“But I say to you that listen…”

Having described the emotional (and spiritual) turmoil of living in a broken world, Jesus offers some guidance. This, finally, is what we’ve waited for. Tell us how to live! Tell us what to do! Teach us, Jesus.

And the advice is not encouraging.

Love your enemies…do good…bless those who curse you…pray for those who abuse you…

What good is it to offer both cheeks to be slapped, or to strip naked in the face of an unreasonable demand? How is this helpful?

This is a complicated bit of business simply because we don’t understand the ancient approach to justice, mercy, honour and shame. Jesus is deep in that world, and even so he is trying to help his listeners use those attitudes to change things.

And at the heart of all this utterly strange advice is the plea for mercy. To act mercifully is to imitate God, and this is the ideal to which Jesus calls us all.

In the world as it was then, the notion of standing firm and offering the other cheek (or your undergarments) to a brazen attacker was really an act of defiance. When faced with someone stripped down to their birthday suit, it was the observer who was shamed by the nudity, not the naked person. By stripping down, the affronted person has made a joke of the demand – and convicted the oppressor in the court of public opinion as being someone outside the law.

Taking a blow to both cheeks involved forcing your attacker to treat you like an equal ().

Jesus’ remaining advice encourages radical generosity (lend without expectation of repayment, give people whatever they demand of you…forgive and you will be forgiven…) The more I read this, the more it sounds like some relatively modern advice – try not to become that which you hate.

Jesus is not advocating doing nothing in the face of violent stupidity, nor is Jesus suggesting that ignoring those who are dangerously arrogant is part of some divine plan. Jesus says, ‘be like God.’

God forgives. God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God is merciful. God does not fight fire with fire.

I know, you are going to say – ‘but the Old Testament!’ – I repeat. God does not repay violence with violence. Humans do that…while claiming Divine support or sanction. We always have – and if current events are any indication, we always will.

Jesus is trying to change our distorted view of how God operates. Doing things ‘in God’s name’ is always a dangerous enterprise. Jesus wants us to adopt God’s style.

The measure you use will be the measure you get back. You are what you eat, we say; you reap what you sow. This is the deep dive into what we so blithely call the ‘Golden Rule’ – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Why should that be such a radical idea?

Because of our inherent selfishness. We seem hard-wired for self-interest and self-protection, and that has been the root of all our problems.

When we implicate God in our selfishness (bring God on to our side) then we can pretend that God has the same selfish interests as we do. Organized religion is pretty good at that. And then along comes Jesus who says (essentially) God treats the bad and good in the same way – in a merciful way. Against all odds, against all human notions of reason and fairness, God knows no partiality (no matter how loudly we claim God really does love us best…) And Jesus urges us to change our approach. And it’s darn near impossible.

It’s impossible to put a clever saying into practice – we cannot ‘turn the other cheek’ until we understand how shaming your opponent works in the real world.

Even for Jesus, a ‘stand there and take it’ approach led to blood and tears and pain and sorrow – not exactly the path of least resistance. But the real result of Jesus’ lifetime of Godly action was a grand and glorious revelation of the love and mercy of God.

Raised from the dead, Jesus stands as the perfect example of God’s preference for the oppressed and downtrodden. No condition – not even death – is beyond God’s reach. No person is immune from God’s loving kindness.

It is hard to imagine loving our enemies these days. It feels wrong to wish well those who wish us ill. But the broader principle of mercy to all is one to which we must hold firm. The desire to fight evil with evil is strong in us – it is evolutionary. But our survival depends on our maintaining our integrity, and Jesus advice helps us do that. To continue to see our opponents as beloved by God – to long for reason and equality and compassion and real justice – this is what ‘saves’ us. Citizens of the kingdom of God are those with their humanity intact. And our efforts towards mercy – our willingness to challenge the bullies of this world with character and dignity – to show in our behaviour the things that are absent in their actions – this is the revolution that the golden rule promotes.