As we look about our world today, our neighborhoods and cities, our country and our world, we see senseless violence and dehumanization everywhere. We may wonder “where is all this coming from – all this hatred and focused harm on each other?”  We may be tempted to see these events as something done by the others, or even the ‘enemies.’  Especially so when those who are ostensibly affected by the violence are innocent.  We have a tendency to distance ourselves from the situations by considering them to be caused by either forces beyond our control or forces that indeed need to be controlled, indeed in a definitive retaliatory manner.

The hurt is deep, the pain and killing reaches down into the depths of our humanity and when we try to mask the hurt or even deny the pain, we turn it into another version of the pain and hurt itself, but one that we feel we can now ‘handle.’ We hear ourselves say, “this is why this happened…” and “this is what needs to be done…”  Something needs to be done in order to address or redress the hurt and violence spiraling out of control that we are inflicting upon each other.

This directed hurt results perhaps most directly from unrealized desperation and ignorance of how everything that we do in our lives affects everyone and everything else.  We’ve unfortunately been able to disguise the rippling effects of our actions in cultural, religious and political biases that bolster a self-justifying platform upon which only a few so-called privileged try to stand.

Paul in his letter to the Corinthians ( 2 Cor 6:1-10), addresses them with a powerful accountability that we may need to hear today as we struggle to make sense of and respond to the hurt that seems to be growing recklessly in our world:

Brothers and sisters: As your fellow workers, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.

More than the appeal not to receive God’s grace in vain, Paul is clearly delineating the relationship between he and those to whom he is addressing – “fellow workers!”  After he identifies the Corinthians as part of everyone else working for Christ, Paul goes on…

Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. We cause no one to stumble in anything, in order that no fault may be found with our ministry; on the contrary, in everything we commend ourselves as ministers of God, through much endurance, in afflictions, hardships, constraints, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, vigils, fasts; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech, in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left; through glory and dishonor, insult and praise. We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful; as unrecognized and yet acknowledged; as dying and behold we live; as chastised and yet not put to death; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing and yet possessing all things

Paul seems to be saying that inasmuch as we are “unrecognized, dying, poor, chastised, treated as deceivers, having nothing,” in the trials of life, the “weapons of righteousness,” as he calls them are not characterized by retaliation and retribution but by “purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech in the power of God.”  In order to ensure that “we cause no one to stumble in anything,” which would mean to continue perhaps in the desperation and ignorance of patterns of force and violence that feed the fire of hatred, we are enjoined to respond in offerings of healing that can reach down to the deepest roots of the suffering.

Jesus in today’s Gospel (Mt 5:38-42) brings the point directly into the heart of the law:

“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… Give to the one who asks of you”

In today’s world, the concept of ‘endurance’ sometimes plays out on sides of oppressors and victims, with perhaps neither knowing that the dualism of this structure has a self-perpetuating mechanism. Rather than offering what could be considered a surface ‘roll over and play dead’ approach to violence and evil, could Jesus instead be revealing the enduring character of Love that takes both sides and reveals that the hurt inflicted goes out in all directions to both the oppressor and the victim and offers the dissolution of this distinction by healing the breach?

This strong truth of love exposes that violence cannot do away with the connection that we have in Christ – and that means ALL OF US!  That is why violence is always desperate and ignorant.  The lie we believe is that we have different faces from each other, when there is only the one face of Love in Christ that we can either slap or kiss!

The hard work is the deep digging that we must do in order to see that which we have covered over with layers of recalcitrant egoisms, which have effectively hidden the treasure of healing that only works when it is recognized and applied to all! Unless we see and address each other as fellow workers to surface this hidden connection, we will only see the terribly violent symptoms of our attempts to disconnect with each other as sure signs that we must overcome the ‘perpetrators’ rather than exposing the flimsy fallacy from which we feel justified to “slap the other cheek.”  Everything will appear as dualities that circles in violence until we to see that the circle of Love’s center is everywhere in Christ and there is no circumference or boundary wall.

As Paul says, NOW – in the present moment – is the acceptable time to embrace an engage this healing. It’s not something you have to plan necessarily, but something you can practice in every moment of your everyday life.  The face of Christ is everywhere if we but recognize it.  It’s the alternative answer to the question that hurt and violence masks, wherein “turning the other cheek” truly means to “give to the one who asks of you,” simply because the question is the same for everyone.  The longing is the same – to be loved,  to be empowered, to be recognized, to be healed, to be held in the human embrace that we so desperately want and fail to see is exactly the holy and enriching embrace of God that cannot let us go!

Teilhard tells us that “from the Christian point of view, the universe is finally and permanently unified only through personal relations, i.e., under the influence of love.”[i]  Authentic Love unifies by bringing us face to face in unity without distorting any of the faces.  Personal dignity in connected unity – this is the Christ Face that we must work toward with our whole lives!

[i] Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “Introduction to the Christian Life” in Christianity and Evolution (Harcourt: 1969), p. 171.

Peace

Thomas

(originally published June 19, 2017)