James Talarico

I'm telling you to turn the other cheek.

Moses told you an eye for an eye because you weren't ready to hear turn the other cheek.

Eye for an eye was meant to keep things from spiraling out of control.

It was meant to have a balance of justice.

And then Jesus is going further in teaching nonviolence, which is consistent and a growth, an evolution.

And that's the universe we live in.

God created an evolving universe.

And you can actually go back in the New Testament.

The first word out of Jesus's mouth is change.

Some can call it repent or turn around, but change is the first thing he says in his public ministry.

So I think both of these things can be true at the same time.

We are rooted in something eternal, something that has existed forever.

since before time existed.

And it is also always moving us forward.

And we are always changing and evolving.

And both of those things can be true at the same time.

What's that a reference to?

So it's, again, a story in the New Testament of when Jesus walks into the temple.

And I think it's hard for us in our modern context to really understand an equivalent of the temple, because you would think it's a church or a synagogue or a mosque.

But the temple was so much more than that.