jesus responds to violence by dying

As if the event itself weren't painful enough, little bits of theological lunacy always seem to cling to days like that of the Sandy Hook Massacre. I'm thinking of two right now, though there are always more. 

The first should be easily dispelled by any thinking person of faith. The second seems more difficult to shed.

Following a similarly dark day years ago, I can remember the date and time that I rejected this nonsense that “everything is part of God’s plan.” This blasphemy images God like some sort of callous puppet-master who manipulates the course of these horrific events in order to “teach a lesson” to some sinners whose lives are, apparently, more valuable than those sacrificed in order to teach them. The strength of this theological worldview is its convenience. Its weakness is its god. Any god for whom this constitutes a “plan” is not a god worth worshipping.

If you haven’t already done so, please dismiss any thought of this calculating, puppet-master god quickly and unceremoniously.  But when you do so make sure you have access to another image of God to fill the void. I fear that much of our culture has rightly shed the puppet-master god but at the expense of any thought of God whatsoever. It’s much easier to unthink God than to rethink God.

I say I fear this not because I’m silly enough to think that the “secularization” of our culture is the problem (whatever that means, exactly) or that all human brokenness could be fixed if we’d just “allow God in schools” by posting the ten-commandments in the hallway or some other nonsense. Such a sentiment assumes, in the most theologically naïve way, that the human heart can be changed by what, in Lutheran theology, we call Law. Most of the Bible’s thickness is devoted to the fact that this doesn’t work. The Law would be great if it truly cured what is ailing humanity, but it doesn’t. Something else is needed, namely Gospel…namely Jesus, God’s rash and irresponsible message of unconditional love to the world.

It’s because of Jesus that I’m only still learning, myself, to shed another common explanation for the perversity of human evil, one that is equally false but even more convenient and, for that reason, even more difficult to shed. A succinct version of it was given to me by a trusted elder at a time when I was younger and much more naïve. He said, “You know, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who litter and those who clean it up.”

I was quite attracted to this worldview. Who wouldn’t be? I, of course, must be one of the litter cleaner uppers, if not on a global average, then certainly when compared to some of the worst litterers that come to mind. Right?

And that’s why this explanation isn’t going away anytime soon, because it’s just so darned convenient. Bad things happen because that other half of humanity is bad. If I’m feeling optimistic, maybe the bad portion is just a small fraction of humanity and most of us are basically good. If pessimistic, maybe just me, “my church,” and a few of my closest family and friends are good while most of humanity is going to hell in a handbasket. The size of the groups doesn’t really matter. It only matters that this clever aphorism allows one group, mine, to distance itself from the other and avoid any implication in the darkness and violence that so obviously plagues the world.

It’s convenient to think that only the one or two most immediate culprits are to blame for such horrific days as we experienced last week—that, for instance, this event is completely disconnected from my support of an entertainment industry and media culture that cheapens life and glamorizes violence, or the laughable fraction of the money I earn that goes to the mental health system as compared with weapons development, or that I personally have spent a lifetime not reaching out and showing Christ’s love to individuals who are at risk for violent behavior.  

Of course, I can think through all of this in my head…but in my gut…before long, a few images from the last week flash before me once again, and here comes that visceral response I know so well. My face gets hot, my own blood-thirst wells up inside of me. Forgiveness is a nice thought. But this is real life. Forgiveness? Not for this. Not for this. For this, the only solution is the oldest law known to humanity, the rudiment of all Law. One eye for one eye. One tooth for one tooth. Show me the sicko. I’ll do it myself.

…And there it is. That darkness that has plagued humanity for millennia has crept into my very own soul. Of course, like Saul the murderer before he became Paul the preacher, I’ll try to confuse the issue. I’ll justify myself and continue to distance myself and will even convince many that my own inner violence is of a completely different kind, perhaps even an admirable kind. “Well, that monster is a cold blooded killer. I’m simply executing the wrath of God.”  

What eye for eye logic has going for it is at least the semblance of perfect justice. What could be more equitable than identical recompense for any violence committed? And, theoretically, it seems quite possible that the threat of equal and opposite retribution should deter future violence, right? What it has going against it is that it has never worked, and it never will. 

…

Jesus tried another option, one that is so stupid and so naïve that it wouldn’t even be worth trying except that the other thing we’ve tried hasn’t ever worked either. He abdicated the sensible solution that we all expected of a Messiah, using violence (judiciously and sensibly applied, of course) in order to make for less violence.

Instead, he died. Peter took out a sword and tried the “stand your ground” method. But not Jesus. He responded to our world’s violence by dying, dying by our very own hand…and, at the same time, dying with us like a husband who, sick of seeing his bride suffer from a chronic disease, would gladly take the disease onto himself. The shorthand for his ridiculous alternative to the sensible and just application of law is “the way of the cross.”

Of course, our societies reflexively feel threatened by “the way of the cross.” Predictably, someone will stand up at this point and say, “Here in the real world (apparently, not the one in which Jesus lived) having no means of punishing or retaliating will give criminals free reign. Just forgiving and turning the other cheek willy-nilly will cause whole societies to spin out uncontrollably into a violent chaos.”

On the other hand, the innocent one hanging there on the cross confronts us with the fact that perhaps we had already spun out uncontrollably into a violent chaos under our law. In fact, it was our law that crucified him.

Jesus was put to death because he had the audacity to claim that the deeper hitch in our otherwise reasonable logic—that if they, out there, are littering, then we, over here, have to clean it up—had little to do with the litter and had everything to do with the “we” and the “they.”

We were expecting a messiah who would come down hard on that bad half of humanity. Instead we got one who died. Free grace is a grossly unpopular idea. It always has been. People have been crucified for even suggesting it. The world can be a horrific place. We want eyes and teeth, dammit!

Once we realized what had happened, the sun went black. We bawled and mourned and, that following Saturday, we began looking for someone to blame. “They crucified him. They’re the litterers. The chaos won. Now let us take to arms and try no more naïve experiments with love.”

Such is the wisdom of Holy Saturday.

But the story doesn’t end there.