Chapter 23 of 404

Jesus on Nonresistance

The preserved sayings of Jesus do not naturally lend themselves to the interpretation that Jesus was a revolutionary,¹⁰² apart from a few sayings that fit Jesus’ use of hyperbole and shocking metaphor.¹⁰³ For example, the words that Mark attributes to Jesus on the week before his crucifixion, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Mk 12:17), do not sound like a revolutionary. Jesus’ beatitudes may criticize oppression, but they emphasize the way of dependence on God rather than resistance or any attempt to seize the kingdom (Lk 6:20-23; especially Matt 5:3-12). Jesus teaches radical nonretaliation (Matt 5:38-47; 7:1; Lk 6:27-37). Although he was not unique in teaching against avenging oneself,¹⁰⁴ he was certainly emphatic about it.

Yet Jesus takes this ethic of nonretaliation to its furthest possible length when he invites disciples not only to refuse to strike back, but to rejoice when persecuted (Matt 5:10-12; Lk 6:22-23). One should accommodate oppressors¹⁰⁵ for the sake of peace, trusting in divine reward and vindication (Matt 5:39-48; 7:1//Lk 6:27-37). In enduring persecution, his disciples would follow the model of the earlier prophets (Matt 5:12//Lk 6:23),¹⁰⁶ a model amplified in Jewish tradition.¹⁰⁷ Linked with his other teachings about radical dependence on God (e.g., Matt 6:25-33//Lk 12:22-31), such passages suggest nonretaliation not simply for its own sake, but as an act of radical dependence on God rather than oneself.

As we shall see later, accepting suffering is precisely the behavior that Jesus himself models in the passion tradition; the gospel tradition as a whole is coherent on this point. At Gethsemane he refuses to resist (cf. the apparently multiply attested warning in Matt 26:52 and Jn 18:11).¹⁰⁸ Jesus and those of the Pharisees who advocated peace rather than revolution were ultimately vindicated when Rome brutally crushed the aspirations of the Jewish resistance in 66- 73.¹⁰⁹

↑ Back to top