“I say to you that listen.” †
“Listen” is the first word in the Rule of Saint Benedict, and the verbs “to listen” and “to obey,” he reminds us, share the same root. When Jesus invites us to listen, Jesus invites us not merely to hear his words, but to obey them. To be obedient. To be a disciple.
I say to you that are obedient disciples: Love and do good, bless and pray, turn and give, lend and forgive – particularly to the most malignant among you: your enemies and haters, your abusers and takers. Jesus calls us to civil obedience.
Civil obedience to Jesus often calls for civil disobedience of the powers and principalities of this world – the self-proclaimed kings and day-one dictators who govern by threat and intimidation and domination; a lordship which is in direct opposition to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, the desires of God, and the aims of God’s kingdom that Jesus came to announce and inaugurate.
Civilly-disobedient disciples of Jesus come to mind this month as we celebrate Black History – bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins, the strategic breaking of unjust laws designed to degrade and dehumanize not only the oppressed, but also the oppressors, whose violent enforcement or nonchalant acceptance made them accessories to and committers of sins against God and neighbor. Jesus’s twentieth-century, civilly-disobedient disciples were God’s agents of liberation not only for themselves, but also for the oppressors among them, the cruel and the indifferent, who were willing to listen to Jesus and to be converted.
Today’s gospel passage, and others like it, inspired generations of courageous, civilly-disobedient justice-seekers, who studied gospel principles and learned, for instance, that turning the other cheek isn’t a sign of weakness, but rather it is to assume agency and signal to the oppressor an unshakable strength. They show that the human-driven system of retaliatory violence, which may, for a short time result in an uneasy détente, will fall apart as soon as the defeated side sees an opening for revenge – “The measure you give,” says Jesus, “will be the measure you get back.”
Of course, it wasn’t only the participants in our nation’s Civil Rights Movement that practiced gospel-based civil disobedience. The first disciples of Jesus and the earliest Christians took their turn, as have justice-seekers in every century. Including our own.
Even now, some are called to the discipline of listening to and obeying Jesus by saying “no” to the present-day threats and intimidation and domination that seek to sew chaos and fear, and thus extend rule by executive fiat. Maybe even someone in this congregation – one of you – will take on the hard calling of being civilly-disobedient, of turning the other cheek, even as you love and pray for the ones who would attempt to rob you and others of human dignity.
Now even if most of us aren’t called to the front lines of civil disobedience, we are still called, each of us, to the every-day practice of civil obedience. These gospel principles of Jesus apply to us even in the seemingly small and ordinary passages of time and opportunity allotted to us. Every day, Jesus says to you that listen …
How will you react when someone insults you?
How will you respond when you give a gift, or lend an ear, or extend a kindness, but don’t get a “thank-you” in return?
What will your attitude be when you encounter, in person or in the media, someone with different values from your own?
Practicing the civil obedience Jesus requires of us makes our lives richer, our spirits happier, and our souls purer. It is part of the life-long conversion to the good. This is the measure we get back.
This practice of civil obedience, enhanced by the grace of the sacraments and the power of prayer, shows that we’re not merely hearing Jesus, but listening and obeying him, too. †
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
Seventh after the Epiphany – February 23, 2025
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
“Civil Obedience”
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