There has been much talk about resistance and persistence, spurred by recent assaults on human rights and dignity, on environmental protections, and on the common decency of speaking factually and accurately. Such is the world of “empire,” and we have been here many times before.
The narrative of holy week and Easter is a good reminder of that. And it’s good medicine, as we all learn to navigate an increasingly Orwellian public rhetoric and seemingly endless abuses of power, privilege, and wealth.
Feeling overwhelmed and powerless, I take comfort in the passion narrative. The story is essentially one of a very small group of people who told the story of an even more obscure man whose love and power from God very slowly toppled the the world order. In increments measured in the widths of human hearts, the Jesus movement undermines empire and makes it in many ways obsolete. It was an avalanche in slow motion and it was done one person making one decision at a time.
At various times Christianity thought empire and power irrelevant if only those of the new faith could live in a holy denial of “the world.” They turned away, kept to themselves, and waited for Jesus’ triumphant return. Some Christian traditions still do. While that protected those Christians in that community, it hardly spoke beyond their own hearing. It also ignored “the world” that God clearly loved enough to try to save. In that way, this kind of holiness denies the very reason Christ came to us: to be with us, to seek us, to build something new with us.
More to the point, the resurrection means that the values of empire– power, wealth, force, control, patriarchy, domination– are overturned. It’s not just that they can be safely ignored, they are exposed as dead ends. They are not the values God endorses. Life that transcends death and sacrificial love that changes hearts with Good News did not, does not and can not come from those forces. As the theologian Pannenberg has said, the cross changes the very nature of reality: no longer are the powers of this world confirmed. They are subverted and made powerless by God’s unfailing love for those NOT in power, NOT perfect, NOT yet secure, NOT yet whole.
This is disturbing not only to governments and tyrants. It is –and ought to be– at least provocative to you and me. We all get caught up trying to be more secure by being more powerful and more in control. Does it work? And more importantly does it draw us closer to God? In most cases, the answer is no. The power and money we we were taught to value and seek at any price, turn out to be impediments to the “thy kingdom come!” petition we make every Sunday.
The good news, of course, is that we are in the legion of souls who are not perfect, not in power, not ready, not whole, that God cares so much about. “What are mortals that you care so much?” the writer of Psalm 8 asks. And yet, again and again, even to the point of permitting a son’s death, God has reached beyond power to relationship, to justice, to the joy of right connection.
In the midst of organizing resistance to injustice, and in praying for a more joyful world, the resurrection narrative reminds us not of how a secret weapon came to the rescue and made everything alright again. It reminds us that relentless divine love by even just a few persons cannot be thwarted by governments or terrorists. It rises with life from within flawed hearts and broken dreams. It will not be put down it will not be kept out. Centuries of tradition have shown us all that slowly, slowly, slowly, like water through a rocky land, divine love wears away the stone allowing us to exit the tombs of our own making.
May such joy be with you in all you undertake this Easter season,
Rev. Kent
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