On Easter morning
I’m gonna imagine
Stephon Clark
gets back up.
I’m gonna imagine
he’s one of many.
I’m gonna imagine
fear and great joy.
I’m gonna imagine
the powers that be
quaking in their boots
when they realize
they were wrong
when they thought
they could bury
the truth.
Gladius, from Wikimedia Commons
Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)
Actually Jesus
in the first place
this proverb
applies to mercenaries and criminals
not regular normal
law-abiding men like me
who make their living in legal ways.
We know the only way to stop a bad guy with a sword
is a good guy with a sword.
And obviously
I’m a good guy.
You don’t understand context.
In the second place
what is a sword anyway?
How is it different from a long dagger?
People can kill
with sharpened sticks,
bows and slings, poison and flames.
Do you know the difference
between a gladius and a rapier?
And if you don’t know the difference
and if you can’t speak with expertise
about tangs and weight ratios
or the finer points of pommels and hilts
or the art of flaying a man’s skin
or piercing a woman’s belly
or cleaving a child’s skull
then who are you to talk to me about swords?
You lack the authority.
In the third place Jesus
what would a world be
without swords?
Will you use a plowshare to fight the Romans
when they come to take your sword?
Will you use a pruning hook
when the bad men come
to rape your wife
and kill your children?
Jesus, if we beat our swords into farm implements,
how will we defend our homes and farms
from the bad men with swords?
Will we be men at all?
You don’t understand the way the world works.
In the fourth place Jesus
who are you
to take that tone with us?
A real messiah would say
“Take up your sword”
not “take up your cross.”
It’s easy for you
Son of God
who can just pop up from the grave
when death isn’t convenient.
For the rest of us worm food
death is permanent.
So don’t you dare lecture us
about obsessing over the length of swords
when we’re down here facing the tyrrany
of tiny men
with big swords.
You lack humility.
In conclusion Jesus
you should have said
“all who
do not
take up the sword
will die by the sword.”
All that Sunday school stuff
about peace on earth
about a little child leading them—
nobody down here believes it.
Real Christians believe the opposite.
And if they do believe you
they are just victims
waiting for us powerful men
who understand the way the world works
to defend them
or exploit them
So go ahead and heal
all the ears
of all the victims of violence you want
Because those of us who matter
aren’t listening to you.
References:
Matthew 26:47-56
Luke 22:47-53
Micah 4:3-4
Isaiah 11:6-9
Still from “Slaughterbots,” a Youtube video by autonomousweapons.org
Here are two linked videos. This one is fake and terrifying. The other is real and gee-whiz cool. It is possible for the same reality to be cool and terrifying at the same time.
I believe this technology is inevitable. We need to be planning for how to control it, defend against it, and hold people accountable for its abuse. Killer bots have already been used in law enforcement. Integrating AI into the use of killer bots is as predictable as self-driving cars.
We even know how it will be sold: tired of police shooting unarmed black men? Let robots make the decisions instead.
Of course, you can hear that last sentence several different ways.
I know that there are plenty of public conversations about ethics we’re not having, because we are overwhelmed with the kleptocrat-in-chief’s rejection of all previous norms. But technological progress isn’t stopping for humanity to have remedial lessons on conflicts of interest, consent, nepotism, and civil behavior. It is scary to think of him having access to nuclear weapons. It is scarier to think of people like him using this technology.
Autonomous killer bots should also figure into debates about the second amendment. Should private citizens have access to swarming armed drones? Why not?
It is almost quaint how apologists for the NRA think they will be able to stave off next-generation tyrants with their guns. Ballots, not bullets, are the way we fight tyranny. It requires us to have a prophetic imagination that allows us to think beyond the next election cycle, and to see how our technology affects our behavior over decades. It requires us to make decisions as a community and to recognize that there are some things we have to address for the common good.
Killer bots already exist. Our moral imagination has to catch up.
[edit]: I remain in awe of how Star Trek predicted so many technologies and the social questions they would raise. Remember this episode?
I have a hard time hearing this passage (John 11:47-53) without inserting the deep bass voice of Caiaphas from the 1973 movie: “For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die.” (The scene from the 2000 film is also good).
So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to put him to death.
While they are often portrayed as the bad guys, I have sympathy for chief priests. They are, after all, acting for the good of the many. Like the rest of their people, they are under the heel of Roman oppression, and don’t want to see a Roman crackdown. Seventy years later, the Roman crackdown will come anyway. According to Josephus, the Romans will crucify so many people they will run out of wood; every tree within twenty miles will be cut down in the mass executions. The chief priests have good reason to be afraid.
On the other hand, Roman oppression has been pretty good to them. They live in the nicest part of Jerusalem. They have money and social status. They have some extra incentives to throw Jesus under the bus to maintain The System.
Over the last several years, as I’ve gotten more involved with various justice-oriented organizations, I’ve heard this expression quite a bit. To be thrown under the bus means to have a supposed ally or friend act in a way that lets a larger force crush you. Throwing someone under the bus means cooperating with the forces of systemic injustice, to leave someone hanging or standing alone when you should stand by them. It’s a good metaphor for acting in such a way that lets you off the hook for someone else’s misfortune. You can be complicit in injustice simply by standing back, giving a nudge, or actively “throwing” someone under the wheels of injustice.
The chief priests conspire to turn Jesus over to the Romans because systems of power evolve ways to divide and conquer. This is why slave masters appointed some slaves to be overseers. It is why there will never be any lack of anti-feminist women in political leadership, and why racism is rampant among gay white men. There’s a lot more I’d like to say about both the betrayal mindset and the hypersensitivity of activists in justice-seeking organizations, but I’ll leave it for later—mainly because in terms of social hierarchy, I’m a lot closer to the chief priests than I’d like to admit. If Jesus showed up talking about destroying Christianity the way he talked about destroying the temple, plenty of clergy would be happy to see someone else shut him up—permanently.
The irony that John points out is that Caiaphas has no idea of the truth he speaks. He and his privileged few plan to throw Jesus under the Roman bus—and by doing so he will reveal God’s solidarity with those who are scattered and betrayed, who will ultimately bring them together.
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
This upcoming Sunday is Palm Sunday, and one of the lectionary texts will be Mark 11:1-11. This story is often referred to as “the triumphal entry.”
When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.
I love Mark’s ending to the parade, which is a bit anticlimactic. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus charges straight into the temple and starts flipping tables over, but in Mark, Jesus is late, and the crowds have already gone home. He comes back the next day to “cleanse” the temple. Mark’s version reveals two things: First, Jesus wasn’t always on time. Second the whole event is staged.
We also have this interesting dialogue about procuring the colt. Had Jesus already made arrangements behind the scenes? Or did he simply have divine foreknowledge about the colt? I suspect Jesus has engineered this confrontation.
I did a Google image search for “triumphal entry,” which is how people often refer to this story. There were the usual classical paintings of Jesus on a donkey, but there were also these:
When we call this story “the triumphal entry,” we frame the event in terms of a conquest or occupation, sometimes for the sake of contrast: Jesus is a peaceful messiah, not a military one. I don’t think that’s wrong, but the title isn’t in the text. I do think the writer is calling to mind the story of 2 Maccabees 10, in which Judas Maccabeus (“Judah the Hammer”) retakes Jerusalem from “the foreigners” and purifies the temple. There are clearly revolutionary and militant overtones, but there always are in protests. And that’s how I frame this story: a planned protest, an “occupation” more like Occupy Wall Street, and a “triumphal entry” more like the Civil Rights marches.
This story is geographical. There is a lot of movement from Jesus’ base of operations in Bethany to the dangerous religious and military stronghold of Jerusalem. When Jesus commandeers a colt, marches into Jerusalem, and throws out the moneychangers as if he and his followers own the place, they are occupying a contested public space.
So if you have a problem with public protests and marches, you wouldn’t actually like Jesus very much.
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
Today I want to share one short line from Mark 14:27:
And Jesus said to them, “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’
What does it mean for Jesus to refer to himself as a “shepherd?”
First, “shepherd” is a metaphor for king.
Alan Storey makes a point I think the church needs to hear: we’re confused about leadership, and our words demonstrate it. In the church, we call clergy “pastor,” and the word “pastor” means shepherd, but the Bible does not use the word “shepherd” to describe clergy. The word “shepherd” is applied to kings. Although I carry the title “pastor” and talk about “pastoral care,” it’s always against the background that this metaphor is basically wrong. Whenever the Bible uses the metaphor of shepherd, it refers to a king or a national leader (1 Kings 22, Psalm 78:70-72, Isaiah 44:27-28). Moses and David are the most famous leader-shepherds. They are not—and this is important—priests.
Shepherd in Jableh, Syria, from Wikimedia Commons by
Victor.ibrahiem.photographe
Storey says that the ancient Israelites understood that national leaders were responsible for the well-being of the people. Most of those shepherd-kings had paid advisors called prophets (and some, like Amos, who did the job for free). The role of the prophet was to hold the shepherds accountable. The church has lost its prophetic voice because it has essentially let national leaders off the hook and assigned “shepherding” to clergy, claiming that it is the church’s business to take care of the poor. But prophets like Ezekiel made it clear that part of the job of shepherds (national leaders) was to make sure the fat sheep (the rich) didn’t take resources from the starving sheep (the poor). It is not surprising that today, the rich and powerful prefer a society in which the role of “shepherd” is shifted to an apolitical and impotent church, and the role of the prophet goes unfulfilled.
Second, Jesus shows he’s already thinking of himself as a king.
(The other place Jesus refers to himself as a shepherd is in John, where he calls himself “The Good Shepherd,” but describes other leaders as “hired hands” and “thieves.”)
Here in Mark, as Jesus prepares his disciples to face his arrest, trial, and execution, he’s taking on the role of a king who is under siege from an enemy power. In the very next chapter, Pilate will ask Jesus directly, “Are you the King of the Jews?” He will be referred to as king in a mocking way by Pilate, the Roman soldiers, and the sign over his head.
This was a familiar story to Israel and Judah, who saw their kings humiliated and executed and their people scattered by the Assyrians and Babylonians. Jesus indicates that he embodies Israel’s history in his captivity and execution. Like Israel, he will be treated unjustly by his captors:
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future? (Isaiah 53:8)
But also, like Israel and Judah, he and his followers will be reunited and restored. “Who could have imagined his future?” The scattered sheep will be gathered again, and the Good Shepherd will take over.
I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice. (Ezekiel 34:16)
I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. (Ezekiel 34:23)
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
Does God break God’s promises? Is God unfair?
I’m sure most believers will reflexively reply, “No.” I think it’s important to linger over the discomfort of this question, because it’s a central problem in the Bible. Theologians call the problem of struggling with God’s justice “theodicy.” Job is probably the most explicit in his struggle with the goodness and reliability of God, but plenty of other authors raise the question.
Before we get to today’s text (in Jeremiah), it’s important to get a little history: Israel and Judah were destroyed by invading armies (in 722 BCE and 587 BCE). Most of the prophets attributed their nations’ destruction and exile to the judgment of God. They said that the Israelites and Judeans had turned away from God to idols, or had failed to do justice to the poor. Invasion and exile was God’s punishment.
Tissot’s 1896 depiction of the Babylonian Exile, “Flight of the Prisoners”
But what about all the people who hadn’t worshiped idols? What about the children who were collateral damage, who were “dashed against the rocks” (Psalm 137:9) by invaders? Biblical authors struggle with a God who would do such things. This is why Abraham chides God: “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25). This is also why the same scene plays out with God and Jonah, but with roles reversed: now God reprimands Jonah: “…should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11).
The standard history I was taught in Sunday school was this: Israel sinned and turned away from God, so God punished them with invasion and exile. This is a stunning attribution of violence to a God of love. But there are plenty of voices in the Bible who object to this version of history. One of my favorites is in Psalm 44.
You have made us like sheep for slaughter,
and have scattered us among the nations.
You have sold your people for a trifle,
demanding no high price for them…All this has come upon us,
yet we have not forgotten you,
or been false to your covenant. [my emphasis]
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way,
yet you have broken us in the haunt of jackals,
and covered us with deep darkness.If we had forgotten the name of our God,
or spread out our hands to a strange god,
would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
Because of you we are being killed all day long,
and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
“God, you are being unfair!” says the Psalmist, before concluding, “Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep!?” This is pretty gutsy stuff to say to God, reminiscent of Elijah taunting the priests of Ba’al: “perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (1 Kings 18:27).
It’s important to hear this background rather than the trite moralizing we’re often taught in church that trivializes oppression, the trauma of war, and human suffering. The question “does God break God’s promises” is a question about history. It is a gut-wrenching “why?” asked of the universe. It’s important to acknowledge this pain before hearing the lectionary text for this Sunday from Jeremiah:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humans and the seed of animals. And just as I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring evil, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the Lord. In those days they shall no longer say: “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” But all shall die for their own sins; the teeth of everyone who eats sour grapes shall be set on edge. The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (Jeremiah 31:27-34).
Jeremiah, like other prophets, is struggling with the justice of God. While he accepts the standard interpretation of history, he says God is about to do a new thing, something which is both more just more profound. Rather than punishing children for the crimes of their parents, God will evaluate us on a case-by-case basis. Rather than punishing a nation for the sins of its leaders, God will have an intimate covenant with all people, “from the least to the greatest.”
I don’t think Jeremiah’s answer satisfies the problem of God’s justice, but he makes a major theological shift: God will forge a new, more humane, and more personal relationship with human beings. God is doing something new.
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
The upcoming lectionary text for Sunday contains one of my favorite metaphors:
Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be.
(John 12:24-26)
We say the bit about wheat falling to the ground and dying during the funeral liturgy. The seed metaphor has been stated beautifully by poets, activists, and musicians: “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”
A biologist would point out that a grain of wheat doesn’t technically die, but it’s a lovely description of the way we bury something in order to create more of it. Jesus lays the symbolism on thick, here: what he is doing will be replicated many times over. He will die, and create a movement. The members of this movement will do the same. All of this illustrates the love-it-and-lose-it paradox: that we only find meaning and purpose outside of ourselves. Our lives are fulfilled when we realize our lives are not the most important thing. We find our selves when we lose our selves for a greater purpose.
The “hate/love” language can be difficult for modern ears, but it was a staple of ancient rhetoric. Modern folks are also more aware of two great distortions of this teaching. The first is a social distortion: the church has sometimes used doormat theology to oppress others. It has said, “You should hate your life so you must accept unfair treatment. You are a sinner and deserve hell, so be grateful for what you get.” The second is a personal distortion: individuals use passive-aggressive selflessness to shame and humiliate others. In many toxic relationships, someone plays the martyr or hero. Both of these distortions, social and personal, involve self-deception and sleight-of-hand. We can use the language of selflessness to massage our own egos or build our own power.
It helps to place the metaphor in context: Jesus’ revelation about his identity and character. He ties it to the movement he births, he describes it in terms of a cosmic battle with the “prince of this world,” and he restates one of John’s favorite themes: that those who follow Jesus will be with him. If we give ourselves in love to others and to God, we will recognize Jesus is with us the whole way. Jesus says, “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. ” Jesus is about to voluntarily walk into a cosmic conflict with the forces of evil and oppression that will play itself out in his very body, and although it is terrifying, he is more alive than ever.
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
There are several references in the Lenten readings to Ol’ Scratch and temptation:
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
(Ephesians 2:1-3)
I keep a folder of hate mail that people send me informing me that I’m going to hell (in loving, Christian terms, of course), so I understand why some progressive Christians are allergic to the language Paul uses above. “Following the desires of flesh and senses” sounds like Puritan condemnation of sex, chocolate, beer, and dancing, and “the ruler of the power of the air” like fundamentalist obsession with the devil.
By the way, the Greek words for “trespass” and “sin” here literally mean “falling down” and “missing the mark.” In the Greek philosophy in which Paul was steeped, the passions were like wild horses which, without a skilled driver in the chariot, would gallop to destruction. The will, human reason, was the driver who directed the passions toward their proper goal. Paradoxically, we are not truly free if we give our passions free reign. Seeking life, we become dead. Our passions become our masters.
But Paul makes a break with Greek philosophy here. We do not overcome the passions by exerting the will or employing our reason. We are made alive by the grace of Jesus Christ:
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
(Ephesians 2:4-6)
Lent is not about controlling our passions with willpower, but opening ourselves to grace.
It is easier to believe than ever, I think, that there are forces of systemic evil in this world led by ego-centric human passions: xenophobia, greed, racism, and superficial status. “Children of wrath” seems apt. Paul says all of us were once this way, immature in our actions and thinking, following a “spirit of disobedience,” a power as invisible and pervasive as the air.
What sets us free is grace. It is not earned or achieved by force of will. There is nothing to be smug about. So, if we’re inclined to tsk-tsk at the state of the world, we remember that the only thing that will save us is not our own enlightenment or force of will, but the action of God in Jesus Christ.
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
It’s not the most famous wilderness story, but it’s the one Jesus references when he talks with a religious leader:
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
(John 3:14-18)
The story is that when the Hebrews were wandering in the wilderness, they had a poisonous snake problem. God instructed Moses to make a bronze snake-on-a-stick, and when people would get bitten by poisonous snakes, they could look at the snake and not die.
The old story from the wilderness wanderings of the Hebrews depends on a kind of sympathetic magic, a bit like drinking “the hair of the dog that bit you.” Somehow just looking at the image of the snake would mitigate the effects of snake venom.
The author of John uses this as an analogy for Jesus. Somehow, looking at Jesus on the cross and understanding him as the son of God mitigates the effect… of what? Apparently we’ve been bitten and poisoned by something, and seeing it exposed and lifted up saves us from death.
In both stories, something scary is transformed into medicine. Many people have a fear of snakes and react to them with horror and revulsion, so it is counter-intuitive to make the image of a snake into a healing symbol. Likewise, the cross was a form of Roman propaganda, a tool of oppression that terrorized occupied people. But seeing the Son of Man lifted up in this way also becomes a healing symbol. We need fear neither snakes nor human evil. God can save us from such poison.
Many Christians focus on the personal pain and torture that Jesus endured on the cross, as though the redemptive act is made efficacious by how much he suffers. But in this passage Jesus seems to be saying that it is in being lifted up, and in being seen and believed that God saves the world from death. God has no interest in killing, only in saving us from our self-imposed systems of death and power.
Twice a week during Lent (usually Tuesday and Thursday) I do a short reflection on a Bible verse from a devotional and social justice perspective. You can sign up to get a prompt via SMS here:
You can give online here to support the ministry of Saint Junia.
Dave Barnhart 
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