The Way of the Way at WorkNäide

On March 12, 1911, Booker T. Washington—then the most famous Black man in America—was standing in a hotel lobby when a white woman mistook him for a servant. She asked Washington for a glass of water. And instead of correcting her, he quietly obliged, returned with the water, and asked, “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

That’s a beautiful example of the type of “second mile service” Jesus is calling us to show in Matthew 5:38-42.

In Jesus’s day, Roman law stated that a soldier could ask any Jew to carry his gear up to one mile—which the Jewish people would have seen as an oppressive and offensive request from their occupiers. But Jesus ups the ante saying, “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.”

And Jesus didn’t just preach this—he embodied it to the ultimate degree. We were once God’s enemies (see Romans 5:10). But Christ didn’t just go one mile to save us. He crossed the infinite chasm between holiness and sinfulness to wear our sin and bear our shame.

Now he calls us to go above and beyond for our enemies today. Because it is that kindness that slowly “overcomes evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

There’s a great line from The Hunger Games that gives language to this. Katniss Everdeen is in a literal fight for her life when an enemy begins showing her kindness. She says, “A kind [enemy] is far more dangerous to me than an unkind one. Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.”

The same will be true for you and your enemies at work—or, to use less extreme language, those co-workers who frustrate you or whom you simply don’t see eye to eye with.

In response to Matthew 5:38-42, I’d encourage you to identify one thing you’ve been asked to do that you really don’t want to do. And commit to one thing you can do to go the second mile in the task.

In the spirit of practicing what I preach, here’s what I did after outlining today’s devotional. There was a Zoom on my calendar that I didn’t ask for and certainly did not want to attend. My initial (shameful) plan was to show up physically, but not mentally. I had planned to check email during the call. But instead, I committed to being fully engaged, super-serving those who called the meeting.

No obvious fruit came from that act. But that’s not the point. Jesus has called me—and you—to go the extra mile, even for those we’d rather avoid. This is the way of The Way. Go and do likewise.