MERRY CHRISTMAS. WAR IS ABOLISHED! BY BRIAN ZAHND

Isaiah had a dream, a God-inspired dream.
Isaiah was a poet, a God-intoxicated poet.
He had a Messianic dream that he turned into a prophetic poem.
It goes like this—

In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore.
-Isaiah 2:2–4

Swords turned into plowshares.
Spears into pruning hooks.
Tanks turned into tractors.
Missile silos into grain silos.
The study of war abandoned for learning the ways of the Lord.
Instead of academies where we learn to make war,
there will be universities where we learn to wage peace.
The cynic will laugh (for lack of imagination), but this is Isaiah’s vision.

And every Christmas we borrow another of Isaiah’s poems to celebrate the birth of the child who makes these dreams come true—

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who live in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined…
For all the boots of the tramping solidiers
and all the uniforms stained in blood
shall be burned as fuel for fire.
For unto us a child is born,
unto us a son given;
the government shall be upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His government shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
-Isaiah 9:2, 5–7

Isaiah in his prophetic poems frames the Messianic hope like this:

A Prince of Peace will establish a new kind of government, a government characterized by ever-increasing peace. Weapons of war will be transformed into instruments of agriculture. At last the nations will find their way out of the darkness of endless war into the light of God’s enduring peace.
This is Isaiah’s hope. Christians take Isaiah’s hope and make a daring claim: Jesus is that Prince of Peace! Jesus is the one who makes Isaiah’s dreams come true. From the day of Pentecost to the present this is what Christians have claimed.

But then a doom-obsessed dispensationalist performs an eschatological sleight of hand and takes the hope away from us. On one hand they admit that Jesus is the Prince of Peace who has come, but on the other hand they say his peace is not for now…it’s only for when Jesus comes back again. Bait and switch. Yes, swords are to become plowshares…but not today. For now plowshares become swords; but in our day, it’s war, war, war! They abuse Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century by always applying it to the latest contemporary geopolitical events. They replace the hope of peace with an anticipation of war! They find a way to make war a hopeful sign.
Think about that for a moment! And here is the worst irony: It was precisely because Jerusalem failed to recognize Jesus as Isaiah’s Prince of Peace right there and then, that they rushed headlong into a war that ended with their own destruction!

End-time prophecy “experts” keep trying to force the same mistake on us in our day. We should refuse. I am a conscientious objector to the doom-obsessed, hyper-violent, war-must-come, pillage-the-Bible-for-the-worst-we-can-find eschatology of Hal Lindsey and his tribe. We must reject that kind of warmongering misinterpretation of Scripture. Jesus doesn’t call us to give a “prophetic interpretation” to the latest war and rumor of war. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and lead the way out of the darkness of retributive violence into the light of Christian reconciliation. But we haven’t done a very good job of it. So it’s time we started believing what we say every Christmas:

The Prince of Peace has come!

Isaiah says that in the last days the nations will come to Mount Zion and learn the peaceful ways of the Lord. That’s when weapons of war will become implements of agriculture. Well, let’s believe it! The Apostle Peter said on the day of Pentecost that the last days have arrived. (see Acts 2:14f) The writer of Hebrews said that in Christ we have come to Mount Zion. (see Hebrews 12:22f) Obviously, with the passing of two thousand years it should be clear that Peter didn’t mean the end of time was imminent, rather he meant exactly what Jesus himself had been saying — that the waiting was over, the time was fulfilled, and all that the prophets had foretold was coming to pass in the present. The writer of Hebrews means that what Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets had described as the nations flowing to Mount Zion to learn the way of peace has been inaugurated with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.

Let me say it clearly: If you are waiting for something to happen before you beat your sword into a plowshare and your spear into a pruning hook, you can stop waiting! If you confess that Jesus is the Prince of Peace foretold by the prophets, you can start being a peacemaker…today! You don’t need to wait for anything else. You shouldn’t wait for anything else!

As followers of the Prince of Peace are we ready to bid farewell to Mars? We must be. The god of war has had his day. His day ended on the first Easter. In his death and resurrection, Christ has abolished war. Christ made it clear on the cross that war will no longer be the way the world is transformed. The cross exposes the use of violent force as a shameful practice to be renounced. Yes, Jesus has abolished war. The King of Kings won his kingdom without war. Jesus proved there is another way.

Jesus is the other way. The question, “what are you willing to die for?” is not the same question as “what are you willing to kill for?” Jesus was willing to die for that which he was unwilling to kill for.

Jesus won his kingdom by dying, not killing. Ruling the world by killing was buried with Christ.

When Christ was raised on the third day he did not resurrect war. With his resurrection the world is given a new trajectory, an eschatology toward peace.

Merry Christmas!
War is over!

BZ

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE>

Who Needs A Gun?

[EXCERPTS FROM THE ARTICLE AT OPINIONATER BY GARY GUTTING]

FULL ARTICLE HERE>

Our discussions typically start from the right to own a gun, go on to ask how, if at all, that right should be limited, and wind up with intractable disputes about the balance between the right and the harm that can come from exercising it. I suggest that we could make more progress if each of us asked a more direct and personal question: Should I own a gun?

Finally, there’s the idea that citizens need guns so they can, if need be, oppose the force of a repressive government. Those who think there are current (or likely future) government actions in this country that would require armed resistance are living a paranoid fantasy. The idea that armed American citizens could stand up to our military is beyond fantasy.

Once we balance the potential harms and goods, most of us — including many current gun owners — don’t have a good reason to keep guns in their homes. This conclusion follows quite apart from whether we have a right to own guns or what restrictions should be put on this right. Also, the conclusion derives from what makes sense for each of us as individuals and so doesn’t require support from contested interpretations of statistical data.

I entirely realize that this line of thought will not convince the most impassioned gun supporters, who see owning guns as fundamental to their way of life.

It’s one thing to be horrified at gun violence. It’s something else to see it as a meaningful threat to your own existence. Our periodic shock at mass shootings and gang wars has little effect on our gun culture because most people don’t see guns as a particular threat to them. This is why opposition to gun violence has lacked the intense personal commitment of those who see guns as essential to their safety — or even their self-identity.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE HERE>

NO MORE GUN SILENCE

PART 2: Finding God In Your Enemy

By Thomas Crisp

Corroboration from other parts of Jesus's teaching and other parts of Scripture

Let me try now to get a bit more of Jesus's teaching and other bits of the New Testament before us to try to bolster my case that Jesus and other New Testament writers were understanding the love command in this way. We won't have time here, obviously, to go into depth.

I start with Matt 5: 38-42:

“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I tell you, don’t resist an evildoer. On the contrary, if anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. As for the one who wants to sue you and take away your shirt, let him have your coat as well.  And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to the one who asks you, and don’t turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

Note the first part: "you have heard it said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth". This just is the myth of redemptive violence: If someone visits violence on you, then you should visit it back on them. But not so, says Jesus. "Don't resist an evildoer," he says—or perhaps better, since the Greek verb here is often used in the New Testament to refer to armed conflict or revolution: "Don't violently resist an evildoer." Rather, if he slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other cheek to him; and if sues you for your shirt, give him your coat too, and if he forces you to go a mile, go with him two. To your enemy's violent attack, then, don't respond in kind; instead, return extravagantly generous love.

And Luke’s Luke 6: 27-36:

“But I say to you who listen: Love your enemies, do what is good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also. And if anyone takes away your coat, don’t hold back your shirt either. Give to everyone who asks you, and from one who takes your things, don’t ask for them back. Just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them.  If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.  If you do what is good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.  And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.”

It's interesting to note that the initial material in this Lukan passage—pray for those who mistreat you, offer the other cheek to the one who hits you, offer your shirt to the one who takes your coat—finds difficult-to-miss parallels in Luke's depiction of Jesus's crucifixion, in which we find Jesus praying for those crucifying him, offering his other cheek to those who slap him, and giving up both his coat and his shirt. Jesus taught his disciples to do these things, and then modeled them en route to the cross.

Next there is Luke 9, where we find Jesus rebuking James and John for wanting to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan city who refused to welcome them, and according to some manuscripts, exclaiming, "You don't know what kind of spirit you are of; the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them."

And Luke 22, where Jesus rebukes a disciple who takes up a sword in his defense and heal  the soldier injured by the sword; and Matthew 26, where Jesus rejects the option of calling down an army of angels to fight against his enemies.

All of this is the sort of teaching you'd expect if Jesus were interpreting the love command in the radical way I've suggested—as enjoining love even to one's enemies. All of this counts as corroborating evidence of that read of the command.

Likewise Paul in Romans 12:16-21:

“Bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. … Do not repay anyone evil for evil; consider what is good before all people. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people.  Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

And 1 Peter, Chapter 2:21-23

“For to this you were called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example for you to follow in his steps. He committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth.  When he was maligned, he did not answer back; when he suffered, he threatened no retaliation, but committed himself to God who judges justly.”

All of this is the sort of teaching you'd expect if the New Testament writers were interpreting the love command in the radical way I've suggested—as enjoining love even on one's enemies. All of this counts as corroborating evidence of that read of the command.

Objections

That we should love our enemies, our real enemies—those who seek to harm us or our loved ones—is, I grant, counterintuitive. For many, it's obvious—as obvious as anything gets—that the proper response to someone trying to harm me or mine is violence, lethal violence if necessary. "Something must be wrong with your read of the love command," you might say, "because it has implications that are flatly and obviously crazy."

Let me look next at a couple reasons you might have in mind for rejecting the read of the love command I am putting forward.

So many people can't be wrong!

First, there's the fact that the myth of redemptive violence seems so obvious to so many people. It’s a pervasive and deeply held moral conviction for so many people. It can't be, surely, that so many are wrong!

Well, it wouldn't be the first time. In the Europe of the 1920's and 30's, it was a tremendously widespread and deeply held moral conviction of millions of Christian people that people of Jewish descent were somehow inferior, of less worth or dignity than other human beings. In the America of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century, it was a tremendously widespread and deeply held moral conviction of millions of Christian people that people of African descent were somehow inferior, of less worth or dignity than other human beings.

A tragic fact of the human condition is that we humans are capable of mass moral delusion, of being deeply wrong, en masse, about matters of deep moral import. I suggest that if Jesus's read of the love command is to be believed, humanity's widespread embrace of the myth of redemptive violence is another of those areas where we have been deeply wrong, en masse, about matters of deep moral import.

The Doormat Objection

Next, there is what you might call the doormat objection. Surely Jesus did not want us to be passive doormats, to simply roll over and let evil people walk all over us and our loved ones.

That is repugnant, cowardly, detestable, and makes us complicit in the crimes of the wicked; surely Jesus would not call us to that.

To which I reply, he most certainly would not and did not. The practice of enemy love to which Jesus called his followers is not a practice of passive acquiescence to evil and injustice. It is not a practice of being a doormat whilst evil people walk over us and our loved ones. There are two general and widespread responses to evil: (1) passive acquiescence (doing nothing); and (2) violent resistance (fighting it with violence of some sort).

As New Testament scholar Walter Wink helpfully notes, Jesus was proposing and practicing a third way, a third kind of response to evil, which was neither passive acquiescence nor violent resistance to evil. Rather (and here I’ll put things in my own way, which is a bit different than Wink thinks of it), it was nonviolent resistance to evil and injustice employing these six weapons of the Rule of God:

1. courageous truth telling: publicly and prophetically speaking truth, in love, to power that oppresses, at personal risk to ourselves;

2. Noncooperation with evil: refusing to cooperate in any way with practices, structures, cultures, and systems of evil;

3. enemy love: seeking the inclusion of our enemies in shalom community, feeding them when they're hungry, protecting them from harm, always respecting their dignity;

4. self-suffering: willingly enduring suffering in our own persons as a means to the transformation of our enemies;

5. prayer: for our enemies, for their transformation, for their well-being; and

6. forgiveness: forgiving our enemies, whatever they do to us, over and over again.

 

Such is the way of resisting evil Jesus taught and modeled to his followers: he spoke public and prophetic truth to the powers that would oppress and marginalize; he refused to cooperate with a corrupted purity code and Temple system that marginalized and further bankrupted the struggling poor; he loved his enemies, seeking their good, their inclusion in shalom community; he was willing to take terrible suffering into this own body to see his enemies transformed and brought into shalom community; he prayed for them throughout; and forgave them as they crucified him. The early Christian movement understood this, followed Jesus in this way of the Cross, and in consequence, turned the entire Roman

Empire Upside Down.

A modern-day follower Jesus who understood the Way of the Cross as well as anyone in history was Martin Luther King Jr., who said:

“To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."

 

Such was the kind of resistance employed by the spectacularly successful Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, which, in the face of hatred, lynchings, and other murders, stood up to the evils of institutionalized racism in the United States and effected a sea change in our political and moral culture. The freedom riders and other civil rights workers of the era did not cowardly roll over and and passively acquiesce while evil men walked over their backs. No, they courageously spoke truth to power, refused to cooperate with evil, accepted suffering in hopes of winning over their oppressors, loved, prayed, and forgave.

This was their means of resistance, and it worked. Such was the kind of resistance employed by the Gandhian Indian independence movement against the British in the early 20th century, against similarly institutionalized racism, hatred, and violence. Gandhi, it turns out, was deeply impressed by Jesus's Way of the Cross.

It is said of Gandhi that he meditated on the Sermon on the Mount morning and evening, every day, for forty years. One of his political opponents in South Africa, against whom he had the deployed the Way of the Cross, said of Gandhi and his fellow Indians:

“I do not like your people, and do not care to assist them at all. But what am I to do? You help us in our days of need. How can we lay hands upon you? I often wish you took to violence like the English strikers, and then we would know at once how to dispose of you. But you will not injure even the enemy. You desire victory by self-suffering alone and never transgress your self-imposed limits of courtesy and chivalry. And that is what reduces us to sheer helplessness.”

No, this was no cowardly rolling over and being a doormat, whilst evil men perpetrated injustice. It was active resistance, in the Way of the Cross, a style of resistance that requires tremendous self-discipline, courage, and strategy. More, as history has shown again and again, it’s a remarkably effective style of resistance. From the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in the 1980s, to the overthrow of Hosni Mubarik's dictatorship in 2011, to the overthrow of several dictators in Latin America over the course of the 20th century, the Way of the Cross has been a remarkably effective means of resisting evil and injustice.

Closing

So far, then, a couple objections to reading Jesus in the way I’ve suggested. There are many more to consider. Had we more time, we’d want to talk about how to square this read of Jesus’s love command with the so-called Holy War texts in the Old Testament, where one seems to find Yahweh commanding the Israelites to war, even brutal war, war that seems genocidal in some instances. These texts don’t fit at all well with a read of the love command on which the proper treatment of our enemies is pursuit of their shalom! There is much to be said about this, but, alas, theology is long and life is short. I must hasten to my conclusion.

As in my last two talks, then, let me close our time together with an imaginative thought experiment, imagining together what it might look like to live some of this out.

So imagine that you eat together weekly with a group of thirty or so brothers and sisters in the way of Jesus: thirty or so black, white, and brown men, women, and children living in the teachings and practices of Jesus, some rich, some poor. You know each other well; see each other often. You pray, worship, study, and play together; together you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless. You live simply and give with abandon to those in need.

Together you practice the Way of the Cross, in several ways. Firstly, you practice radical forgiveness with one another. Which means, you don't punish one another for wrongs (for that is what forgiveness is, a decision not to punish). We humans tend to punish each other for wrongs, and this in two main ways: we attack (with anger, criticism, complaint, and harsher forms of violence) and, we withdraw (into cold, stony, angry silence). You make a practice of not doing these things to each other in response to wrongs.

You have developed a deep and pervasive habit of non-punishment. You speak truth to one another in love, sometimes hard truth, but you've given up attacking one another with anger, criticism, and complaint, and given up withdrawing from one another into cold silence. In this way, you practice the Way of the Cross daily. You practice the Way of the Cross in other creative ways: One of the homes in your community was recently broken into while the family was at home. Rather than attack their assailant, they shocked him by calmly introducing themselves, welcoming him into their home, offering him some coffee, and telling him he could do them whatever evil he would, they would return only good. After a long conversation, they asked what money he needed, gave it to him, and he left peaceably.

One of the members of your community was attacked recently by a deranged gunman who turned his gun on and killed himself. Though your community member wasn't killed, he was hurt badly, and he and his family have suffered as a result. Your community responded in the Way of the Cross, seeking out the gunman's widow and her children, bringing them food, praying with them, paying their mortgage for a time, and finally, inviting them to move into your neighborhood to be part of your community.

Several of you regularly engage in nonviolent protest at a local company engaged in abusive labor practice to its mostly immigrant labor force. You've spoken truth to the management of the company about its practices, practiced noncooperation by refusing to buy their products and encouraging others to follow, practiced self-suffering by willingly enduring arrest and jail several times, and practiced love and forgiveness by hosting the president of the company for dinner at your home, treating him with the utmost respect, kindness, and hospitality.

The practice of the Way of the Cross has, at times, been hard: it’s meant jail time for some of you; some have been beaten up, choosing to absorb violence rather than inflict it. There’s difficulty in it, to be sure, but there’s also a sweetness, as more and more you find a power of love surging up from within you, strengthening you, comforting you, enabling you to wear down your enemies with love.

This power is Christ in you, for as you practice his way—his teachings of familial community, radical simplicity and generosity, the Way of the Cross, and more—he comes more and more to dwell with you, abide with you, and strengthen you. More and more, you find yourself swimming in oceans of grace, drinking in the shalom of the inbreaking Rule of God. And it is good, deeply good, like a pearl of great price, just as Jesus said, worth selling all, giving all, to lay hold of.

May God bless us more and more with this pearl of great price. Thank you.

-Thomas Crisp

[VIDEO] FIGHT: A Christian Case for Nonviolence by Preston Sprinkle

(Part 8 of 9) The Final Eight Prophecies of the Nonviolent Jesus.

By Herb Montgomery

"Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’ For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.28–31)

We’ve reached the eighth and final prophecy of the last eight prophecies of Christ in Luke’s version of the Jesus story. We will be returning to the fifth prophecy in Luke 27 for the ninth and final part of this series, but this week we are looking at Jesus’ words to the women weeping for him on his bloody march to Golgotha. 

Jesus was just moments away from being crucified. Luke tells us that “a large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him.” (Luke 23.27) It is difficult to discern whether these women were sincerely weeping for Jesus and Jerusalem’s rejection of him or because of the dashing of their hopes that this Jesus would be their Messiah. Days earlier this same crowd had ushered Jesus into Jerusalem. There is much that is missed in the details of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem by today’s Christians who still trust in militaristic saviors in our current global climate. Here Jesus is borrowing imagery used by Rome itself. It must be remembered that Caesar himself was referred to as the “son of God.” He was called “the savior of the world.” It was through the victories of Rome (i.e., Caesar) that the political propaganda of Jesus’ day proclaimed that “peace on earth” would come. It was called the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome.” When Caesar would approach a city within the Roman Empire, emissaries from the city would go out to meet the dignitary and escort him on his way into their city. They would welcome Caesar and the “peace” that Roman occupation brought to their lives.

At a bare minimum, the fact that Jesus used the image of taking honor thought to be due only to the “Lord” Caesar would have been interpreted as a threat to Rome and could have been met with swift retribution. This is why “some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’” (Luke 19.39) They did not wish to bring on themselves the same retribution Caesar had recently exercised against the Galilean insurrectionists. (See Part 3.) As Jesus approached Jerusalem, the crowd was crying out,

“Blessed is the KING who comes in the name of the Lord!” and “PEACE in heaven and glory in the highest!” But what must be noticed first and foremost is how Jesus was turning this imagery on its head. Where Caesar would have been riding a warhorse in his triumphal entry, Jesus came riding on the foal of a colt, a young donkey. Jesus was doing two things here—providing his own nonviolent, enemy-embracing imagery in contrast to Rome’s violent warhorse imagery and pointing those present that day to the words of the prophet Zechariah:

“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your KING comes to you, righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a DONKEY, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will TAKE AWAY the CHARIOTS from Ephraim and the WARHORSES from Jerusalem, and the BATTLE BOW will be broken. He will proclaim PEACE to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” (Zechariah 9.9, emphasis added)

Jesus was trapping his audience once again in a catch-22.  To admit that Jesus was their “King,” as Jesus’ fulfillment of Zechariah’s words would indicate, would be to also accept this contrast between the imagery of violence used by Caesar riding a warhorse and the nonviolent Jesus riding a donkey. He was announcing a nonviolent, enemy-embracing “peace” revolution of love and enemy-forgiveness in which the “warhorse,” “war-chariot” and “battle bow” would all be laid down by Jerusalem so that the world could be healed of its violence rather than simply liberating Jerusalem from the Romans  and allowing it to become another unstoppable, violent, world-dominating, empire. That was the catch. To embrace Jesus as King was to embrace the path of nonviolence.

When Jerusalem came into view, Jesus stopped and wept. “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you PEACE—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come on you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19.42–44, emphasis added.)

We covered this passage in Part 6, but suffice it to say here that this is the same crowd in our prophecy this week, not shouting in joy, but weeping in lamentation. Crucifixion meant defeat. These people did not want to embrace their enemies, to forgive the Romans, or to learn from this prophet of nonviolence how to even love the Romans. No, they wanted a Messiah that would defeat the Romans and liberate Israel. (It should be noted that Rome would, by the fourth century, be defeated by the nonviolent revolution Jesus began, yet this was not the kind of defeat those in Jesus’ day desired.) For a Jewish Messiah to end up on a Roman cross meant that Rome had won. (Little did they realize that in reality Rome’s defeat was just beginning.) Jerusalem had rejected Jesus and his nonviolence in favor of a more militaristic hope of defeating Rome. Thus, Jesus proclaimed to those weeping:

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ then “‘they will say to the mountains, “fall on us!” And to the hills, “cover us!”’ (Luke 23.28–30)

Jerusalem, rather than learning to love its Roman enemies, would continue on the path of an eye for an eye, retribution, retaliation, and violence against Rome. And what would be the result? That path would end in its annihilation by Rome. Jesus here was quoting the prophet Hosea, who centuries before had spoken those same words referring to the way Israel would be destroyed by Assyria. “The high places of wickedness will be destroyed—it is the sin of Israel. Thorns and thistles will grow up and cover their altars. Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Cover us!’ and to the hills, ‘Fall on us!’ . . .  I will come against the wayward people to punish them; and nations shall be gathered against them when they are punished for their double iniquity.” (Hosea 10.8, 10) Jesus applied Hosea’s words to how Jerusalem would be destroyed by Rome.

“As the legions charged in [the Temple], neither persuasion nor threat could check their impetuosity: passion alone was in command . . . Most of the victims were peaceful citizens, weak and unarmed, butchered wherever they were caught. Round the Altar the heap of corpses grew higher and higher, while down the Sanctuary steps poured a river of blood and the bodies of those killed at the top slithered to the bottom . . . Next [the Romans] came to the last surviving colonnade of the outer court. On this women and children and a mixed crowd of citizens had found a refuge—6000 in all. Before Caesar could reach a decision about them or instruct his officers, the soldiers, carried away by their fury, fired the colonnade from below; as a result some flung themselves out of the flames to their death, others perished in the blaze: of that vast number there escaped not one.” Josephus, The Jewish War, Williamson and Smallwood, p. 359 (6.5.1; 271–76)

This is where the path of violence, of an eye for an eye, of retributive justice, and of retribution ends. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind!

Lastly, we come to Jesus’ final sentence to these weepers:

“For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.31)

Jesus was bringing to their minds the warning given by Ezekiel in the days when Babylonian captivity loomed on the horizon:

“Hear the word of the LORD. This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to set fire to you, and it will consume all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched, and every face from south to north will be scorched by it. Everyone will see that I the LORD have kindled it; it will not be quenched.” (Ezekiel 20.47)

Jesus clearly was the green tree, bearing the fruit of nonviolent, enemy-embracing love.  This was the fruit the Father desired. This was the “will of the Father” that Jesus had referred to so many times.  What Jesus is saying here is: “If Rome will do this to me—a prophet of nonviolence, leading a subversive, peaceful revolution—if Rome sees nonviolence noncooperation as a threat, how much more will they do this to Jerusalem when it—a dead tree—chooses the path of violence and insurrection under the headship of a militaristic messiah!” Jesus is proclaiming, “Do not weep for me. No, no! Weep for yourselves because the violent path you have chosen will end in horrifying events that are neither imaginable nor conceivable.”

What does this mean for us today?

The greatest victories of the church were won in its nonviolent days before Constantine. This is how bloody and violent Rome was brought to its knees by pacifistic Jesus-followers. There were no Christian armies, and every true Christian soldier was a martyr. It was martyrs who conquered Rome. Today Christians and non-Christians alike have to rediscover the sources of Christianity. It began, not as a religion, but as a pacifist movement of people placing their hopes in a nonviolent Messiah or Lord, an enemy-forgiving, loving, and embracing revolution and a final resurrection whereby the world would be restored, renewed, and healed. We must come to realize that we have, to a great extent, abandoned the early Christian ideal of peace and nonviolent action.

It is a curious thing that in the twentieth century the one great political figure who made a conscious and systematic use of Jesus’ principles for nonviolent political action was not a Christian but a Hindu. What is more curious is the fact that so many Christians today continue to think of Gandhi as some kind of eccentric whose nonviolence remains impractical, a sensational fad, or at best naïve. What may lie underneath all of this is the reality that we may have to admit that a Hindu, being oppressed by Colonial Christianity wedded to Empire, understood the meaning and intent of the nonviolent Jesus’ teaching more deeply than many post-Constantinian Christians.

Today we, much like Jerusalem in Jesus’ day, still hold to the idea that evil must be met with evil. Today we are faced with the same options Jerusalem had—nonviolence or nonexistence—both in our personal lives as well as in our global lives. According to experts, we live, every day, each moment, only five minutes away from total genocide of the entire human race either through global nuclear war or new developments in ecological science that could inflict irrevocable harm. All along those who claim to follow the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are “straining gnats” while by their silent approval they are “swallowing camels.”

The question is appropriately asked:  “How are we today to live at the end of the world?” I’m suggesting we do so by beginning a new one, rooted in the nonviolent teachings of the enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving, enemy-loving Jesus. Nonviolence, as Jesus taught it, is a steadfast love, in resistance, of those behind technologically advanced violence, behind the massive oppression that causes the masses to continually go hungry, and a global debt crisis that keeps the poor of this planet in slavery to larger and stronger empires. It is to love, in resistance, the conduits of violence in our local communities, our private and public relationships, and even within our families no matter what they do. It is the force of this kind of unrelenting love that can overcome anything.

To live the prayer of desiring Christ’s “Kingdom” to “come . . . on earth as it is in heaven” is to believe in a Kingdom whose coming will cause “swords to be beaten into plowshares.” Or in language that would be more appropriate to our culture today, it is a Kingdom where technologically advanced forms of mass violence will be abolished and the world’s masses will be freed from hunger and the poor freed from oppression.

We will discuss the two prevailing views of how Christ’s Kingdom will come in the final part of this series (Part 9) when we return to Jesus’ words in Luke 17, and I will actually offer a third option. But to believe in Christ’s Kingdom is to believe that a new world will eventually come  into existence (one way or another) and to be working toward that end in our daily lives today, not just putting on display what such a world will look like! The Kingdom has come! The Kingdom is at hand! The Kingdom starts now!  The Kingdom of God is within your power! All of these words, spoken originally by Jesus, are to be our proclamation to the world. His parting words in Luke were the promise of repentance [metanioa] for the forgiveness of sins” being “preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”  (Luke 24:47, emphasis added)

We live in that final time that offers humanity the same choice as the final eight prophecies of Jesus about Jerusalem in the book of Luke—the Kingdom or global holocaust. Where do we start?  Put this down right now, go into the bathroom, and look in the mirror. It starts right there. As the old adage goes, “As you are, so is the world.” It starts with one person at a time, beginning with today, not with Jerusalem but with each one of us. It starts with me. It starts with you. In our own lives, in our own spheres of influence, wherever this finds us today, will we be followers of the nonviolent, enemy-embracing, enemy-forgiving, enemy-loving Christ?  If nonviolence does not begin here, it goes nowhere. The revolution starts now! Look deeply into that mirror, and by the power of God’s Spirit, let a new world begin today!

Till the only world that remains is a world where love reigns. 

-Herb Montgomery