{"id":1563,"date":"2022-04-14T08:40:41","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T12:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1563"},"modified":"2022-04-14T08:40:41","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T12:40:41","slug":"jesus-and-the-sword","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/04\/14\/jesus-and-the-sword\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus and the Sword"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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For the four weeks leading up to and going beyond Easter, we’re looking at the life of Peter.\u00a0 Because he\u2019s so often at the center of both the brightest and darkest moments in the Gospels, he has always been a source of hope and inspiration for those endeavoring to follow Jesus.<\/em>


Theologian Walter Wink calls it the Myth of Redemptive Violence.

It is the belief “that violence saves, that war brings peace, that might makes right.\u201d\u00a0 As he observes in his book The Powers That Be<\/em>, \u201cIt is one of the oldest continually repeated stories in the world.\u201d

Using force to make our enemies pay just seems so natural. \u00a0Isn’t that what we have to do?

Scroll through your Netflix menu this Easter weekend and you’ll find thousands of films about cops, ninjas, secret agents, crime families, and comic book superheroes. \u00a0What most of these movies have in common is a \u201cnecessary\u201d violent confrontation to set things right. \u00a0It seems that the only way to stand up for what is right is to start shooting, karate-kicking, or bombing.
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Avengers: Endgame<\/em> just surpassed Avatar<\/em> as the highest-grossing film in Hollywood history.\u00a0 Both epics rely on the formula of the Big Fight at the End to destroy evil, as do 19 of the other 25 most lucrative movies of all time.\u00a0

In the real world, people of faith sometimes come to the same conclusion. \u00a0If our call is to fight God’s enemies, we may have to resort to violence, right?
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In her 2020 book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation<\/em>, Kristin Kobes du Mez notes that a national emphasis on \u201cmilitant masculinity\u201d swept conservative churches in the wake of 9-11.\u00a0 At Christian conferences, men were called to thank God for the gift of testosterone, \u201cpick up their swords\u201d to defend their families against atheists and political correctness, and to eradicate the \u201cwussification of America.\u201d\u00a0 Speakers urged men to \u201cforget the Jesus who turns the other cheek.\u201d\u00a0 Christian mixed martial arts academies emerged as a new way to do ministry \u2013 \u201cwhere feet, fists, and faith collide.\u201d\u00a0
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The irony, of course, is that all four Gospel accounts end with the ultimate showdown between Good and Evil.\u00a0 Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final time.\u00a0 His enemies were arrayed against him.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t a movie.\u00a0 This really happened in space and time.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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And Jesus lost.\u00a0 On purpose<\/em>.\u00a0
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To the surprise of everyone \u2013 perhaps especially Peter and his fellow disciples \u2013 Jesus wasn\u2019t following the ancient script of the Myth of Redemptive Violence.\u00a0 He was living out a deeper story \u2013 that redemption would come not from a God-anointed warrior, but from a suffering Messiah.\u00a0 The only way to experience the victory of Easter was to lose \u2013 or appear to lose \u2013 the climactic \u201cfinal battle\u201d on Good Friday.\u00a0
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Peter couldn\u2019t see it.\u00a0 Always eager to do something<\/em> for God, he was prepared to fight for his Master.\u00a0 According to John 18:10, he pulled out a sword and sliced off the right ear of a man named Malchus, a servant of the high priest.
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When the disciples asked Jesus if he wanted them to fight for his freedom, his response, as reported in the Gospel of Luke, was unambiguous:\u00a0 “Enough<\/em>. No more<\/em> of this!\u00a0 <\/em>Those who live by the sword shall perish by the sword.” \u00a0Whereupon he reached out and healed the man’s ear.

Bible scholar Dale Bruner points out that whenever followers of Jesus resort to physical force, all they end up doing is cutting off the ears of other people, making it harder than ever for them to hear the Good News.
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Here we should pause to marvel at the fact that even though so many characters in the Bible are unnamed, we actually know the identity of the man who lost his ear.\u00a0 It must have been interesting when Malchus went home later that night.\u00a0 We can imagine the moment when his master, the high priest \u2013 one of those committed to killing Jesus \u2013 asked, \u201cSo, did everything go smoothly during the arrest?\u201d\u00a0 How would Malchus have reported the events of the evening?\u00a0
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We also need to acknowledge a sobering reality of Christian history:\u00a0 Followers of Jesus have sometimes gone to war with crosses on their shields. \u00a0It\u2019s tragic that Jesus\u2019 cross \u2013 the very place where God made peace with the world \u2013 has occasionally been distorted into a military banner.\u00a0 We can say with certainty that Jesus himself never gave an order to do such a thing.\u00a0
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He did, however, speak plainly about battling evil.\u00a0 We must always resist.\u00a0 But we must never, at a personal level, resort to physical violence<\/em>.

The opening line of St. Francis’ famous prayer is always a safe place for us to land: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

Does God want us to bet our lives that violence will somehow make our families, our communities, our nation, and our world a better place?

Enough. No more of this.<\/em>

As Peter ultimately learned \u2013 the hard way \u2013 there are so many better ways to conquer the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the four weeks leading up to and going beyond Easter, we’re looking at the life of Peter.\u00a0 Because he\u2019s so often at the center of both the brightest and darkest moments in the Gospels, he has always been a source of hope and inspiration for those endeavoring to follow Jesus. Theologian Walter Wink calls it the Myth of Redemptive… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1564,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[421,425],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-peter","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}