Luke settles down with the boys at a Georgia road prison camp for a game of poker. After all the cards are dealt the men make their wagers in nickels and dimes, but Luke throws in a dollar. A few men fold as they go around the circle. When they get back to Luke he bets another dollar. When the man sitting next to him asks, “What are you doing,” Luke replies, “It’s only money,” throwing in another dollar. They go around the circle again and everyone folds less one brave soul. Luke puts up another dollar. Finally, Luke’s opponent folds. They take a look at his cards. No full house. No flush. No pairs. He has absolutely nothing, to which Luke replies, “Sometimes ‘nothing’ is a mighty cool hand.” The name “Cool Hand Luke” is born. After that night, Paul Newman as Cool Hand Luke gains respect and authority among his fellow inmates.
Later in the movie the men are asked to pave a long stretch of highway. One by one they woefully pick up their shovels and start throwing gravel onto the tar. Luke is shoveling quickly with joy. Dragline, who at first was Luke’s enemy, says, “You better slow down. That’s a long road.” Luke responds, “The boss wants it done fast? We’ll give him fast,” and he shovels with more fervor. The rest of the men follow suit, quickly shoveling as if it’s a competition. Before they know it, the job is done. They stand around the end of the road while someone asks, “Well, what do we do now?” “Nothing!” Luke says with a grin. The police officers don’t know what to do.
Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand. When Jesus renarrates the Law, “You’ve heard it said, but I say unto you,” he’s speaking to a crowd who knows what nothingness is. Jesus doesn’t say, “When you strike someone, offer your cheek.” Several scholars have suggested as to why the right cheek is specifically mentioned. Most have said, and I think this is right, is that this “turn the other cheek” concerns the relationship between a slave owner and his slave. In order to shame a slave, the owner would take him out into the public sphere and strike him with the back of his hand across the right cheek. Now, if the slave offers his left cheek, the slave owner has a decision to make. To slap him with the left hand would suggest that the slave owner is unclean. In first century Palestine, you didn’t so much as gesture with the left hand. Would the slave owner admit unrighteousness? The other option is to strike the slave with a closed fist, which is only reserved for those of the same social status. So, what will the slave owner decide—that he is unclean or that his slave is his equal. Either, for some, is too hard to stomach.
Jesus says, “When someone strikes you.” Jesus doesn’t say, “When you sue someone;” rather “When someone sues you.” It is not when you force someone to walk a mile. It is when someone forces labor onto you. Jesus is talking to the oppressed, those who know violence, those who knows what it’s like for someone to strike, to force, and to take. He is talking to people whose identity is given to them rather than accepted and honored. Not only is Jesus preaching on what it’s like to live as a Christian, he is reclaiming a desperate people’s identity. In the words of an anonymous poet: “To do evil, to strike, to force, to take, does not my identity make.”
Jesus seems foolish to ask his followers to not resist evil doers. Evil is nearly ubiquitous. Persecution, disease, scarcity, especially scarcity—the idea that there’s not enough to go around. We are so attracted to scarcity. It is an innocent as the marketplace which tells us, “for a limited time,” and “Your life will be complete if you only had a Snuggie,” to the forced famine humanity imposes through greed. The problem with evil is that it provides for us a false identity. It tells us that we are not worthy. It tells us there’s not enough. It tells us that we are nothing, and this is the mystery underneath Christ’s most difficult commandment, to love our enemies because in so doing, we discover who we are, we discover our identity as a blessed child of God.
This week during “Open Space,” our college and Young Adult worship service, I asked them if there was a time when you can confidently say, “I know who I am.” One of them gave a great answer saying, “I’ve known who I was several times, it’s just that it keeps changing.” What we began to figure out is that we have a tough time understanding who we are, and yet we have a pretty good idea of who everyone else is. This is not a means of discerning identity, yet it is the cornerstone of the campaign. Vote for me and I will oppose everything my opponent proposes. Frankly, we can train a dolphin to do as much. If we are simply not the other, we seem to be nothing at all. When we are invested in maintaining an enemy, living against the other, we are not living for anything. There was a reading from our Tuesday night Christian Believer class which said something to the effect of, “The Devil likes to present false dichotomies so that we are forced into choosing the lesser of two evils.” When we cannot live without an enemy, we might not be as good as we imagine ourselves to be. When we live our lives in an “us vs them” model, when “them” is defeated, we find that there is actually no “us.”
Love your enemies, Jesus tells us. Why? So that things will be good? So that nations will never learn war? So that there will be peace? These are holy and righteous goals, but no, not necessarily. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” In other words, letting go of our penchant for having an enemy reveals to us our true identity as heirs of God’s promise. By loving our enemy we begin to let go of the things in the world which tell us we are nothing. We begin to participate in the life of God who looked at the nothingness of the earth and said, “Let there be light.” We begin to participate in the life of God who gave the Israelites, a people without a story, God’s story, born on mountain top tablets. We begin to participate in the life of God who took on flesh and walked in humanity’s shoes, who looked out at the crowd of thousands and said, “If you think this lunch of fives loaves and two fish is nothing, then give it to me, let me bless it, so that they will have their fill.” We begin to participate in the life of God who, when he had nearly nothing left, looked down at his enemies and said, “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing,” a God who took the nothingness of death and despair and met it with an empty tomb.
When we love our enemies we cultivate a church in which people who think they are nothing discover that they are someone for whom God loves enough to die and be resurrected. When we love our enemies there is nothing that can stand between us and the life of God offered to us in our baptism. When we love our enemies we discover who we are, children of a God, who takes our nothingness and transforms it into abundant life because with God, sometimes nothing is a mighty cool hand. To do evil, to strike, to force, to take, does not my identity make. May you be blessed with the peace and grace and identity of Christ. Amen and amen.
