From Our Love of Power to God's Power of Love

Lent Series : Our Nonviolent Jesus in A Violent America -- 1 of 5

Scripture: Luke 4:1-13

 

Central Theme: Our dominant discourse and culture in America premises and orients our spiritual reactions violently: toward an omnipotent God – a lover of power.

We are called by Jesus instead to orient ourselves nonviolently:

toward a fully present God – the power of love.

Two decades ago – a full generation – this year. Before Newtown … Before the War in Iraq, and before that (and still today) in Afghanistan … Before 911 …

Twenty years ago, before over 600,000 Americans were killed by gun violence in our own land – that’s over 30,000 annually … and our military expenditures nearly tripled, till now it is greater than the next 20 countries combined …

Twenty years ago – in 1993 – a Methodist minister and professor, the late Walter Wink, opened his opus magnum called Engaging the Powers with these blunt words:  “Violence is the ethos of our times. It is the spirituality of the modern world.”

Strong stuff, then -- and a bit of a downer, perhaps. Twenty years later, however: I wonder if Wink is really on to something?

What strikes me as even more compelling is how Wink then frames this dominant spirituality of violence in our world with a term I would like all of us to remember for this Lent series to come. What is operating among us, Wink writes, is a powerful force known the Myth of Redemptive Violence.

As Wink puts it, the Myth of Redemptive Violence is the persistent belief that violence can somehow redeem violence. That, if we only armed ourselves in our daily lives with the right comeback, if we only equipped ourselves with the right gun or guns, if we only wrung every last drop of blood out of the tortured body of Jesus on the cross so that the world would be saved … then possibly – just possibly – we could redeem the world for good.

Sound strange? And yet, that’s how many in the church have been telling the story for ages. That Jesus had to be crucified on that cross for us to achieve the peace of eternal salvation – not that the cross was inevitable, but that the most gruesome violence imaginable was necessary. That tenacious myth that violence can redeem violence – in our church as well as our culture –has translated, to this day, into the perpetual notion that we have to fight one more battle each day in our lives or one more war each decade in our country in the undying hope of making our world safe for peace.

And yet: How hopeful is that? How healing – how joyful – can such an endless cycle be?

Funny how the Myth of Redemptive Violence seems to have eclipsed the Bible’s beginning – in Genesis 1 – that God created everything, and it was all good. For if we truly embraced that all was deemed good, how could we think any violence could redeem it? Why, instead, wouldn’t a nonviolent way serve the cause of redeeming the disruption? A peaceful way we can all participate in – and not a crucifixion we somehow feel a need to re-create?

So that’s our Lenten task – and that’s our Lenten promise. Not to listen for and hear and incorporate in our lives the violence of the cross courtesy of the powers and principalities on the other end of Lent. Our task and promise these next five weeks is to listen for and hear and incorporate and rejoice in the nonviolent way Jesus offers and teaches us – in full Communion, with him, and with one other.

In short: The myth that it takes violence to redeem us persists – in our land, and in many others. Sadly, churches often cooperate: The violent coercion of the cross becomes “redemptive”, obscuring the nonviolent freedom of the way. And we, blindly, repeat that “redemption”, and there is no real peace.

All of which gives rise to this Lenten series: Our Nonviolent Jesus for a Violent America.

The prepositional phrase “for a Violent America” does not mean to suggest that violence in any way is the essence of America. Nor is a violent America being lifted up as the focus of this series.

The phrase “for a Violent America” simply reminds us that our own lived and fallen context – part of “the spirituality of the modern world,” as Wink puts it – can and will be redeemed by the good and joyful news of our true series focus: “Our Nonviolent Jesus.”

For our nonviolent Jesus presents for us a Lenten spiritual path of peace opposite of what the world would teach us about redemption. For whether it’s in a Violent America or a Violent South Africa or a Violent Brazil or a Violent Belarus … these two spirits of violence and nonviolence fight for our souls each and every day. One of them whispering to us, “They call me Good Friday: produced and directed by the lovers of power! Only my violence will bring you peace!” The other responds, “I am your Lenten journey: produced and directed by the power of love. My peace be with you!”

Two spirits; two gods. A stark contrast:

 “Good Friday: Want peace? Only my violence will bring it!”

 “The Lenten Way. Want peace? Let’s you and I make it!”

Which one do we serve? Which one will you serve?

Today’s scripture story sets the stage for our response.

Jesus has just been baptized. He has yet to begin his public ministry. It’s time for his trial by desert fire. Which god will he serve?

Forty days: No food. Can’t relate? Let’s take this seriously and not literally, then: This is a time we have all had in our lives. This is the time of greatest vulnerability.

Three temptations – which are ours, in our greatest times of trial. Three temptations that speak peace, under violence’s clever cover.

Three temptations, from the Lover of Power. Three responses, from one showing us the Power of Love.

Temptation 1: Economic –

  Love of Power: “Command this stone into bread! You are God’s Son! Save yourself, man!”

  Power of Love: “I’m saved already! Life’s more than bread! I am free!

Temptation 2: Political – 

  Love of Power: “I want to give you all glory and authority!”

  Power of Love: “I want to pray and I want to serve!”

Temptation 3: Religious –

  Love of Power: “Throw yourself down. Throw yourself at God’s mercy!”

  Power of Love: “‘Throw myself?!’ God is here. There’s no need to give God a test!”

Three temptations: Economic, Political, Religious. So which God is ours? So which God is yours?

  The Violent Lover of Power: “Command! Glory! Authority! Throw yourself down!”

  Or the Nonviolent Power of Love? “Freedom! Prayer! Service! God is already present!

So which God is ours? Which God is yours?

The Violent Lover of Power – the authorities of “Good Friday” – that insist on crucifixions as necessary for peace, to this day?

Or is our God the Nonviolent Power of Love – the Communion of Lent – that resists the crucifiers … always, nonviolently?

 

Lent celebrates – as no other season does – an amazing story. A story where this rabbi we claim to follow, time and time and time and again nonviolently resists the injustice around him. Until one day, the powers of injustice perpetrate the most hideous deed they could perpetrate against him, to save themselves and to shut him up!

And what is there to celebrate? In Lent, we celebrate that Jesus has unmasked the violence of these powers – all the way up to their Final Solution – through the intentionally nonviolent resistance to them he has lived. For in Lent, we celebrate that the power of love exposes once and for all the lovers of power.

This dramatic Lenten script – nonviolent power of love resisting violent love of power – is writ large in human history, in the most extraordinary of ways. One I have seen writ small and yet in extraordinary ways in my own life.

Participating in a large nonviolent resistance at the Pentagon once – it’s a long and rich and grace-filled story – I experienced seasoned, buff, highly-trained Department of Defense police violently apprehending many, and then quaking in their boots as they finally apprehended me for the same nonviolent action. One tugged gently at my sleeve, then gave me handcuffs that fell off. Their fear and their hesitance – I later learned – all had to do with the fact I was wearing a clergy collar. Violent spirit on nonviolent spirit: Let’s just say the clergy collar won!

And then, I experienced the celebration of Lent while being tried with 35 others for another nonviolent resistance –it’s the School of the Americas trial some of you know about. One day in court, as were presenting our evidence, I witnessed, five feet away, one of our prosecutors visibly shaking. Staring stoically ahead, tears were pouring down this poor man’s cheeks.

And yet nowhere is the power of love writ larger and more dramatically than in the ordinary moments of everyday lives. Daily victories of Communion with God and with each other we see fought and won every day, if we but pay attention.

Victories beautifully observed by Morgan Freeman as God to Jim Carrey’s Bruce Nolan in the 2002 film Bruce Almighty – God saying thus:

Parting your soup (through the powers I have given you) is not a miracle, Bruce, it's a magic trick. A single mom who's working two jobs, and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says no to drugs and yes to an education, that's a miracle. People want Me to do everything for them, but what they don't realize is, they have the power. You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.

We have the power, sisters and brothers. The power to love, when the love of power would de-center us, all around.

You have the power. Be the miracle, to one another.

Let us be the miracle to each other now by serving Communion to one another today …

 

Charge and Blessing …

The body of Christ, broken: By unmasking the violence of the powers that broke him, Jesus shows us no brokenness need be perpetrated again.

The blood of Christ, poured: By unmasking the violence of the powers that bled him, Jesus demonstrates that no bloodletting is necessary in this world again.

Through his body needlessly broken, and his blood needlessly spilled, the world’s greatest need is ironically filled: The exposure for all the world to see two things:

  (1) That the emperor has no clothes, and

  (2) We can dress him for and invite him to the party!