Eighth Station

Migrant Mother, Dorthea Lange

There’s a scene in the classic film Boyz in the Hood that’s stuck with me for 30 years. A mother performs the sacred work of scrubbing the blood from a sidewalk where her son has been shot and killed. Contemporary images like this are easy for secular and religious leaders to write narratives around. One poetic image is from Langston Hughes poem Harlem,

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Hughes is writing of life-ambition thwarted; with people to blame. The poem has a creative companion in young playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s, “A Raisin in the Sun.” She and Langston were friends and exchanged letters of inspiration, until at the tender age of 35 Lorraine died of cancer.

In Matthew and Luke’s telling of the Gospel Jesus offers spiritual direction for conflict between people where anger is present:

“But I tell you who hear me; love your enemies and do good to those who hate you…”

It’s a spiritual perspective that Jesus grounds not in the feelings of universal brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity—but in specific action:

“If anyone hits you on one cheek turn the other also. If someone takes your coat, let him have your shirt as well”

This happens to be the Gospel assigned to the Episcopal Church’s Feast of Martin Luther King Jr. The popular interpretation is to be the bigger person; the kinder person; the more loving person; the more Christian person. The problem with this interpretation is that’s not at all what Jesus was trying to communicate. We know this in part, because in the context of asking people to love each other—in the context of offering blessings to people who have been left out; the poor, the hungry, the mourning; Jesus also offers sharp rebuke to the rich, the satisfied, those in control.

His teaching about turning the other cheek is addressing the conflict between the rich and the poor…This teaching both in Luke and a similar passage in Matthew are in part what inspired Martin Luther King; but not to be nice. They inspired him to dig deeper into the history of the passage and into its application. Scholars tell us in the 1st century it was common for people to be struck in the face, backhanded when they did not do as they were told when they were told to do it.

The striking was less an act of physical violence if you can imagine, but an act of psychological degradation. It was a dismissal. A showing of power, “I told you what to do, do it.” To turn the other cheek is to make the aggressor meet the one they are dismissing face to face. Turn the other cheek. Don’t slink away, look them in the face; when you meet face to face, they must regard you as an equal. If you are still struck, you will be met by an open hand, by someone of equal standing—a person—not an object to be dismissed.

Likewise the admonition that if someone takes your coat, let him have your shirt as well is grounded in history that in the ancient world the law allowed creditors to take peoples outer garments as collateral for unpaid debts. Some believe that what Jesus is saying is: “don’t stop there. Why be humiliated? Take off all your clothes and stand naked. The brazenness of taking your clothes is not a threat to repay unjust interest but an attempt to humiliate the poor into looking even poorer. Go all the way, take everything. It might make the creditor take stock of just his unjust this system is!”

This point of view makes sense as a contemporary read if you believe that the civil rights movement was also trying to change not individual hearts and minds but a rotten system that actively practiced injustice. And that like a dream deferred; justice delayed could explode!

To know the background of Biblical history takes extra time to uncover. It takes educational training to know what to look for.

Can we assume that the first audience of Jesus knew what he was talking about…and it’s as the years and centuries go by it’s gotten harder?

Maybe. But it’s also in the Bible, a warning not to trust our emotions of revenge.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you love those who love you what credit is that to you?”

Jesus wants to get us off the merry go round of impulse actions. Into deeper more grounded being. In a word, love. Not the emotion; but concrete acts which make the world a better place. It’s said that when the great poet Langston got word his friend was dying of cancer he instinctively began to write to express his emotions. What he came up with though was not a battle cry against God; or the unfairness of life; but an affirmation of goodness of seeing in pain and rainy days a path to Grace,

In time of silver rain

The earth puts forth new life again,

Green grasses grow

And flowers lift their heads,

And over all the plain

The wonder spreads

Of Life,

Of Life,

Of life!

In time of silver rain

The butterflies lift silken wings

To catch a rainbow cry,

And trees put forth new leaves to sing

In joy beneath the sky

As down the roadway

Passing boys and girls

Go singing, too,

In time of silver rain When spring

And life

Are new.

Whether Jesus is as Martin Luther King Jr. believed calling into question a system. Or it is a more spiritualized inward turning as Langston Hughes experienced. It’s clear that what Jesus is doing is building not tearing down. That’s important for us to know; yes in general, but right now too. In a time where we are often frustrated. Jesus gives a path to God by finding mercy by being mercy.

The Eighth Station of the Cross:

Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you: Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

There followed after Jesus a great multitude of the people, and among them were women who bewailed ad lamented him. But Jesus Turning to them said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”

Those who sowed with tears: Will reap with songs of joy.

Let us pray.

Teach your Church, O Lord, to mourn the sins of which it is guilty, and to repent and forsake them; that, by your pardoning grace, the results of our iniquities may not be visited upon our children and our children’s children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen,

Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, Have mercy upon us.