Posts Tagged ‘non-violent resistance’

An undressed guest – an act of resistance?

October 14, 2023

Pentecost 20 – 2023
Matthew 22:1-14
Marian Free

In the name of God who gave us life, Jesus who challenged cultural norms and the Spirit who gives us courage to stand for what is right. Amen.

I have just finished reading the novel All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. The novel is an account of a number of children whose lives intersect during and after the Second World War. One sub-plot concerns a ‘school’ that trains (increasingly) young boys to join Hitler’s war. It is, as you can imagine a particularly brutal place. The boys are selected according to their Aryan appearance and physical or mental abilities. They are expected to do everything they are asked without question – even when it involves jumping from a great height into the arms of the boys below or beating a fellow student with a rubber hose because he is deemed to be the weakest in the group.

Frederick does not really belong – he is physically small and needs glasses. It appears that his presence at the school has nothing to do with him and everything to do with his father’s position. He is resigned to having no control over his life and we learn that he was only accepted into the school because his mother helped him to learn the eye chart by heart. Frederick has an air of resignation, he does everything required of him and bears, without complaint, the beating he receives for being singled out as the slowest boy in the group.

One winter’s night, all the boys in Frederick’s year group are taken from their beds and made to stand in the courtyard. Snow lies on the ground and the boys are freezing. While they wait, wondering why they are there, an emaciated and ragged prisoner is paraded before them. After the prisoner’s crimes are listed, the boys are a given a bucket of water in turn and ordered to throw it on the prisoner. For fear of the consequences everyone complies. Everyone that is, except Frederick. When it comes to his turn, Frederick empties the bucket on to the ground. He is given another bucket – which he empties and another. “I will not,” he says.

Several nights later his bunk mate, Werner, notices that Frederick is not in his bed. When Werner goes to the infirmary in search of his friend he is confronted by bloodied sheets, but no Frederick. Years later Werner discovers that Frederick had been beaten so badly by his fellow students that he had suffered brain damage and was confined to a wheelchair. The compliant child discovered that there was a point beyond which he would not go. His non-compliance had the most awful consequences.

Resistance is costly as the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize can attest. Narges Mohammidi is an Iranian activist who is serving 30 years in prison as a consequence of her struggle for human rights (democracy, freedom, and equality) in Iran. Not only has she been imprisoned but she is not allowed any contact with her husband or children. Narges is only one of thousands who resist oppression, cruelty and injustice and who pay a terrible price for struggling for justice.

Today’s parable about a king who prepares a wedding banquet, guests who not only offend the king but who offer poor excuses or worse, beat and kill the slaves, a king who retaliates by killing the offenders and razing their city and inviting others (good and bad) to the banquet, and who finally tosses a hapless guest into the outer darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. It is a bloodthirsty, vengeful story worthy of Game of Thrones and tells us nothing of God’s love, goodness, and mercy.

Taken at face value, this parable is notoriously difficult to understand, especially the addition about the guest without a garment. While it is possible to bring some cultural factors into play in our interpretation – refusing a king’s invitation being an attack on the honour of the king and the king’s vengeance a means of restoring that honour – we are still left with a capricious and violent king whose reaction to being slighted appears excessive – both in terms of the reaction to the original guests and the response to the underdressed late comer. It leaves us wondering what the parablecould possibly tell us about the kingdom of God.

Many of us grow up missing the detail of the aggression of the insulted king, but very aware of the ‘rudeness’ of the guest without the appropriate clothes. You, like me might have memories of Sunday School lessons in which a teacher told us with some authority that there was a custom of a host providing wedding dress for the guests. We were led to believe the king (God) was absolutely justified in treating the ‘ungrateful’ guest in the way that he did. The takeaway from the parable was that we should be – be grateful or else!

There are many scholarly attempts to come to terms with this parable, but I was particularly taken with Debie Thomas’ reflection . She questions her/my Sunday School lessons and the attitude that it fosters – the arrogance that believes that the unclothed (not us) deserve a shocking and vicious consequence for their ingratitude. She asks: “do we really believe in a God as petty, vengeful, hotheaded, and thin-skinned as the king in this parable?” (and what does it say of us if we do??)

Debie wonders: “Here’s one possibility: What if the “God” figure in the parable is the one guest who refuses to accept the terms of the tyrannical king? The one guest who decides not to “wear the robe” of forced celebration and coerced hilarity, the one guest whose silent resistance leaves the king himself “speechless,” and brings the whole sham feast to a thundering halt? The one brave guest who decides he’d rather be “bound hand and foot,” and cast into the outer darkness of Gethsemane, Calvary, the cross, and the grave, than accept the authority of a violent, loveless sovereign?”

This is an interpretation that I can live with, one that honours the parable’s intention to shock us out of our complacency into a new and radical way of thinking. The depiction of the heedless, selfish guests, the affronted king and the excessive response becomes a description of the world as it is, and the underdressed guest is the one who resists aggression and who pays the ultimate price for his resistance.

What is our image of God and what price are we prepared to pay in our resistance to a violent and divided world?

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A matter of perfection

February 21, 2014

Epiphany 7

Matthew 5:32-48

Marian Free

 In the name of Jesus our Saviour who calls us to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. Amen.

The use of non-violent resistance is usually attributed to Gandhi, who as a young English-trained lawyer, was thrown off a train in South Africa because he refused to move to the third-class carriage when he had tickets for a first class seat. This experience led Gandhi to develop “satyagraha” – a deliberate and determined nonviolent resistance to injustice. Such resistance would mean not complying with an unjust law and not reacting to the consequences of non-compliance whether it be violence, confiscation of property, angry or an attempt to discredit the opposition. The goal, it was hoped would be not winners and losers but that all parties would come to see the injustice of a particular law and that those with the power to do so, would abolish it.

In South Africa, Gandhi organised opposition to the Asiatic Registration Law. Seven years of protests and strikes finally saw the law repealed. Returning to India, Gandhi observed the injustices perpetrated by the British against the Indian people and set about trying to change the situation without resorting to violence. As we often see, it can be very difficult to ensure that protests remain non-violent and in a country as vast and as populated as India it was, at the start, difficult to prevent rioting among the people. The famous Salt March is an example of a successful non-violent protest.

Salt was a seasoning that even the poorest of Indians used. However, the British had made it illegal for anyone other than themselves to make and sell salt. In order to expose this injustice and to subvert a law that caused so much heartache Gandhi set out with 78 people to walk 200 miles to the beach. Along the way he was joined by two to three thousand more. When the group reached the beach they spent the night in prayer. In the morning Gandhi picked up a grain of salt. An act considered to be illegal. His action began a tidal wave. All over India people began to collect, make and sell salt. The British reacted by arresting those taking part.

When Gandhi announced a march on the Dharasana Saltworks he was arrested and imprisoned, but the march continued all the same. When the marchers reached the saltworks, they approached the waiting policemen 25 at a time. Watched by media from all around the world, the marchers, who did not even raise their arms to protect themselves, were beaten to the ground with clubs. When they could no longer stand, the next 25 came forward and so on, until all 2500 protestors had been beaten to the ground. Not one had shown any resistance and not one had broken the law. The news of the British brutality towards non-resisting protestors quickly spread, forcing the Vice-Roy to release Gandhi and to begin discussions with him. It took much longer for India to be granted Independence, but Gandhi had demonstrated that force was not necessary to bring about change.  (details from history1900s.about.com)

Two thousand years before another man had demonstrated peaceful resistance. In the face of charges that were false and unjust and with the prospect of a particularly nasty fate ahead, Jesus chose to remain silent. He offered no defense, he did not protest his innocence, he did not call on his disciples to fight and nor did he call on heaven to intervene.

Today’s gospel contains the second set of three anti-theses (the first of which we encountered last week). Again, Jesus is taking teaching with which his hearers would have been familiar and extending it to its logical conclusion. If love of neighbour is important, love of enemy fulfills or completes the commandment to love. Taken to its extreme love excludes no one. Just as the sun and rain do not discriminate between the good and the bad, so too authentic love does not choose who to include or exclude within its scope. After all, it is easy to love those who love us back – even the worst of sinners do that.

Inclusive “love” is expressed in a number of radical ways: by being authentic, by not returning violence with violence, by showing generosity rather than giving the bare minimum. It is this love, the going above and beyond the minimal requirements of the law that will make Jesus’ disciples more righteous than the Pharisees (5:20). Jesus’ followers will demonstrate their righteousness by fulfilling the intention rather than just the letter of the law.

Love of the kind described here is only possible if we have reached a stage in our own lives in which we no longer need the recognition and affirmation of others. It is only possible to love so carelessly and indiscriminately if our sense of self is complete and secure. We can only find the strength to be utterly selfless, if we have a true sense of who we are.

Jesus was able to speak with such authority because he was absolutely clear about who he was and what he was called to do. In our faith journey we are called to the same depth of relationship with him and with God, that we too are able to step beyond our fears and doubts, our anxieties to become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect (5:48).

 

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