Violence creates such a storm. The violence of death. The violence of battering fists. The violence of being used or abandoned by a person or a system or an organization. The violence of rejection and hateful language. The violence of vicious lies and cold wars. The violence of the murder of a loved one.
We feel annihilated, in shock at first. And then anger sets in, the storm of anger that swamps the fragile boat of our consciousness and takes over. We want to destroy! To kill! Because we, or someone we know, are the righteous victim. How dare they! How dare they do what they did! Tears streaming down our faces, we pound walls, throw things. How we wish the person who did this, whom we hate! were in front of us to feel the fullness of our wrath and hatred.
Our boat of consciousness plummets down to settle at the bottom of a black, lightless ocean, the fragments of who we were floating on the surface, no longer recognizable. We no longer know who we are. We no longer remember who we were.
We yell various things in God's general direction.
"I hate you, God!"
Or - "Where are you, God!"
Or - "God help me!"
Or "Even you abandon me, God!"
Or - "Why did you allow this to happen, God?"
Where can we go from here, when we lie at the bottom of a black, lightless ocean, fragments of ourselves, hapless wreckage, floating disconnected across the top of the waves?
We feel dead. In fact, part of us is dead. The part, the innocent part, that thought that if we prayed, God would always take care of us. God, the Lord of Armies, would fight all our wars and we would be the conquerors. God would part the Red Sea of Injustice and we would enter the Promised Land, unscathed.
But maybe that part of us had to die. So we could discover who we are. So we could discover who God is.
God does deliver us from our enemies. But not the enemies we think.
God came to us in the Person of Jesus, who was not a political leader or a military man.
God in Jesus shares in our brokenness and humiliation. God in Jesus has been helpless.
God in Jesus is the Perfect Victim dying a criminal's death on the cross. God cried out in Jesus "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" in a perfect storm of helpless physical weakness, brokenness, and pain as his earthly life was slowly being annihilated.
Jesus did not suffer, helpless and broken, and then die to deliver us from suffering and death. Jesus suffered and died because he is the Way and the Truth and the Life. He is the Way who prepares us for life, because every life includes suffering and death. He is the Truth because he showed us that we can endure storms of physical violence, verbal violence, anger, fear, injustice, and abandonment by holding fast to him. He is our Life because he showed us by his example that we all die many many kinds of violent inner deaths many times, and after each death we can find new life in Him - and finally the Life we were created for after our physical death, - unity with Him forever.
The enemies that assail us that Jesus promises to deliver and free us from are: fear, resentment, selfishness, human respect, cowardice, pride, and hatred. These are our true enemies, the enemies that can kill the soul. Jesus showed us that, in his Spirit, we can conquer these enemies even in the throes of torture and death.
Jesus, the victim who conquered death, will empower us to put our fear to death and to be able to stand up for justice, to speak the truth without violence, to protest, to demand change, to speak out for our dignity if that's what our situation asks of us. Because Jesus continues to die in the oppressed and asks us to stand up for him and with him for human dignity. Not for vengeance. For freedom and flourishing for all.
God, in Jesus, is the Perfect Victim who rejected resentful victimhood as we understand it.
Because Jesus, looking at the Roman soldiers who crucified him, the leaders of his church who failed to understand and accept him and who turned him over to the Roman authorities, and the fickle crowd who praised him one day and called for his crucifixion the next, - this Jesus said
"Father, forgive them, they don't know what they're doing."
And we want to yell in our righteous anger HOW DID THEY NOT KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING?!!!
How did those people who conspired to kill Jesus not know what they were doing?
How did that man not know what he was doing when he beat or raped or killed his daughter or his neighbor or the child he kidnapped?
How did that co-worker not know what she was doing when she deliberately lied about me?
How did that churchman not know what he was doing when he told me I was excommunicated simply for getting a divorce? Pope Francis says that I'm not excommunicated!
How did my Boss not know what he was doing when he sexually harassed me and then fired me when I wouldn't play along?
How did my classmates not know what they were doing when they beat me up because I was honest and told them that I'm gay?
How did that terrorist not know what he was doing when he murdered people in New York City, Boston, or Orlando?
HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT, JESUS? HOW CAN YOU SAY "FATHER, FORGIVE THEM, THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING"? HOW CAN YOU LET THEM OFF THE HOOK THAT WAY?
Jesus meant that the human mind and heart are strange, perilous, complicated territories. Only God understands anyone's mind and heart. And God in Jesus knew and knows that all of both know and don't know what we're doing at any time of the night or day. We frail, blinded humans rarely know the full reality and consequences of what we say and do. We walk around in a fog of not completely knowing ourselves or each other, of being captives of systems and ideologies and addictions and human respect. All of us are blind, blind to our own thoughts and passions, blind to how we've been affected and conditioned by our upbringing, blind to how fear and pride and ambition cause us to compartmentalize our lives, blind to our motives for the way we treat and mistreat each other. We sin, and then lie to ourselves and say that we don't sin.
Jesus knew that possibly those soldiers crucified him because they were afraid they'd be punished or lose their jobs or their lives if they didn't. That afterwards they'd go back to the barracks and visit with their friends as if they hadn't just committed murder. That these same soldiers and Jewish leaders and crowd members could conveniently forget what they'd done and go home and be tender with their children and love their wives. That's the horror and sadness of sin and the way we compartmentalize our lives. That's the way we lie to ourselves about how we annihilate each other's hearts and souls by careless words and actions. Yet Jesus absorbed all this violence into himself through compassionate, forgiving love. And absorbed ours as well. Because only love can absorb and defuse and transfigure the violence of sin. God's justice is God's mercy. Merciful love travels beyond justice to say "You have another chance."
Only Jesus can say to us "I understand your anger and pain. I understand that you feel dead inside - because I have been tortured and died. I understand why you rage because you cannot feel my Father and your Father's Presence in your life right now. I absorb into my heart your hatred for the one who has wounded you and your loved ones. I absorb into my heart your anger and hate for our Father. What do I want from you right now? Just to hold you. To let you cry. To let you scream and rant in the anger that wants to protect you. And by holding you, to slowly heal you."
ONLY THE WHOLLY AND HOLY BROKEN ONE CAN HEAL US AND PUT THE PIECES OF OURSELVES BACK TOGETHER AGAIN. ONLY HE CAN HOLD US IN DEATH TO CARRY US TO NEW LIFE.
Jesus died and then overcame victimhood by rising from the dead. And then, at Emmaus, the dead Jesus came back to explain to his grieving followers why he had died - to set us free. To free us from resentful victimhood, because every time we become dead inside, we too also can rise to new life. To set us free from unforgiveness, because we can acknowledge the reality, the enormity, of the awful thing that has been done to us and still also acknowledge that all of us are motivated by fears and selfishness and passions that sometimes seem beyond our control. Only when we can accept all humanity within ourselves can we be free enough to protest non-violently, to stand up for ourselves and others free of a desire for vengeance and name-calling.
Jesus, the Face of Non-Violence and merciful love, shows us clearly and forever that God is never the Author of Violence. Human beings are. Every day. We can never throw violence into God's face as something that comes from Him. God is the One Who overcame violence and shows us how we can as well. Any time a Church or organization or system uses the Name of God to legitimize violence or exclusion of any kind, these human beings are misrepresenting God. Any time any of us seeks the violence of vengeance and getting even in the Name of God Who is Justice, we misrepresent God, who in Jesus is the Forgiving Victim.
Rising from the dead takes a long time. But death and life are part of nature.
A caterpillar "dies" in a cocoon to be transfigured into a butterfly. The caterpillar had to "die" to become a butterfly.
Leaves have to die to become life-giving mulch.
Animals die to give life to one another in the hunt.
Ice melts to water the ground.
Winter dies to give place to Spring.
Fire devastates wide swaths of land so that new life can flourish.
We are baptized into the death of Jesus - all the multiple deaths he endured: physical exhaustion, because he saw the people were sheep without a shepherd so he chose to teach and heal them; pain, because of his own leaders rejecting him; grief over the death of his dear friend Lazarus; righteous anger because of the way his religion's leaders used and abused the people; the pain of being misunderstood because he ate with sinners and befriended and affirmed women and Samaritans and lepers and the possessed, all the excluded ones; and finally the pain of betrayal, abandonment by his friends, torture and death. We too will die from pain and injustice, betrayal and abandonment, and hopefully endure Jesus' other "deaths" that stemmed from his courageously living from a place of love, acceptance, and forgiveness.
Baptized into his death, living united with him, we too will live again after each violent storm.
Slowly we float off the black, lightless ocean floor. Slowly the fragments of ourselves strewn across the waves come together again. But the inner geography of our hearts, minds, and souls has shifted. And it's not because of us. It's because of God within us. We are beginning again to live. Live able to slowly but surely let go of hatred and a desire for vengeance. Live able to look more honestly at our own broken souls, capable of violence. Live able to embrace new ways of living and loving and being at peace and flourishing. Live finally free to work courageously and compassionately for justice. Live realizing eventually that if we had not lived this death and broken into a million pieces, we would not have lived this new life.