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But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well. (Matthew 5:39)
None of this is possible except in the presence of a great love.
There is no way to rationalize Jesus’ turn-the-other-cheek teaching
and make it make sense. It’s utterly beyond anything we can produce, and maybe
that is part of the point. It’s beyond us; it’s certainly beyond me.
There are few quicker than I when it comes to taking offense when
criticized or slighted. It’s an old wound, a childhood scar sensitive to the slightest
touch. My heart harbors old hurts; anger and defensiveness ever ready, a
well-honed reflex well trained by long ago moments of feeling small and “less
than.”
Most of this is well hidden, of course, like so many of the
inner dramas we lock behind heavy doors in our hidden hearts, trying our best
to deny what we know all-too-well.
However well hidden, old hurts and suspicions control many of
our moods and immediate reactions to, well, pretty much everything. Unearthing
and understanding old wounds and unfilled hungers affords a bit of freedom to
choose our responses to people and events we encounter day-to-day, including
those most troubling.
But only the experience
of a great and impossible love allows us to release our hurts and let down our
guard knowing our worth, our dignity, our beauty has nothing to do with the
words and actions of others.
Only there, immersed
in an all-encompassing love sensibly embracing everything about us—every
thought and memory however they have wounded us, only there do we find freedom
from what has long defined and bound our hearts. Only there are we released to live beyond our defensiveness, beyond the
tit-for-tat way of the world.
Jesus’ impossible words invite us beyond what we are and into
the Love he is, the Love who invites us to descend into our hearts and pray out
whatever darkness we find. He waits there, smiling.
David L.
Miller
