Sermon: "Turning the Other Cheek Correctly"- September 7, 2025

The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Topical Sermon

The Rev'd C. Patrick Perkins, Rector 

Transcript

This morning, I’m going to do something I don’t often do. I’m going to preach a sermon that has absolutely nothing to do with the texts appointed for today. Instead, I’d like to try to answer a question posed by one of Mediator’s remark-able young people. Let me tell you why.

When Mother Ezgi and I accepted the call to become the Rectors of the Mediator, we made no bones about the fact that ministry to our young people would be a top priority. The reason for this is simple: We know how hard it is to be a young Episcopalian in the South. Every day, you’re forced to swim for your life in a sea full of Southern Baptists—and, let’s be real, Baptists can come up with some pretty goofy things when they’re home alone with their Bibles. 

It’s very important that our young people understand that the fundamentalist evangelical position that’s in the majority in Meridian, Mississippi, isn’t (and never has been) the majority position of the wider church.  As Episcopalians, we are heirs to a much older and far less reactionary way of interpreting Scripture than our hyper-protestant friends. When people ask us what church we go to, there’s no reason for us to duck our heads, fold our hands, and sheepishly mutter “the Episcopal Church,” as if we were admitting to being carriers of some shameful social disease! No, we have every reason to take pride in our faith tradition—we simply need to understand what that tradition is and why we be-lieve it to be true. That’s the reason Mother Ezgi and I will be leading our youth in an examination of Big Questions on Wednesday nights. We want you to know what you believe and why you believe it. 

Now, to make full disclosure, this morning’s sermon was very nearly a blistering response to the claim of a local Bible teacher that “churches that wear robes in their services don’t worship from the heart.” (I wrote that sermon in a single, impassioned sitting a few weeks ago, and, when I finished, I realized that I had been…well…just a bit intemperate. If you haven’t noticed, I’m something of a shin-kicker.)

I decided that, instead of engaging in a what certainly would have been a campaign of theological carpet bombing, I’d address another question raised by one of our youth—one that, actually, is far weightier in the bigger scheme of things. She asked me a very good question. “When Jesus told us ‘to turn the other cheek,’ did he really mean that we should simply stand by and take abuse in his Name?” My dear, young friend, this sermon is for you. 

When I was growing up in rural Mississippi, I was a schoolyard bully’s dream: red-headed, short, overweight, and miserably unathletic. Nobody wanted me on their kick-ball team! (As is still the case, God built me for comfort, not for speed!) For these reasons, I was picked on mercilessly by older, sportier boys on the playground. 

Many was the day that I went home totally deflated from the hazing. Every afternoon, when I gave my mother an account of the day’s ordeals, she would make what I now call the “June Cleaver face,” affect a holier-than-thou, Miss Baptist America voice, and tell me, “Paa-at, the Good Lord tells us that, when people do things like this, we are supposed to turn the other cheek.” In those moments, I wanted to tell my mother to kiss my other cheek – and not the one on my face! (My father, on the other hand, had been a high school principal, so he advised me to kick bullies in the crotch when the teacher wasn’t looking. Because, after all, no bully wants to “tattle to teach” that it was the fat kid that reduced him to tears.)  

I’d imagine that many of us, when faced with various forms of persecution, have been advised by well-intentioned fellows and family members simply to “turn the other cheek.” It seems to be a very “Christ-like” thing to do – “Just absorb the abuse and say, ‘Bless you!’ instead of the four-letter alternative.” But is this really what Jesus intend-ed? Is the Christian ethic simply to be a doormat “in Jesus’ Name”?

This morning, I’d like to take a few minutes to debunk the common reading of this text as a call to passive, non-resist-ance. By taking a look at this text in its historical context, I think we’ll be able more clearly to see the point our Lord was really trying to make.

Most of us are familiar with St. Luke’s account of Jesus’ “turn the other cheek” teaching. In it, our Lord says simply, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” It would be quite easy to misunderstand what Jesus’ is saying here, if you simply plucked the verse out of context, as many do. However, Matthew’s version of the saying gives us a bit of insight into how a first-century Jew may have heard Jesus’ statement. 

Matthew writes: “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” There are two important details in Matthew’s account that are not explicit in Luke’s. First, Matthew specifies the nature of the “strike” that Luke describes. It is a slap, not a punch. Interesting. Secondly, Matthew tells us that the initial slap is to the right cheek. Again, interesting. What difference can these tiny details possibly make. Quite a lot, actually!

For those of you who are right-handed, think for a moment about slapping someone – no one in particular – on their right cheek. You can’t do it with an open palm! To slap someone on the right cheek is to strike them with the back of your hand. (No Middle Easterner would slap a person’s right cheek with his left hand, by the way, because the left hand isn’t used for public action. It’s for wiping your bum!)

Even today in the Middle East, to backhand someone is to make something of a social statement. It indicates that the person doing the striking believes the other person to be his/her inferior. This sort of slap isn’t used to repel an assailant; it’s done to put someone “in his place.” It’s how a master would respond to an uppity slave. It’s how a husband would deal with a mouthy wife. It’s how a parent would “brake check” a willful child. What is more, it’s how a Roman would react to a protesting Jew. 

In the Ancient Near East, to backhand someone was an act of degradation. It was a social statement telling a person to get “back into line” and reassume the position of  compli-ance. After a backhand, you can imagine that many people would simply drop their eyes and take a step back. They’d realize that they were facing not only a person but a power structure against which they had little real recourse. At this point, in most cases, it would be “game over.” The superior would prevail, and the inferior would give way.

Imagine an aggressor’s surprise when the person he just slapped turned the other cheek.This wouldn’t be taken as a sign of compliance but of defiance. It would be like saying, “Okay, Mr. Bully, you’ve swatted me as you would a fly. Let’s see if you’ll punch me like a man.”

Now, I want to be careful here not to mislead you. Jesus is not telling us simply to “stand our ground.” (Jesus wasn’t a Texas Republican!) There is something much subtler going on here. By telling us to turn the other cheek, Jesus is calling us to a particular type of non-violent resistance. He’s saying, “When confronted by aggression, don’t retaliate against it, allowing it to pull you down to its level. Instead, expose it. Force it to identify itself for what it is: a coward’s attempt to prevail by power instead of principle, to dominate by demeaning.

Friends, Jesus’ teaching here is revolutionary, as much in what it doesn’t say as in what it says. He is not advocating a sort of pacifistic passivity here. He’s not calling us to be doormats. He’s telling us to resist violence actively but non-aggressively. My goodness, what an ethical difference this makes! Christians are not to stand silently by and let evil have its wicked way. We are, instead, to force evil into showing itself for what it is while refusing to fight it on its own violent terms.

Allow me to close with a few observations and one practical application. There’s no telling how many battered women or abused children or discriminated minorities have re-signed themselves to lives of victimhood because well-meaning Christian siblings have told them to “turn the other cheek.” Throngs of such people have left the Church and, even, made shipwrecks of their faith as a result of this common but erroneous interpretation of our Lord’s words. 

Hear me: God never calls us to passive victimhood but to active witness. Even our Lord, at his passion, stood at the whipping post and mounted the cross, not as an act of resignation to evil but as a self-sacrificing resistance and, ultimately, conquest of it. He “gave his cheek to the smiters,” not from a place of weakness but from a position of power. He “set his face like a flint” and said, “Give me your best shot, so everyone will know who’s doing the shooting. You’ll have to bear both the recoil and any returned fire.”

For us, this more faithful reading of Jesus’ words is immensely practical. In this world, we will all face acts of violence – perhaps not physical aggression but certainly attacks on our personal autonomy or dignity. As followers of Christ, we are called to “love our enemies and do good to those who hate us,” but this does not mean we must simply acquiesce to their abuse. Christ doesn’t ask us to act as if violent behaviors aren’t happening; he simply entreats us to refuse to respond to it with more violence. Cesar Chavez got it right when he said, 

“Violence just hurts those who are already hurt. Instead of exposing the brutality of the oppressor, it justifies it.”

Friends, those who attempt to conquer evil with evil are, ultimately, always conquered by evil. This truth should be self-evident. Violence attacks the humanity of the oppressedboth in the initial action and the subsequent reaction. Christ reveals to us a “better way” to oppose violence, a way that allows us to resist it without being dehumanized in the process. Chavez, again, well represented his Christian convictions when he observed that “the first principle of non-violent action is non-cooperation with anything that is humiliating.” Gosh, that’s good! It has a double meaning. It says, as Christians, that we must not stand for being humiliated nor should we participate in anything that humiliates others. This is precisely Jesus’ point!

Brothers and sisters, when faced with things that demean us, Jesus doesn’t ask us to turn a blind eye; he bids us to “turn the other cheek,” so that no one – not even the oppressor – can fail to see what’s going on. By doing this, we emulate our Lord both in his witness against and his response to evil. Jesus was no passive victim. His choice to “turn the other cheek” was an act of agency, an act of power. We, too, don’t have to embrace victimhood when we are victimized. We can retain our power and agency as image bearers of God both by resisting evil and refusing to return it. AMEN.