could even have said that by labeling them as poor he would be affixing to them a negative term. But in the context it reminded me too much of a story a friend of mine tells of preaching to a congregation about the needs of a particularly impoverished community, only to have members from that congregation say to him, "The people you're talking about don't really exist."

Beyond that concern, however, is a much deeper concern: In stressing Jesus' concern for the rich (presented here first) and "those who will never become rich," the pastor is attempting to speak to God's concern for those on the margins without ever addressing their material needs, the unjust economic system that has placed them on the margins, or the fact that many, many members of his congregation have benefited greatly from that unjust economic system.

Thus God's concern - and, in turn, the proper concern of the congregation - is spiritualized. God cares about those who will never become rich, so he sent them Jesus. The congregation should care about those who will never become rich, and thus they should share Jesus with them. But this neuters the Gospel, offering neither a challenge to the wealthy nor comfort to the impoverished. Everything remains as it has always been and shall always be. There are some who are rich, others who are not. God cares about them both, and wants them all to be saved and go to heaven.

But honestly, I'm afraid that the pastor went just as far as he could go in that congregation. To say more, to say what I would have wanted him to say, to offer a prophetic critique of economic injustice, to offer a no doubt highly political articulation of the Gospel, would have threatened his job. Possibly even his career. And that's my problem with the suburban white Jesus I grew up worshipping. Held captive to the upper-middle class American values of the dominant culture, he looks so little like the Jesus I read about in the Gospels.

One Jesus for the Poor and Another for the Rich: Is This a Problem for Moltmann?

This post comes out a discussion we had yesterday on Jurgen Moltmann's The Way of Jesus Christ in my Contemporary Theology class.

In his section on "The Messianic Perspective," Moltmann wrestles with Buber's understanding of the distinction between the "Messiah" and the "Son of Man" within the tradition of Jewish Messianic expectation, and uses that as an entry point to discuss his understanding of the role of Jesus as the Christ in a post-Holocaust world. Here Moltmann is interested in asserting the universal nature of Jesus' role as the Christ without totally trampling Judaism, or articulating some abhorrent concept of supercessionism. In this his attempt is, I think, admirable. He is wrestling with his own beliefs about Jesus in light of the problem of Jewish-Christian relations, which in light of the long history of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism (which culminated in the Holocaust) is necessary for any responsible Christian theologian.

However, some of what he says greatly troubled students in my class. Interestingly, the two lines on which we spent most of our time is discussion - while they set up his attempt to understand Jesus in a way that is sensitive to what he calls "the Jewish 'no'" to Jesus as the Christ - don't explicitly have to do with Jewish-Christian relations. Instead, they have to do with the kinds of social and material conditions that he sees as the concern of the "Kingdom of God." In these lines many of my fellow student heard Moltmann articulating what we might call a "multiple Jesus theory" - that is, that Jesus is not the same person for different people:

The same Christ Jesus is not the same for everyone, because people are different. He has one profile for the poor and another for the rich, one profile for the sick and another for the healthy.

While this should be read in the immediate context of Moltmann's concern for understanding differences between Christians and Jews concerning both Messianic hope and the meaning and significance of Jesus (the line that follows these two lines is, after all, "Accordingly, this same Christ Jesus has one particular profile for Jews and another for Gentiles,"), and while Moltmann's wading into the turbulent waters of Jewish-Christian relations in light of Christian claims about Jesus, it is no accident that Moltmann articulates a difference not only between Jesus' profile for Jews and Gentiles, but also between his profile for the poor and the rich, the sick and the healthy.

To this one could add any number of other divisions: black and white, gay and straight, first world and two-thirds world, etc.

That Jesus is not seen the same way by different people is obvious. Jesus looks very different in an Evangelical church than in a Mainline church. Jesus looks very different in a black church than a white church. Jesus looks very different in Asia than he does in Europe.

And, not only does Jesus look different, he has very different concerns. The message and meaning of Jesus varies dramatically from setting to setting, at least in terms of how it is received and understood. But, if this is all that Moltmann means, he is articulating something painfully obvious, without offering any real guidance for how faithful Christians should respond to this situation.

After all, the white Jesus is not just cosmetically different from the black Jesus: he has a totally different ethical, theological, and political agenda. The poor Jesus is not just cosmetically different from the rich Jesus: again, he has a totally different ethical, theological and political agenda. Not only is Jesus' ministry - his message and meaning - different in different settings, Jesus is used differently by different groups of Christians.

The maleness of the human Jesus has been used by many churches throughout Christian history to deny ordination to women. If Jesus is a man, and if it is not accidental (as these churches might claim) that Jesus is a man, then how can women represent Christ, who is essentially (rather than accidentally) male? Similarly, in the American context the normative image of Jesus as white has been used to deny both the full humanity blacks, as well as their participation in the imago Dei. Jesus' concern in many Evangelical churches for personal salvation rather than political and systemic transformation has been used to justify an ethos that looks to an honest reader of the Gospels very little like the ethos of Jesus.

But if it is simply a plain fact - without any value or significance - that Jesus is different for different people, how can anyone's reading of Jesus be used to call anyone else's reading of Jesus into question? If Jesus is so amorphous in nature that he is in fact a different person for different people, can anyone call the white Jesus, or the rich Jesus, or the gay-bashing Jesus, or even the gun-toting Jesus an idolatrous creation by a corrupt people crafting their own Jesus to baptize their prejudices and call them "good"?

These were the very valid concerns of many in class yesterday as we discussed Moltmann's own reading of Jesus and its Christological implications. I can't claim to be an expert on Moltmann, and I certainly shared some of the concerns of those in the room who thought that Moltmann's apparent positing of multiple Jesuses (spell check is going to love my pluralizing "Jesus"!) doesn't leave much room for a prophetic critique of the misuses of Jesus through history. This is, after all, one of the main problems with postmodernism. If there is no grand meta-narrative, no universally valid truth-claim (and I agree that there isn't) by what means can one mediate between competing narratives or truth-claims?

And when these narratives or claims concern Jesus - who has been used by some many different kinds of people in so many varying ways, both good and bad - the situation is even more urgent.

But I think that there is a quite charitable and even helpful way to read Moltmann's articulation of different profiles for Jesus among different kinds of people. While of course this claim can be a valueless claim that legitimates the use of Jesus by some groups to abuse and marginalize others, it can also be a powerfully prophetic claim that acknowledges the different needs of and demands on different groups of people.

This is perhaps most obvious in Moltmann's articulation of a difference between Jesus' profile among the rich and the poor. While this can be used to state the obvious - that the Jesus of the rich in infinitely less concerned with economic justice than the Jesus of the poor - it can also be used in a very different way. One could easily say, as I hear Moltmann saying by his inclusion of God's concern for the poor in his later articulation of the Kingdom of God, that the Jesus of the rich and the Jesus of the poor differ not in their essential nature, but in their message to and demands on their respective communities.

That is to say that, perhaps to say that Jesus has a different profile among the rich than among the poor is not just to state the historical fact that among the rich Jesus' concern for economic justice is minimalized; but rather, it is to say that to the rich Jesus has a very different message and a very different call than he does to the poor. It could mean something more like this.

To the rich, Jesus says: "Anyone who would come after me must take up their cross and follow me."

And to the poor, Jesus says: "Come to me, all who are weak and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

These are very different messages to very different communities, but they are both liberative. The poor, those on the margins of society, do not have to be invited to take up their cross. They are crucified daily. And so from Jesus they receive a very different message, a very different invitation. Rather than being invited into suffering, they are invited into comfort. But those who are comfortable in the midst of this fallen world, so characterized by injustice and inequity, they are invited to the cross.

This invitation to the cross is a liberating invitation, because it frees the rich from their slavery to money, it frees the powerful from their slavery to oppressing. This is because, ultimately, the rich, the powerful, the oppressor, is held every bit as captive as the poor, the powerless, the one under the thumb of the worldly powers. To wield power over others, to idolize wealth and to justify oppression, is to be estranged from God and from one's own true nature. This as much as the plight of the poor, is within the realm of God's concern.

But this situation demands a different cure. And so to the rich Jesus appears one way, and to the poor another, because rich and poor, sick and healthy, black and white, gay and straight, all have different needs. But the same Jesus who has so many profiles appears to all and offers reconciliation to all, even if that appearance and that reconciliation looks different for each.

This is at least one viable way to read Moltmann here.

A Positive Articulation of Marcus Borg's Theology (Part II)

Intro

Part I

All scholars begin their work with certain assumptions, certain presuppositions. Marcus Borg, as a Christian whose faith has been shaped by mystical experiences, begins his study of the "historical Jesus" assuming both the reality of God and the validity of religious experiences. These together help shape his view of Jesus as a "Spirit Person," a "mediator of the Sacred."

But before we look too deeply at this view of Jesus, it should be noted that in his work Borg makes a sharp distinction between the "pre-Easter" Jesus and the "post-Easter" Jesus. This distinction is basically the old distinction between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith," but Borg's decision to phrase this distinction the way that he does sheds some insight into his approach.

The distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith is a distinction between Jesus of Nazareth as a historical figure and early Christian beliefs about Jesus as the Christ, as recorded in the Gospels and, later on, in creedal statements of faith and the like. It is the difference between the flesh and blood person of Jesus, and Jesus as he came to be understood within the Christian community after his death and the enduring experience of his resurrection.

Borg rephrases this distinction because of some discomfort with the terminology "Jesus of history" and "Christ of faith." In his mind the phrase "Christ of faith" amounts to a denial of the reality of the enduring presence of Jesus in the Christian tradition. It implies that "the 'real' Jesus is the Jesus of history, whereas the Christ of faith could only be believed in." Because for Borg the enduring experience of Jesus as a mediator of the Sacred in the Christian tradition is at least as important as the flesh and blood Jesus of history, and because the Easter experience is formative for shaping the Christian faith, he uses "pre-Easter" and "post-Easter" to make the same sort of distinction that "Jesus of history" and "Christ of faith" has generally made.

This distinction, however, is still fraught with many of the same difficulties that plague the quest for the historical Jesus (distinct from the Christ of faith). There is still next to no early information about Jesus found outside the emerging Christian tradition. There seems to have been nothing at all written about Jesus by anyone before his death and resurrection. This makes any attempt to separate the "pre-Easter" Jesus from the "post-Easter" Jesus a difficult task, and a task that requires adopting up-front certain assumptions about how to read sacred Christian texts when looking for history. That I share many of Borg's assumptions regarding the reading of such texts makes those assumptions no less problematic for those who do not share them.

Borg views the Bible as a "historical product," but not as a history text as we understand the term "history" today. As a "historical product" the Bible is human in origin, and not divine. It comes out of historical human communities, and provides us with insight into the thought-world of those communities. It is not an "absolute truth" from the vantage point of the divine, but instead is "relative" and "culturally conditioned," shaped by and meeting the needs of the human communities that produced it.

This means that when reading the Bible looking for historical information, one must take great pains to account for the way in which the communities from which the Biblical text emerged shaped that text to reflect their own views. In the case of looking for information about the "pre-Easter" Jesus in the Gospels, for instance, this means recognizing that the beliefs about Jesus that started emerging after Easter were written back into stories about the pre-Easter Jesus. As such, almost no statement can be made with absolute certainty concerning the pre-Easter Jesus.

This does not prevent Borg from having his own views, nor does it keep him from rigorously backing up those views. It simply keeps him (or anyone else) from being able to absolutize those views.

So, how does Borg vision the "pre-Easter" Jesus? To answer that question thoroughly would require as much space as he's taken up in his many books on the subject. Instead of offering a more thorough answer here, I'm simply going to highlight a few distinctive points, starting with (in this post) his understanding of Jesus as a "spirit person."

Borg did not first notice the phenomenon of "spirit persons" in his study of his own Christian tradition. Christianity, while it has a long history of mysticism, has not always been known for its mystical side. "spirit person" is a term that Borg applies to what had been known as a "holy man." He used "spirit person" because it clears up two problematic aspects of the older term:

1. Its exclusively male language, and

2. The connotation of "holiness" as a kind of moral piety.

"Spirit persons" are found in almost every religious tradition. They are those for whom, as Borg puts it, "the Spirit [is] an experiential reality." This is, as noted above, rooted in the assumptions of the reality of God and the validity of religious experience. So, for Borg, "spirit persons" really do experience something, and are valuable for their sharing of that experience with the rest of us, mediating the sacred for us.

One concern that any faithful Christian may have with Borg's understanding of Jesus as a "spirit person" is that it does not preserve the "uniqueness" of Jesus as Christ. That is to say, Christians have long held that Jesus is a kind of special and unique revelation of the nature of God. This is at minimum what our doctrine of the Incarnation means. So, to see Jesus as a "spirit person" - a category that includes many other persons through history - can be seen as calling into question the uniqueness of Jesus' revelation/mediation of the nature of God.

It is thus important to note that Borg does not just see Jesus as a "spirit person." He uses the phenomenon of "spirit persons," found in all sorts of religious traditions, as a framework with which to try to understand who Jesus was. But - especially as concerns the post-Easter Jesus - this is not the only framework Borg uses. It is, however, a useful framework; one that helps us flesh out more clearly what might be at stake in new Christological reflections.

However, on the subject of the uniqueness of Jesus, Borg decides strongly against Jesus being entirely unique, unlike anything else in the history of the divine-human relationship. In fact, he sees that understanding of Jesus as being quite harmful to the legitimacy of the Christian understanding of the revelation of God:

... when the truth of the Christian tradition was tied to the claim that the revelation of God was found only in this tradition... its truth became for me highly unlikely. What are the chances that God would speak only to and through this particular group of people (who just happen to be our group of people)?

However, seeing Jesus as participating in a type of person found in a variety of historical, social, cultural, and religious contexts makes, for Borg, his ability to reveal for us the nature and concerns of God much, much more likely. In fact, Borg finds the plurality of religious expression not a liability, but rather a tremendous asset. He sees the multitude of forms of religion as pointing to the reality of the Holy, the Sacred, the Other. His understanding of Jesus as a "spirit person" is connected to this. There really is a sacred to experience, there really are people who experience this sacred in a special way, and as such mediate it for us, and Jesus really was one such person.

But, as noted above, Jesus was/is not just a "spirit person." In fact, Borg's most recent book on Jesus (my favorite, by the way) makes no mention of "spirit persons." But a fuller picture of Borg's understanding of the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus, as well as its connection to the enduring and emerging Christian tradition, will have to wait.

Some concerns to anticipate:

In what ways does Jesus uniquely reveal the nature and concerns of God within the Christian tradition? Within Christianity, after all, Jesus is - per Borg's use of language - not just a "spirit person," but our "spirit person."

What is the political content of Jesus' message and ministry, and how does/should that shape our own political concerns? Within that, there is some concern for the relationship between theology and politics, as well as some concern for the political nature of theology?

Is Jesus best seen as a prophet, or as a wisdom teacher? Or, do we have to choose between the two?

Does Borg allow for any discussion of the eschatological content of Jesus' message and ministry? (In Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time he does not, but in more recent work he may open the door, depending on how we flesh out his distinction between immanent eschatology and participatory eschatology.)

Finally, returning to more overtly theological concerns, we should look at the natures of faith, truth, and religious language. To phrase those concerns as questions:

What is faith, and is there a relationship between faith and belief? If so, what is the nature of that relationship? (To answer that, we will have to explore different meanings of both faith and belief.)

Is religious language primarily metaphorical in nature? And, if so, does that detract from or enhance its ability to speak to "truth"?

Non-Violent Resistance in the Teachings of Jesus

Before I actually get to the substance of this post, I'd like to start with a brief personal note. As some of you know, I am going back to school. It is now officially official. I haven't checked my email in over 24 hours, because I spent all day yesterday in new student orientation. Today, at 11 am EST, I have my first class. I am officially an MAR (Masters of Arts in Religion) student at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I've signed up for 15 credit hours this semester, which is a pretty heavy load, but nothing I can't handle, I don't think. Most of my classes, at least at the outset, don't seem worth mentioning. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised by them, but at the moment I'm just taking them because they are required - the seminary equivalent of basic requirements, 100 level classes. But there is one class that looks exceedingly promising: Resistance and Reconciliation.

Having just signed up for that course, and having just joined the Christian Peace Bloggers Blog-Ring, I thought I might jot down here, before I leave for campus, a few observations of non-violent resistance in the teachings of Jesus.

That Jesus taught non-violence is not exactly new, though by their behavior some Christian could learn a refresher course in it. As my dad wrote in one of his songs, shortly after explaining how as a PK growing up he had to go to church 4 or 5 times a week:

But I must have been sleeping in
When Jesus taught us to kill

But it takes many Christian by surprise when they realize that the non-violence that Jesus taught was neither passive nor meek. In fact, it was radical and revolutionary, such a strong form of resistance that it got him killed by the authorities. If Jesus had been safe, and if his non-violent teachings had been as domesticated as the must have seemed when they were used by whites to teach slaves not to rebel, or when they are used today to support a growing empire, it is highly improbable that anyone would have been threatened by him at all, much less threatened enough to publicly execute him.

But Jesus was crucified. And, as Marcus Borg writes, we can safely assert that Jesus was crucified because of the sins of the world, even if it is not literally true that he was crucified for the sins of the world, as a kind of substitutionary atonement. Jesus was killed because of the sins of the world, because Jesus opposed the sinful powers of the world that exploited and oppressed the poor. But Jesus opposed those powers not with power, not with revolutionary violence, but with the wisdom of non-violent resistance.

In our cultural context, with Christianity as the dominant thought-world, (what I mean is that, in the West, everything responds to Christianity - it shapes our thought when we agree with it, and it shapes our thought when we disagree with it) the teachings of Jesus often become conventional, domesticated. After all, we have been reciting them to each other for almost 2000 years. But, in his own cultural context, Jesus' teachings were radical, and seen in their context they can retain their power in our own context. Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in Jesus' teachings on non-violent resistance.

Two of the most commonly quoted teachings of Jesus concern going "the extra mile" and turning "the other cheek." These have often, and rightly, been interpreted metaphorically and applied broadly to all kinds of situations. In our conventional wisdom now, going "the extra mile" means going out of your way to accommodate someone who is being difficult, in the hopes that such an extravagant gesture will shame and perhaps help shape them. If we "go the extra mile," perhaps the person that we "go the extra mile" for will be impressed with our witness, and be somehow touched, somehow moved, into becoming a more positive person.

Sometimes there is also a measure of constructive pride in going "the extra mile." Sometimes it means doing something that, strictly speaking, isn't required, motivated by the pursuit of excellence. In either event, going "the extra mile" has become conventional, part of what is expected of a Christian; part of one's Christian witness.

The same is true of turning "the other cheek." It is again interpreted metaphorically, and applied broadly. And, again, I see nothing wrong with this - you should know by now my opinion of the religious value of metaphorical interpretation. So, to "turn the other cheek" means to patiently endure an insult. It means to not allow harsh comments to get you down or make you angry.

Both of these teachings, however, in becoming conventional wisdom, have lost their subversive power. They are no longer seen as revolutionary, as dangerous. Of course, this is not true in all cultural context. Gandhi, for instance, based his method of non-violent resistance on these and other teachings of Jesus. His Satyiagraha, his "spirit power," was based on his interpretation of these and other teachings of Jesus. And, he used these as a kind of moral force to shame the British into seeing their own barbaric cruelty, and granting Independence to India.

In the same way, Martin Luther King, Jr. and others applied the methods that Gandhi learned from the teachings of Jesus to the struggle in America for Civil Rights. Non-violent resistance became again a revolutionary way to shame violent oppressors into realizing the barbaric cruelty of their position; into seeing the basic humanity of those they are exploiting. It became the most efficient path to freedom. To fight violence with violence, power with power, was to fight a losing fight. But to resist violence with peace was to undermine the moral authority of the violent and to shame the oppressor.

This is very much more like what Jesus probably had in mind, but it too fails to totally capture the potency of Jesus' teachings in their own context. We can certainly understand how these teachings might have gotten Gandhi and King killed, but that still doesn't show us exactly why they and others like them got Jesus killed. To understand that, and, as such, to understand the potential potency of these teachings, we have to better understand what they might have meant when Jesus taught them.

Marcus Borg's newest book, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, has an entire chapter devoted to resistance in the life and teachings of Jesus. In it he outlines how Jesus' teachings and activities would have been seen by the religious and political authorities of his day, who were the power structure in what he calls a Domination System. At the outset of that chapter Borg argues that "the way of Jesus was both personal and political."

It was about personal transformation. And, it was political, a path of resistance to the domination system and advocacy of an alternative vision of life together under God. His counteradvocacy, his passion for God's passion, led to his execution. The way of the cross was both personal and political.

Seen in this light, Jesus' teachings, including and especially the ones concerning turning "the other cheek" and going "the extra mile" can be seen as radical ways to help bring down the Roman occupation, as well as the native collaborators with the occupation that were mainly comprised of the religious authorities.

Matthew 5:39b has Jesus say, "But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." Of this Borg notes:

The specification of the right cheek and the awareness that people in that world used their right hand to strike somebody provide the key for understanding the saying. How can a person be hit on the right cheek by a right-handed person? Only by a backhanded slap (act it out and see for yourself). In that world, a slap with the back of the hand was the way a superior struck a subordinate. The saying thus presupposes a situation of domination: a peasant being backhanded by a steward or official, a prisoner being backhanded by a jailer, and so forth. When that happens, turn the other cheek. What would be the effect of that? The beating could continue only if the superior used an overhand blow - which is the way an equal would strike another equal. Of course, he might do so. But he would be momentarily discombobulated, and the subordinate would be asserting his equality even if the beating did continue.

Matthew 5:41 has Jesus say, "and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile." Borg says that this statement "refers to a known practice of imperial soldiers."

Soldiers were allowed to compel peasants to carry their considerable gear for one mile, but no more. The reason for this restriction was that soldiers had been abusing the option by forcing peasants to carry their gear all day (or even longer). The result was not only popular resentment, but peasants ending up a days journey (or even more) from home. And so the restriction was introduced, and soldiers faced penalties for violating it, some of them severe. In this setting, what are you to do when an imperial soldier requires you to carry his gear for a mile? Do it - and then keep going. This situation, [Walter] Wink [a scholar, and author of Engaging the Powers, The Powers That Be, and Jesus and Non-Violence] suggests, is almost comical - imagine an imperial soldier wrestling a peasant to get his gear back while the peasant says, "No, no, it's fine. Let me carry it another mile."

That we understand these metaphorically is, of course, appropriate. Any teaching that is so far removed from our historical, cultural, and social setting cannot be taken entirely literally if it is to be in any way meaningful to us. Additionally, it is hard to imagine that these teachings, even in their original setting, were to be taken as hard and fast rules to be applied to any situation without some metaphorical interpretation. Walter Wink argues, for instance, that it is very hard to imagine the literal practice of turning the other cheek to work for very long without the superiors picking up on it, and saying something like, "Oh, its the old 'turn the other cheek' trick," and adapting their behavior accordingly.

However, to properly understand these and other teachings metaphorically, we have to also understand what they might have meant when Jesus first taught them. Understanding that, we see that they are much more powerful, and much more subversive, than our conventional wisdom will allow them to be.