It’ll be 5 years
ago this October/November that I had the chance to pilgrimage in the Holy
Land. And one of the “journeys” of that trip
was to travel from our hotel in Tiberius up to “Caesarea Philippi”—or at least
to the site of the first-century Roman city.
I remember the
day well. It was cloudy and rainy. There were parts of the journey in heavy fog—so
that you couldn’t see the mountains. And
we traveled from land that was established as “Israel” in 1948 to land that had
since been acquired and controlled by Israel—what was once a part of Syria that
now is occupied by Israeli defense forces and citizens. Traveling through this new territory, we didn’t
see tanks or barracks, but we knew it was heavily defended, seeing plenty of
signs along the road indicating that it was “mined” with landmines beyond the
shoulders, noticing, too, that if required a vigorous defense stood at the
ready for any military attack.
I’ve since
wondered if this was also how Jesus’ disciples might have felt about the
journey Jesus was asking them to undertake in last Sunday’s gospel lesson. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
(Matthew 16: 13-20)” is a question Jesus is asking in the face of cultural, military,
and imperial opposition to the people of God.
Jesus presumably takes the disciples to show them the human opposition
that the ministry of Jesus Christ faces in the world. And when Peter offers up the right answer, it’s
an anti-imperial choice, a reflection that the true power of the world is found
in God—in Jesus. But this power is
opposed by the world around it!
Frankly, this
isn’t much different that the challenges we face in our world, today. The call and claim of the ministry of Jesus
Christ calls us to be anti-imperial, counter-cultural, and to choose
non-violence in the face of violence. Because
at the end of the day, “who do we say that Jesus is?”—if not anti-imperial,
counter-cultural, and non-violent? The
identification of Jesus as “the way, and the truth, and the life,” prescribes a
different world-view for us—one of compassion, peace, and justice. These are not just good words; they must compel
us to act.
Jesus calls us
to identify with the Kingdom of God. To
love her virtues, to claim her values, and to give witness to God’s desires for
the world—where every life is valued and acts of violence are abhorred. This must call us to revalue our commitments
to privileged “rights” and public policies.
The problem is, we’re simply afraid of alienating anyone; and when we
take strident stands, we’re accused of cutting someone out.
Unfortunately,
the temptation is to believe that if we hold too tightly and rigidly to the
calls and claims of Jesus, we’ll make people mad. If we call for non-violent solutions in
places like Gaza, Syria, and Iraq, we’ll look foolish in the world of an “eye-for-an-eye”
kind of retributive justice. If we stand
up for victims of violence and discrimination like Mike Brown we’ll be seen as “anti-police”
or “reverse-racist.” And if we try and
steer toward a middle way, we aren’t leading with Jesus’ voice in any clear
direction.
Jesus stood in the face of worldly power and
gave witness to the Kingdom of God.
And frankly,
Jesus calls us to stand in the face of this world’s power and at the very
least, admit our allegiance to God’s power above and beyond human power.
We’re fond—at least
in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A)—of trying to carve out a safe place for
everyone; in other words, we’re famous for not telling people what to believe
or how to vote or forcing people to support certain policies. But what we sometimes lose is remembering to
proclaim boldly the kind of life Jesus lived and calls us to.
The biblical
witness of Jesus calls us toward a lifestyle of not killing, a way of life that
values all human beings, and care for neighbor that identifies even our enemies
as our neighbors. Even in the face of
public opinion.
The congregation
I serve doesn’t tell you what to believe; but we do want you to “do the math.” We should be telling the world what Jesus
did, what he believed, what he stood for, how he called people to live. And that’s a pretty good indication of the
values we should be holding and living out, too.
© Rev. David Stipp-Bethune; Teaching Elder and
Pastor, The Presbyterian Church of Llanerch, Havertown, Pennsylvania
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