A sermon By John Brierly McCall, D. Min.
Matthew 26:51-56 – Jesus is arrested and the disciples flee
Mark 15:16-32 – Jesus is crucified
Over the first four Sundays in Lent, we’ve added symbols to the altar as reminders of the way we hear and experience our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The themes have been water, body and blood, cup, and cross. Today we’ve added a sword and explore the theme of violence done in the name of God.
In the year 1865, the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould of Yorkshire, England, wrote a marching hymn to encourage children in the parish Sunday school. He reported that it took him just 15 minutes and he later apologized that some of the verses were a bit choppy. He drew his inspiration from the words of the Apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy, which reads in part: “Share in suffering like a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” (2 Tim. 2:3). The hymn, of course, is recognized today as “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and is known and loved by many. Many, too, have stopped loving it. I’m among them.
The theme of spiritual warfare is deep in the Bible. Chapter after chapter, story after story we read about a dualistic world in which there is good and evil, light and dark, truth and falsehood. And since we’re the people of goodness and light and truth, those who oppose us – or even disagree with us – are people of evil, darkness, and falsehood. Right?
- In a black and white world, that’s right.
- In an “us versus them” world, that’s right.
- In the ancient world of the Jews crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land only to find it filled with Canaanites, Amorites and Hittites who worshiped false gods, that’s right.
- In Jesus’ world when the Romans brutally subdued and oppressed the people, that’s right.
- And when Christians were thrown to the lions, that’s right.
When the righteous and godly face the children of darkness, good must prevail and evil must be destroyed. “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war with the cross – and sword – of Jesus going on before.”
We also know that many times in human history, those who were morally certain at the time now appear to be a blight on our story. Certainty easily leads to imperialism. When you know you’re right and someone else is wrong, it makes sense to impose your will, your values, your convictions on someone else… especially if they’re weaker and you can use your might to enforce your convictions.
So we watch the tragedy playing out in Sanford City, Florida, as the community demands action in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a neighborhood watch captain who carried a concealed weapon and calls the shooting self-defense under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law.
But the tragic truth is that power and morality don’t always cooperate. Military might and zeal for a cause can easily overrule what is truly right and good and godly.
Rita Nakashima Brock, author of several books including Saving Paradise, and Proverbs of Ashes, used by the Monday evening discussion group, reminds us that “On a “Good” Friday, in 1095, the First Crusade’s pilgrims – headed to Jerusalem to take the city back for Christ – paused in the Rhineland to slaughter 10,000 Jews as ‘Christ killers.’”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rita-nakashima-brock-ph-d
A century later, Pope Lucius III issued a papal bull that launched the European Inquisition intended to root out heretics and non-believers; and in the 14th & 15th centuries Spain began their own purge of Moors and pogroms against the Jews. In the 17th Century in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, devout clergy and hysterical believers set out to expose and destroy witchcraft. And so it goes.
Many Christian denominations today still speak of “The Church Militant,” the Methodists among them, defining it as those “engaged in constant warfare against the world, the flesh and the devil…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_militant_and_church_triumphant
And certainly our own nation’s narrative has fed our wars and military actions as Christian moral crusades against the powers of evil and darkness. Think of the moral absolutes of the Civil War – from both sides. And didn’t we pray to God to deliver us total victory over the Third Reich, while Germans were praying to the same God for victory in their cause?
St. Augustine once wrote:
If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were only necessary to separate them from the rest of us, and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being….During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place: sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil, and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various stages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being.
What does God desire? Can we expect a blessing when we do violence in God’s name? You may want me to soften the vocabulary a little – rather than violence, couldn’t we speak about self-defense, or holy cause, or moral power?
No. Let’s be blunt: violence is an act that harms another. It’s the use of power or position to injure. Anything else we say must begin with that. The World Health Organization defines violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power… that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation…. irrespective of the outcome it produces.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence
The world is filled with violence – much of it justified by moral rhetoric, and lots of it sounding more like a press release from the Roman Empire than an action by the people of God.
While I believe there are times that resisting injustice, even with force, is the better choice, I certainly believe that we resort to violence too quickly, too thoughtlessly – not truly as a last resort.
I now call myself a “troubled pacifist,” the term I first heard from Tony Campolo, the evangelical Christian pastor, professor and author. He wrote:
…I am troubled about my position because I don’t have an easy answer for those who ask me whether there are times a nation must oppose tyranny with violence. Yet I find that what can easily be called ‘the simplistic applications of the teachings of Jesus’ necessitates for me a pacifist posture.
When I read the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus called upon his followers to return good for evil and referred to peacemakers as “the children of God,” I find support for the pacifist position. When I hear Him say, “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword,” I am inclined to take such a statement as a call to abandon all militarism.
Speaking My Mind, [WPublishing Group, 2004] pg. 155-6
While we see numerous Old Testament battles in which God seems to have led the children of Israel into battle and granted them victory, we need only look at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, where Jesus said “you’ve heard it said ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I tell you do not resist evil, rather turn the other cheek.” He also said: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you.”
Outrageous? Maybe.
Idealistic? Certainly.
Possible? Yes.
Following Jesus is hard work because he taught ways that conflict with the ways of the world. He never said that someone who is being abused or neglected should tolerate it, or that a woman who leaves an abusive relationship is ungodly. He told us and showed us that violence escalates. And when we keep armed force as an option we’re likely to use it.
As disciples of Jesus Christ we need only learn from his path to the cross. He was not a weak, fearful man. He knew he had enough power to confront Pilate and Caiaphas and even Caesar himself. He could have led an armed uprising – a “Jerusalem Spring” if you will. But he knew that God’s power is not from violence.
Early Christians were pacifists and largely remained that way until the Roman Emperor Constantine replaced the Roman eagle with the Cross as the battle standard. [Campolo, pg. 156]
Many more rulers and commanders over the centuries have claimed their wars are holy. We’ve mostly forgotten their names. But Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. clearly shaped the world as they demonstrated the power of non-violence.
As disciples of Jesus we have to be honest that our teacher and Lord showed us a way that is powerful and world changing when he refused to meet anger with anger, hatred with hatred, violence with violence.
And I imagine that God walked with Jesus into Jerusalem and into the Garden of Gethsemane and into the kangaroo court and down the Via Delarosa and up to Golgotha, and heard Jesus’ final words of pain laced with forgiveness; and that God shed a tear, and then said “yes.”
We may not be able to do what Jesus did. But neither can we claim that our loving creator delights in violence or war in God’s holy name. Even though it eludes us, our hope is in peace; our future lies in seeking common ground and furthering the well-being of the whole human family.
For starters, I pledge that I will never again sing “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war…”