Flower Spoon Fights

My brother is two years younger than me and when we were kids we were super competitive about everything. Even though I was older, we were about the same size –and we fought a lot.

We had a spoon in our cutlery drawer that was different to every other spoon - it had flowers on the stem and I don’t know how it started but getting the flower spoon to eat breakfast quickly became a cause of war. We would fight over it. “Mum he had it yesterday! It’s just not fair!”

From mum’s perspective, of course, the whole thing was ridiculous. In fact, it was worse than ridiculous. Her great hope was to raise two boys who would encourage and support each other and to see us constantly fighting caused her some pain I think. From her view, whatever victory we think we may have won just wasn’t worth it.

But for us this was a justice issue. He had the flower spoon two mornings in a row and deserved every ounce of suffering I could inflict on him. 

Of course we were little kids, but big kids do versions of this and so do adults. Unsurprisingly the bible has some things to say about retaliation about wanting to win the fight.

The thing is, the illustrating examples seem so unreasonable.

In Pauls letter to Christians in Ephesus we read this: 

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. ”

Think about what Paul is asking here – a slave, whose family has been ripped away from him and is likely not going to see freedom again is being asked to respond like this – that’s not fair surely!

And in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says:

“But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”

Again, think about who gets hit on the cheek. It isn’t the strong or the rich -  it’s those with less power, the slaves, the women, the people being oppressed by the Roman soldier – they’re the ones who get hit. Jesus (and Paul) appear to have gone out of their way to think of the most unfair situation and say and EVEN then, you don’t strike back.

God seems to think that responding with Grace isn’t nice, its critical. That from his perspective the way we treat others is absolutely crucial and that to respond in anger or seek vengeance or lash out with something hurtful, furthers evil in the world and to respond with grace fights it.  And that this battle against evil is far more critical than any sense of vengeance or victory we might experience. In fact, Paul says words like that – our fight is not against people but ‘principalities and powers’

There is a passage in the bible that talks about ‘putting on’ the armour of God. I think, every time I hear that passage I have been trained to think of this noble warrior figure – a knight - holding up the shield of faith and charging into the fray. 

It is interesting to me that this passage about God’s armour comes straight after the bit about how slaves should respond.

What would ‘putting on the armour of God’ look like for that slave? What would it actually mean for them to take up, say, the shield of faith? 

Faith is trusting in Gods’ character – and that ultimately, he will make things right. I wonder if for the slave, the shield of faith means clinging to the idea that despite every voice inside his head telling him to resist the slave master, to fight or hurt or harm, he needs to trust that God has got this – it is His story. 

As Mr Beaver says: “No, no. when Aslan returns, he'll put all to rights”. The righteous justice bit is God’s bit, our bit is trying to love others. Not always easy.

I suspect many of us will continue to have flower spoon fights. Fights about things that seem critical to us but from Gods’ perspective probably isn’t. My brother and I now get on well – we are proud of each other, rather than jealous, and we meet at Macca’s in Vermont every Tuesday and spend time with our mum who can no longer really speak properly and can’t quite remember who we are. But she knows that she knows us, and we laugh a lot.

There are some things more important than flower spoons…