Part Two

As promised, here are my thoughts and explanations of the other parts of the "turn the other cheek" passage in Matthew's Gospel. Sorry that it has taken so long, but with finals and other school things going on, I haven't had as much free time as I would have liked...

The part about the coat and the cloak is again a cultural reference that the author is presenting. A coat, much like today, was a garment worn outside the rest of the clothes. If a person owed someone else a debt, it was a common practice for the person owed the debt to seize the coat of the one owing the debt. Sometimes this was a legal matter that involved a lawsuit, since the person who owed the debt may not have been forthcoming about paying up. However, Jesus throws in the notion of having the debtor sue for your cloak. To give up one's cloak at that time, when he already had given up his coat, would leave the person naked. Nudity at the time of Jesus was a huge no-no, and very shameful. Not so much shameful to the naked person, but shameful to the person who made that person naked. So in this case, the debtor would be the one shamed by everyone else. Jesus is saying this to show how greed and selfishness can lead to shame and humiliation.

Finally, the part about walking the extra mile is a reference to the Jews under Roman occupation. If a Roman soldier were to come upon a Jewish citizen and ask to have his things carried, the Jewish person had an obligation to carry the soldier's items for one mile. Upon completing that mile, the Jewish man had fulfilled his obligation and was free to go. In this instance, Jesus is saying that instead of going on their way after one mile of service, stay for another mile. Again, this is a cultural reference with which most of us are not familiar. For the Jewish man to take up the Roman's stuff for another mile, he was keeping another Jewish man from undergoing the same humiliation. Instead, the humiliation would fall on the Roman soldier, since it would seem as if he did not have "control" over the Jewish man as he should.

So, you see, what Jesus is saying in this passage is that no one is superior to another person in God's eyes. We are all equal, and there is no reason to feel entitled to something that others are not. What Jesus was doing in saying these things was giving hope to the people to whom he was speaking. At this time, the Jesus-believers were being persecuted by their Roman occupiers, and by the traditional Jews, so Jesus is saying this to give them hope. His use of these situations is a way of explaining this concept to the people of that time, in ways that they would understand. Sure, these people think they are hot stuff, but they will get their justice. He urges them, and us today, to be the bigger/better person, and just maybe those that were out to get us or make us look bad will get what's coming to them.