The Way of Violence




Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The way of violence leads only to death. But the path of peace can overcome the grave.

We know what the way of violence looks like. We live it every day. It’s the pervasive notion, older than Athens, that the strong do as they will while the weak suffer what they must. Whenever we put profits over people, that is the way of violence, the way of the empire, the way of the world. When we value retribution over rehabilitation, stockholders over civilians, hubris over humility, scapegoating over selflessness; whenever we heap up corpses on which to build our corporations, that is the way of violence.

And our violence isn’t limited to guns or bombs or blades. Debt works just as well: predatory practices that keep the poor, the marginalized, both the elderly and the young, from healthcare, housing, higher education, childcare. The violent take it by force, and then they blame the victim. They point the finger at the foreigner, the criminal, the troublemaker, the religious minority. And they say:

“There’s your culprit. There’s the reason why you’re sick or poor or indebted or homeless, the reason why you’re a loser, the reason you lost the farm. It isn’t me, of course. It isn’t the people in power, the people with all of the money. No, it’s that weirdo over there. Get rid of him, kill him, cut him out like a cancer, and then things’ll get better, then you’ll be okay.”

And when lynching doesn’t actually improve the situation, they’ll just pick the next sucker to sacrifice—because fear always works, fear of the other, fear fueled by resentment and powerlessness and shame.

Jesus came to liberate us from sin and death and Hell, not just in the world to come but in the here and now. Let’s be clear about that. If His Gospel were naught but pie in the sky by and by, nobody would have killed Him. Nobody would have bothered with crucifixion. Because He would have been harmless! Heck, the Empire might’ve found Him helpful, offering the opiate of the masses, keeping the commoners quiescent. Rome loved mystery cults, after all. Let Jesus open up one of those, make some money hocking afterlife assurances.

But that’s not at all how He rolled. I mean, we’re talking about the guy who inaugurated His public ministry with the Beatitudes at the Sermon on the Mount. Remember those? Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the mourning, the meek, and the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers, the prosecuted, and the pure? These are not saccharine sentiment. These are fighting words, Jesus throwing down the gauntlet, His transvaluation of values.

He’s taking the morals of the mighty Roman Empire—of the Western armies occupying His homeland—and flipping them all on their heads. Romans valued strength, beauty, wealth, fame, in and of themselves. The poor had no rights, peacemakers no value. Warmongers were the heroes of Rome: powerful men imposing Pax Romana—civilization whether you wanted it or not—in order to reap the rewards. Their gods had declared imperium sine fine, “empire without end,” borne on the backs of their millions of slaves.

Other peoples had risen up, Jews and Gentiles alike, brandishing the sword to fight for freedom. They’d been crushed, one and all, beneath the hobnailed heels of the Legions. Still they held out hope for a Messiah, and Savior, come to liberate the land and call down fire upon their oppressors. Heavyweight problems call for heavyweight solutions, after all. Push a people far enough, and they’ll resort to violence. But nobody could out-violence Rome, not back then. The Empire made massacre both a science and an art.

Jesus doesn’t preach violence. He knows that’s the devil’s game. But neither does He preach passivity, nor will He shut up. Jesus always, always embraces a third way, the path of active nonviolent resistance, speaking truth to power, elevating the lowly, waging peace. And that’s more dangerous to the Empire than anything else could be. Rome stays in power by convincing the world that might makes right, and then making sure that they are the mightiest of all. They want you to play by their rules, the rules of armies and economics.

But Christ is unafraid, utterly unafraid. He knows, going in, that His path is to the Cross. He knows what a life dedicated to limitless divine love will cost Him: everything. It will cost Him everything. And that is the price that He was born willing to pay. So what can you do against a Man like that, a Man who isn’t intimidated, a Man who can’t be cowed? Well, you kill Him, of course. That’s the trump card; that’s the final arbiter: violence and the silence of the grave.

And, oh, they do it right, don’t they? We do it right. We make a spectacle out of Him, cause His friends to run away. We run Him through a kangaroo court, and dress Him up like a King, all the while hitting Him, whipping Him, shredding the skin off His back, wrapping His head up in thorns, mocking, spitting, laughing, sneering. And then, the coup de grâce: Crucifixion. You’d have to work hard to come up with a more agonizing, dehumanizing, lingering, sadistic mode of execution. And hell, the Romans were proud of it. It made a statement. It put on a show: the cruelty of politics.

That should’ve been that. Jerusalem should’ve gone back to business as usual. Just one more naive bumpkin on a stick. But then none of us would be here, would we? None of us would even know the name of Jesus Christ. But the dead man got back up.

Now, just to be clear, this isn’t the first time that the dead arose according to the Bible. But Christ’s Resurrection is no mere resuscitation. He didn’t get a green mushroom for an extra life. No, the risen Jesus Christ has conquered Hell! He has conquered sin and death and the devil and smashed His way back up and out of the grave with all the ransomed dead resplendent in His train. Easter’s no minor miracle from the back end of beyond. Easter is the end of all we knew, and the birth of all we’d hoped.

It’s the end of the conceit that only violence makes the world go ‘round. It’s the vindication of all that Jesus preached and taught and did. It is the triumph of life over death, of love over Hell, of forgiveness over sin, of mercy—endless mercy—over all of our acquisitiveness, our cruelties, our scapegoating, our warmongering. Violence doesn’t solve a God-damned thing. It can’t even keep this scraggly Rabbi dead and in His grave.

And please understand, this is not naïveté. We are not ignorant of how the world would work. Our symbol is a Cross, for Heaven’s sake. Do you know what we use crosses for? There may be times, terrible times, when decent people must defend the things they love in last resort; when we must sadly lift the sword to guard the innocent and vulnerable. But violence is always a failure. Violence is always a sin. And peace will always have its price, if we’re brave enough to pay it.

This is Holy Pascha, Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of Our Lord. This is the victory of Jesus Christ over all of the powers that would enslave us, destroy us, separate us from our God. This is not a day for business as usual, a day when we smile and nod and eat some chocolate and search for pastel eggs. This is the day that puts the lie to all our worldly ways. Might does not make right. We cannot put a price on human life. And no-one proves himself worthier, better, nobler by pressing down his boot on someone else’s neck.

Everything this world considers powerful will burn. Every bomb, every gun, every tank, every bank, every prison, every displaced persons camp, every lie—all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. Violence has no hold on us, fear can have no power, for Jesus Christ is risen! Death is defeated! The spine of Hell is broken! And in Jesus all this world shall be reborn.

Go forth and give witness to the world that death has no dominion here.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.







Pertinent Links

RDG Stout
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St Peter’s Lutheran
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Nidaros Lutheran
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