Extreme Love: What Does Turn the Other Cheek Really Mean

Listen to this interpretation of one of Jesus' most difficult sayings from Luke 6: 27-37.  How do we apply this to what is happening to our country today?

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Transcript

Sermons from 

Mission Hills UCC

San Diego, California

Rev. Dr. David Bahr

david.bahr@missionhillsucc.org

February 23, 2025

“Extreme Love”

Luke 6: 27-37 – Common English Bible

But I say to you who are willing to hear: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. 28 Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on the cheek, offer the other one as well. If someone takes your coat, don’t withhold your shirt either. 30 Give to everyone who asks and don’t demand your things back from those who take them. 31 Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you.

32 “If you love those who love you, why should you be commended? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, why should you be commended? Even sinners do that. 34 If you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, why should you be commended? Even sinners lend to sinners expecting to be paid back in full. 35 Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return. If you do, you will have a great reward. You will be acting the way children of the Most High act, for God is kind to ungrateful and wicked people. 36 Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate.  37 “Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged. Don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

Amelia Boynton grew up in Savannah, Georgia, in 1911.  Her first introduction to politics was as a ten-year-old traveling with her mother by horse and buggy to knock on doors to give women information about voter registration.  Her mother was passionately committed even though leaders of the suffragist movement were not equally committed to her right to vote.

After Amelia graduated from Tuskegee University, she began working as a county extension agent, teaching Black farmers better farming methods, as well as lessons on financial, educational, and political strength as she and her husband travelled down dusty dirt roads deep in the rural backwoods of Dallas County, Alabama.  Empowerment was their employment.  

In the 1950s, they worked to revitalize the Dallas County Voters League, trying to get more Black people on the voting rolls.  In 1964, Amelia ran for Congress.  Her campaign motto was “A vote-less people is a hopeless people.”  She challenged a white incumbent, the first African American woman in Alabama to do so and earned 11% of the local vote, despite the fact that only 5% of Black people were registered.

Progress was being made slowly, but white citizens were not going to stand for any of it and began a brutal crackdown.  Amelia reached out to national leaders for help and, in January 1965, Selma became the epicenter of a national campaign.  The story is too long and too complicated to fully tell here, but suffice it to say, those local efforts led to a confrontation known as Bloody Sunday, 60 years ago a week from Friday.  

In September, we are going to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge where Amelia marched in the front rows of a line of six hundred protesters, intending to march 50 miles to the state capitol in Montgomery.  But Amelia recounted, as they crossed the bridge, “I saw in front of us a solid wall of state troopers, shoulder to shoulder.  Gas masks covered their faces and they held billy-clubs, cattle prods, and guns.”  When marchers refused to turn around, troopers advanced with a hateful precision that spared no one, like Amelia who was beaten unconscious and spent two weeks in the hospital.  It was an event so horrifying, people around the country who didn’t think it was “their issue” spoke up and rose up to demand change.

That afternoon, in a church overflowing with traumatized people, a man recounted, “I was out on the bridge today because I thought it was right, but while I was on the bridge, Sheriff Jim Clark came to my house and tear-gassed my eighty-year-old mother.”  He added, “and the next time he comes to my house, I’m going to be ready.”  Despite efforts by Martin Luther King, Jr. to get them to express love and forgiveness for their attackers, that afternoon “people in the church were not feeling love for Jim Clark or for any of the white authorities.”  Malcolm X had spoken in the same church a few months earlier.  “I don’t advocate violence, but if a man steps on my toes, I will step on his.” 

To follow the logic of today’s gospel reading, would Jesus advise Malcolm, “if a man deliberately steps on your toes, hold out your other foot?”

Jesus has a lot of hard sayings and “turn the other cheek” is among the hardest.  It sounds lovely until confronted by the cruel inhumanity of people like those state troopers acting on the orders of the governor.  But actually, Jesus knew something about this as his people faced down the cruel inhumanity of Roman soldiers ordered to act by the Emperor.  

Jesus didn’t say, “just take it.”  He taught them a form of creative non-violent resistance.  If someone slaps you, their intention is likely not bodily injury but humiliation.  Therefore, if you turn your other cheek, it means you refuse to be humiliated.  The “victim” takes control and dares the offender to do it again.  Imagine being in the crowd Jesus was speaking to, people used to being treated inhumanely, forced to “just take it.”  What did they hear Jesus say?  Was it, “be a doormat?”

Or, Jesus said, if someone takes your coat.  Perhaps it’s a robbery, but more likely, the crowds experience was of a soldier commandeering their property, which Rome permitted them to do.  Poor people would often only have one coat and one undergarment, meaning, if you took off both your coat and your undergarment, you would be standing in front of them naked.  But in their world, standing in front of someone naked doesn’t humiliate the naked person, it humiliates the person who sees.  Again, it says to the perpetrator, I refuse to be a victim.

Being a beggar must be embarrassing, an experience many in the crowd listening to Jesus knew intimately, yet it was simply a necessity for survival.  He eliminates their humiliation by telling everyone to give to everyone who asks – without the expectation it should be paid back.  The rich will no longer feel superior and the poor will no longer live in fear of hunger or crushing debt.

Matthew has a parallel of this passage.  Jesus said, “you have heard it said an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, but I say turn the other cheek, go a second mile, give your shirt as well as your cloak.”  The second mile specifically refers to soldiers who were permitted to force peasants to carry their packs for a mile.  But they were restricted to only one mile.  If the peasant carried it further, it subjected the soldier to punishment – and therefore subverted the power.  The crowd knew what he was talking about and it gave them hope and encouragement.  Jesus wasn’t excusing abuse.  Going an extra mile isn’t both flowers and chocolate on Valentine’s Day.  

According to biblical scholar Walter Wink, Jesus was teaching a creative method for living under Roman occupation.  He articulates examples of living in a violent world without violence – which can be true in both Jesus’ time and today.  All with the underlying command of love for humanity including even those who intend to do you harm.  Love your enemy.  Do good.  Pray and bless.

A man once confronted Dr. King.  “Preachers ought to be honest and tell folks that if they live by the turn-the-other-cheek doctrine, the white supremacists will strip them and boil them in oil.  Why don’t you be honest and admit that love is impractical today.  Sure, Jesus lived it.  It’s the ultimate ideal.  But there are times when a person must stand up and fight fire with fire.”

King countered that love is not weak, “it is not the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer but a practical necessity for the survival of civilization.  To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe.  The aftermath of the “fight fire with fire” is bitterness and chaos.”  Or as Gandhi said, “an eye for an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind.”  But, King said, “the aftermath of love is reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community.  Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that.” 

Julio Diaz walked off the train one night onto a deserted platform when a teenage boy pulled out a knife and demanded money.  Diaz handed him his wallet.  As the boy began to walk away, Diaz called out, “Hey, wait a minute.  You forgot something.  If you’re going to be out here all-night robbing people, you’re gonna get cold.  Here, take my coat to keep warm.”  The boy looked at him like he was crazy and asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“Well, if you’re willing to risk going to jail for a few dollars, you must really need the money.  All I was going to do with it was get some dinner.  Hey, won’t don’t you join me?”  They walked to a diner and sat in a booth.  The manager came by to say hi.  The dishwashers walked past and called him by name.  Waiters stopped to chat like they were friends.

The boy asked, “Do you own this place?” 

“No, I just try to treat everyone the way I’d like to be treated.  Weren’t you taught to do that too?”  

“Yeah, but I didn’t think anyone actually did it.”

When the check came, Diaz said, “I don’t have any money, so I guess you’re going to have to pay.  But if you give me my wallet, I’ll gladly treat you.”  The teen didn’t even think about it and handed over the wallet.  Diaz gave him $20.  “I hope this helps you.  Can I have the knife too?”  The boy just handed it over.

Jesus consistently taught that the reversal of fortune does not come from violence but through love – even, perhaps especially, love for those doing it.  Love your enemies.  In this specific passage, Jesus is saying, “let’s figure it out.”  Let’s figure out how to undermine violence without violence using love.  Extreme love.  

Extreme love is creative.  Extreme love is subversive.  Extreme love seeks out ways to reverse the harm and humiliation intended by oppressors.  To turn the other cheek isn’t passive or weak but to subvert violence with creativity and persistence.  That’s what we need today.  For example,

• Are trans people supposed to just suck it up and disappear and be OK with it?  Are we supposed to just watch it happen?  Turn a blind eye?  What if instead we got together and worked to figure out how to turn the other cheek?
• Are people of color supposed to just say, well, I guess we had a few good years of equal – kinda, sort of, almost – equal opportunity?  Are we going to turn a blind eye as rights and protections are ripped away?  What if instead we turned the other cheek?  You know, to subvert the violence with creativity and persistence.
• Are families whose homes and businesses were destroyed by hurricanes and wildfires and floods supposed to just pull up their own worn out and wet bootstraps?  Perhaps Jesus would advise them to turn the other cheek.
• Shall we turn a blind eye to the destruction of international peace and cooperation among the nations of the world, or our responsibility to rescue refugees and welcome immigrants and, or take a pair of scissors to the security net for seniors, people who are disabled, and the poorest among us…  Are we going to just watch it all disappear?  Or are we going to creatively, subversively, and persistently turn the other cheek?  Because, like God, we love the world so much.
• Are we all supposed to just sit back and turn a blind eye to rich, white, heterosexual, so-called “Christian” men assert dominance over everyone and be OK with it?  

No, the extreme love of Jesus will not, cannot, just watch it happen.  I hate to think it will take another Bloody Sunday for people who think “that’s not my issue” to speak up and rise up to demand something as basic and fundamental as human rights, equality under the law.  Thank God thousands of Amelia Boynton’s have already demonstrated how.

But what, really, can we do?

Well, you know that joy is subversive.  When the weight and chaos of the news threatens us to disengage, YouTube videos of our choir, never miss a Sunday, get involved to add some subversive joy to the world.  And don’t forget to tell others.  Nothing upsets an authoritarian more than people laughing.

You know that rest is resistance.  Turn off the TV and go to bed.  Choose carefully your sources for news.  If you are not already reading historian Heather Cox Richardson’s summation every morning, make it a routine you start today.  We can each call, write, nag, show up.  Be a pest for justice.  There’s more.  But never forget to love your enemies.  

And yes, in the short term, hopes for justice and dreams of equality may get buried.  If so, let them be seeds that we tend to, feeding with our faith, watering with our tears, that these seeds may grow and get stronger in the dark, ready to rise and bloom and flower into a beautiful, diverse, equitable, and inclusive world for everyone.  Jesus, too, was crucified, dead and buried, all for the sake of a world in which violence has been reversed and enemies will one day become friends.  

That’s what extreme love does.  What are you going to do?