The Second Mile Series

Preacher David Hoke tells a great story about a weary truck driver who pulled his rig into an all night truck stop late one summer evening in Broken Bow, NE. He was tired and hungry. The waitress had just served him when three tough looking, leath-er-jacketed bikers of the Hell's Angels type decided to give him a hard time. Not only did they verbally abuse him, one grabbed the hamburger off his plate, another took a handful of his French fries, and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it. The trucker didn’t respond as you might expect. Without saying a word, he rose, picked up his check, walked to the cash register at the front of the room and gave the check and his money to the waitress, who watched him through the door as the big truck drove away into the night. When she went back to the bikers’ table, one of them said to her, “Well, he's not much of a man, is he?” She replied, “I don't know about that, but he sure isn't much of a truck driver. He just ran over three motorcycles on his way out.”

Many of us are probably thinking, “Good for him!” That’s the natural human re-sponse to retaliate when we’ve been wronged. As the old saying goes, “Don’t get mad, get even!” The problem is, that most of us don’t want to stop there. We really prefer, “Don’t just get even, come out on top!” Part of the problem with vengeance is that it just plain feels so good.

Getting even has been a primary goal of human beings since the beginning of time. “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is a really satisfying code. The only problem is that if everyone indulges this impulse, sooner or later, as the saying goes, the entire world will be blind and toothless. Because emotions take control, the hurt done to me always looks bigger than the hurt done to you. It’s a trick of perspective – you can’t avoid it. Justice for one side never looks like justice to the other side. And so the spiral begins.

And contributing to that spiral of anger is diametrically opposed to everything Je-sus had been teaching his disciples and to us, contrary to what he had modeled for them and us, contrary to the kind of behavior that is required of the citizens of God’s kingdom. God’s people do not act like this.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.... No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. [Ro 12:17-21]

Yes, people have a right to justice. As citizens of this world we are called to seek for justice, and fight for justice. But not when it’s our own rights that are at stake. When it’s personal, Jesus calls us as citizens of God’s kingdom to opt out of the world’s system.

So does this passage justify pacifism? Many interpreters throughout history have thought so. Before Constantine, Christian leaders rejected participation in the Roman army. They cited not only this passage, but the arrest of Jesus, when Jesus rebukes the disciple who cuts the ear off one of the guard, saying “Then Jesus said to him, “all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” [Mt 26:52] Matthew himself may have seen political meaning in this text; the Zealots, who practiced armed resistance against the Roman occupation, made life much harder for everyone.

But other passages in the Gospels push us in a different direction. New Testament scholar Dr. Dale Allison points out that “Each situation ... in 38-42 is one in which the disciple alone is insulted or injured. But what does one do if others are being insulted or injured? . . . in the parable in Mt 18:23-35 a king . . . releases a servant from debt. But when that servant mistreats another, the king intervenes with punishment.” He further notes that passive submission when others are being hurt is not an act of love, which is, as we know, the fulfillment of the commandment.

First of all, let us look more closely at the context. Jesus has just said that he has not come “to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.” [Mt 5:17] And he begins the lesson by quoting from the Old Testament, “You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’” [Ex 21:24; Lev 24:20; Dt 19:21] That is the principle of exact justice. The punishment must fit the crime precisely. Exodus is explicit: “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise;” Leviticus adds “fracture for fracture.”