Which Power Prevails

Learning to embrace Jesus’ power and love

06/19/2023

Mt 5:38-42 Jesus said to his disciples: "You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well. Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles. Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow."

Last week I was re-reading one of C. S. Lewis’ most celebrated books, namely, Mere Christianity. Some books and some writers are worth reading repeatedly because we keep learning new lessons from them, even if they are “old, dead, white men.” Let me share with you an eloquent though lengthy passage from the conclusion of Mere Christianity. I hope you will see why I am so fond of this Oxford don. And I believe it also sheds considerable light on today’s gospel from Mt 5:38-42, taken from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Lewis writes: “The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us [Christians] are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething. [The Church is still a baby after 2,000 years.] The outer world, no doubts thinks just the opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before.”

Now, Lewis glances back at history, and states: “Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying by persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements [like Communism]. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man [Jesus] came to life again.”

Lewis then compares what happened to Jesus with what will hopefully happen in the life of each Christian (me and you) and the Church as a whole. Listen to this colorful description of how the world’s apparent victory turns into utter defeat. Lewis continues: “In a sense – and I quite realize how frightfully unfair it must seem to them – that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that he started [the Church]: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.”

In other words, there is a deeper power at work in the world than guns, girls, and gold (as Lewis says in another place), that is, money, sex, and power. And that deeper reservoir of truly sustainable energy is the grace of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus’ love on the Cross is the really renewable energy that each Christian and the entire Church operates on. And that is what foils and confounds the world, hence Lewis concluded: “No wonder they hate us.”

In the gospel today Jesus is teaching his apostles and the early Christians all about this renewable energy in his Sermon on the Mount. Listen to how counter-cultural and other-worldly Jesus’ words sound: “But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on your right cheek, turn the other to him as well. If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.”

But is this how the world and modern society think? Hardly. The world’s mantra is: you deserve the best; it’s my way or the highway; and insist on your rights and make sure you get what you have coming to you. In other words, there are two kinds of forces or energies that make the world go round.

One is natural and has a certain attraction and power. But it is finite and will eventually fizzle out. The other power is infinite and is only growing stronger every time it looks beaten and pushed into a corner. And Exhibit A of the second kind of power is Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection.

Today is called Juneteenth, and a federal holiday in the U.S. and here at I.C. Church because our church offices are closed. But not Mass! Juneteenth is a conflation of two words, June and nineteenth, to commemorate June 19, 1865, when Major General Gorden Granger declared freedom for enslaved people in Texas. That was two years after the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln was issued in 1863.

Since then the Civil Rights movement has been a very important part of American life and culture. Racism is an objective and intrinsic evil and needs to be eradicated. But in the past 150 plus years the Civil Rights movement has sometimes resorted to power and persuasion as the world recommends, that is, by arms and violence.

At other times the Civil Rights movement has adopted another path, the way of peaceful protests and non-violent resistance. One power is finite and will finally fizzle out; the other power is infinite and will at last be victorious. Let us pray that Civil Rights leaders – and us - can figure out which power prevails.

Praised be Jesus Christ!