January 20 (Kevin Westling)
Jesus hit a guy and broke his nose. I was just as surprised as you are to hear that Jesus hit a guy but I saw it with my own eyes. It was at Nietzsche’s on Allen Street and it was late, one or one-thirty maybe. We were lucky, to tell you the truth, that we got out of there before the cops came.
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Jesus in Buffalo
“The Fight at Nietzsche’s”
Written by Cam Miller
A reflection on Matthew 5:38-42
Jesus hit a guy and broke his nose.
I was just as surprised as you are to hear that Jesus hit a guy but I saw it with my own eyes. It was at Nietzsche’s on Allen Street and it was late, one or one-thirty maybe. We were lucky, to tell you the truth, that we got out of there before the cops came.
Let me back up. We went to Nietzsche’s to see Joelle Labert, the lead singer for Flatbed and a reader at Trinity@7, but we stayed for three other bands. Don’t be amazed, Jesus likes music, especially local bands; and he likes beer, especially Labatt’s Blue; and he likes a loud, crowded bar, especially at the end of a day when he’s been listening to everybody’s problems. A loud bar is a retreat, especially if people don’t recognize him and, you know, people in a bar rarely do.
Anyway, this is how it happened. Four of us were with Jesus and we were sitting way in the back near the stinky, filthy bathrooms they’ve got at Nietche’s. I hate going in those bathrooms. So we were sitting in the back and this drunk, loud, obnoxious guy comes weaving towards the bathroom but trips and falls right on Jesus. He had to have weighed as much as Cam and later Jesus told us he had a case of dog-breath he wouldn’t have wished on his worst enemy.
Jesus handled it like you might imagine. He pushed up on the guy as we lifted him off, pats him on the shoulder and recommends ginger ale for the next round. The guy laughs it off and stumbles into the bathroom. We don’t pay a lot of attention when he exits the bathroom but about twenty minutes later he is back and the exact same thing happens, only this time he has a beer and as he lands on Jesus so does the beer. This time when we lift him off, Jesus stands up and with restrained anger tells the guy in no uncertain terms that he is embarrassing himself and needs to call it a night. The drunk guy starts yelling in Jesus’ face like a drill sergeant to a dog-face. He’s yelling all kinds of nasty, with words strung together in a chain of profanity that would make a biker blush.
Then the most amazing thing happened. A look of serene calm came over Jesus’ face. You could see it, I mean physically. His face was transformed from tired anger to utter relaxed serenity. Then, quicker than Wyatt Earp could draw his gun, he off and punched the guy. He was no little guy either but Jesus cold-cocked him and he went down. Before there was time to savor the moment, or even wonder about it, the guy’s friends were there and a brawl ensued. If you’ve ever been to Nietche’s then you know it’s not big enough to hold a fight without everyone getting pushed and shoved and spilled on.
I got hit on the side of the head and in the ribs and as I went crashing into the wall I remember, as if it were in slow motion, seeing Jesus standing there surrounded by the melee he had started but passively removed from the scene and unscathed. When I got up off the floor I grabbed his wrist and pulled him through the crowd and squeezed out the door with others who were escaping. All four of us were outside when we heard sirens coming up Delaware so we picked up our pace and disappeared up Elmwood toward the Co-op – hoping Huw Richardson was home and would give us some tea.
When we got to the Co-op oddly enough, there weren’t many people around except Huw, so we sat in the common room and all talked at once explaining what had happened. Finally, when we all had some tea and enough excitement had been drained out of our throats, we turned as if on cue and asked Jesus what he thought he was doing.
“Well,” he said calmly but with the edges of his lips hiding a grin, “he was not listening to me.”
We gasped and sputtered and all at once pounced on his answer. You don’t hit someone because he isn’t listening we protested. What about “turning the other cheek” and all that stuff?
“Well, you know,” he dolled, “that was a long time ago. I gave that advice to peasants who were being harassed by Roman Legionnaires. It was pretty clever advice too, if I say so myself.”
“You see, in those days, a peasant could be pressed into service by a Roman soldier and if he complained about it or did not please the soldier, he was often hit. But the custom was for a social superior to hit an inferior with the back of his hand. It was as if to say, ‘You do not deserve my open hand or fist.” Those were reserved for social equals, you see.”
“So, if you can imagine this scenario: the peasant has just been slapped by the back of the soldiers’ hand – the soldier’s right backhand against the peasants’ right cheek.
If the peasant retaliates he will likely be imprisoned, maimed or killed. What can he do to keep his dignity? He can turn his other, left, cheek.”
“Don’t you see? If he turns his cheek, which would now be his left cheek facing the soldier, the only thing the soldier can do with his right hand, and by custom it had to be his right hand, is to slap him with his open hand or fist – the action of an equal.”
“You see? I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, in 2009, living here in Buffalo, but put yourself in the place of a peasant living under that kind of violent suppression. Small things make a difference. Tricking a soldier into treating you as an equal offers a moment of dignity in an otherwise humiliating situation. Violence in such a setting is an act of futile self-destruction.”
“Now you understand, don’t you? I hit that drunk fellow with my right fist, a rather robust expression of equality!”
The stunned silence that followed could have unnerved a monk. We looked at each other and at Jesus, all of us digesting the strange and unlikely scenario he was describing.
“Ingenious.” Huw muttered as he poured us all more tea.
“So…you are not a pacifist?” someone asked.
“Well I don’t know. What is a pacifist?”
“Someone who doesn’t believe in violence.” I answered.
“Who in their right mind doesn’t believe in violence, it is right there in front of us every day. I wish I didn’t believe in violence but I have seen too much of it not to believe in it.”
“I don’t mean ‘believe’ in violence, I mean, someone who rejects violence as a response to violence or as a solution to oppression and injustice.”
“I should think that there is always a better solution to violence and oppression than more violence – more often than not it will only result in more and worse violence. But…I never like to say “never.” The question of course, is whether Gandhi could have been as successful against the Nazis, who did not care about world opinion, as they were against the British who did.”
“I can tell you that every time we used violence to rebel against Rome, we were crushed in the most brutal kind of way. Every uprising, every rebellion, every serious protest was violently repressed. Did you know that once, just to prove his point, Pontus Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, crucified the remnants of a rebellion along both sides of the road leading from Jerusalem to Jericho? That road is twenty miles long – men, women and children crucified along both sides of that road for twenty miles.”
“So I don’t know if I am a pacifist. I have brothers and sisters who engaged in armed struggle against brutal organized force, armies trained by both the old Soviet Union and your United States. I can’t fault them for it. They were being systematically tortured and murdered. I don’t know that turning the other cheek to psychopathic killers gets you anywhere either – they do not care which hand they cut, burn or electrocute you with. So I don’t know that I could say ‘never’.”
“But Christians!” one of us protested. “Christians claim you are the epitome of non-violence. You let them torture and kill you. What about that?”
“I let them?” Jesus said incredulously.
“I did not let them. They brutalized me because they caught me. You think I wanted to be caught? You think that was some kind of a plan – for me to get caught and tortured and crucified? That is craziness.”
“But I thought…” I said quietly, “I thought that you were sacrificed for our sins like they used to slaughter a lamb upon the altar at Passover. Only you became the Passover Lamb and with your sacrifice we were all saved – you know, like the first Passover.”
There was another long silence in the room. It seemed to me that Jesus didn’t know whether to be annoyed, outraged or empathetic. When his answer finally arrived, the rest of us were all leaning forward, our weight held by elbows upon our knees with hands wrapped on both sides of our steaming teacups.
“I know what you think. I know that made sense to those that followed me, just like the advice to turn the other cheek made sense to them in their situation. But please, think. I want Christians to use their brains and think about it. Don’t give thumbs up or thumbs down as if those traditional interpretations are the only interpretation.”
“How does one man, whipped by leather laced with bone and metal, then nailed naked to a piece of wood, then hung up in public until he slowly suffocates to death as vultures and crows and insects pick at him…how does that save anyone? How does a lamb’s blood save anyone? How? ‘You know what I require, O man, to do justice; love kindness; and walk in humility with me.’”
“If you really believe that God planned my execution, then you have to believe that God approves of violence as a means to an end. If you think that I was tortured and executed as an exercise that saved your soul from Hell, then you must also believe that God approves of violence, and the use of violence as a means to an end. In fact, if you believe in Hell, it follows that you also believe in a God of violence because what is more violent than Hell?”
“Come to think about it, maybe I am a pacifist.”
It was then that the residents of the Co-op began filing in and the privacy, and the kind of awed sacredness of the moment, came to an abrupt end. We thanked Huw for the tea and headed out the door. We were on foot and heading in four different directions. We said our good nights and I walked with Jesus for two blocks before I had to turn down Bryant toward my house.
We stopped at the corner and I asked Jesus a question.
“Then why did you have to die, Jesus?”
“I didn’t have to die, at least not then and not like that. I would have died eventually, just like all living things do. But I died then, and like that, because violence is what human beings often resort to when they feel that their power and wealth is threatened. Sometimes it is perpetrated with little violence’s, you know, a little coercion here and a little manipulation there; and sometimes it is accomplished with big violence.”
“I wish I didn’t die then or that way, but some people have learned from my death… Some people have seen themselves in that torture and execution and they changed how they managed their fear and self-centeredness because of it.”
“But…” I began as Jesus waved me off.
“It’s late and I can’t tell you everything right here on the corner of Elmwood and Bryant – that wouldn’t be fair would it?”
“Why not?” I pleaded.
“Because then you would be the only one who knew all my stories!”
With that we said “good night” and went our separate ways.
