21

The Way of Peace

I’VE NEVER BEEN in a fistfight. I did punch my brother once. I was about twelve at the time, which means he was ten. Even though he was younger than me, Andrew was bigger and stronger. He had me pinned on the ground till I shouted, “Uncle!” After he let me up, I sucker punched him in the face, and then I ran like hell. He was stunned enough to give me a head start—he was also faster than me—and I hid behind a neighbor’s house until he calmed down.

My mom tells a story from just a few years earlier. I was six, Andrew was four, and she was in the final month of pregnancy with our youngest brother, Ted. Being obstreperous, boisterous, and bossy, I was holding court on the front steps of our home with all the neighbor kids just as she was trying to take a nap. After several unheeded requests to quiet down, she angrily came out the front door, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the house. But I stumbled and fell, hitting my head on the corner of a slate table. As a lump grew on my forehead, I looked up and said, “Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll tell the teacher at school that I tripped.” We laugh about it now, but my mother still remembers being horrified at the time that she might be considered an abusive mom. I remember these incidents pretty vividly as well.

Violence haunts us. It stalks us. Whether it’s a person punching a hole in the drywall after an argument or two nations locked in ongoing military conflict, we are a violent species. It’s why, as we’ve seen, so many Christians are unsettled by the crucifixion as the means of our salvation. Violence-free salvation, they reckon, would be better.

But this is where they are underestimating the good news Jesus came to preach. In a surprising twist, the crucifixion is the solution to our violent tendencies. The crucifixion has created the possibility for us to be liberated from violence and enter into a life of peace.

If we do not understand this, then we do not understand the cross at all: the crucifixion of Jesus must change how we live. That is the point.

Figuring It Out Ourselves

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer urged his correspondent to live in the world as if there were no God, he was suggesting that Jesus himself lived that way. Bonhoeffer’s point was that Jesus didn’t look to God to get him out of jams, rescue him from angry mobs, or help him pass his carpentry final. Jesus lived and moved through the world with the confidence of his own convictions and, as the Gospel writers make clear, with the power of the Holy Spirit. And he did so in league with scoundrels and sinners and outcasts and whores.

Bonhoeffer himself surely prayed for the end of the Nazis and the demise of Hitler, but that didn’t stop him from taking action.¹ When he wrote that letter to Eberhard Bethge, he did so from prison, there for taking part in the German resistance movement. Among the activities of that resistance were several assassination attempts on Hitler. Though he was a committed pacifist, Bonhoeffer supported these plots, and that ultimately led to his execution on April 9, 1945, just a month before the Allies defeated the Nazis.

In his last book, the uncompleted Ethics, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Those who in acting responsibly take on guilt—which is inescapable for any responsible person—place this guilt on themselves . . . ; they stand up for it and take responsibility for it.”² In other words, human beings are free, and guilt is inevitable. But this isn’t an excuse to avoid taking action. Instead, we’re compelled to take action, even when the choices are less than ideal. Bonhoeffer called Christians to “participation in the powerlessness of God in the world.”³ Others more recently have called it the “weakness of God.”⁴

Here is the guiding idea: God has forsaken power in order to give creation freedom. In other words, God’s primary posture in the world is that of weakness, not strength. This is a tough pill for many Christians to swallow—we’ve been taught to claim God’s power in our lives, to pray for power, and to trust God’s power and perfect plan for our lives. But we’ve got something to learn from Jesus’ cry of forsakenness, and from God’s response.

God’s power, it turns out, comes in God’s willingness to abdicate power. God saves the world through submission to the point of solidarity with human weakness. Jesus’ final teaching to his disciples was to wash their feet and then tell them to go and do likewise, to act as servants to the world.

Too often, Christians have done just the opposite. Unfortunately, the symbol of the cross seems to fit perfectly on a military shield, and starting with Constantine, that’s where it’s often been affixed. Christians have used their faith as a justification for making war on their opponents. It’s especially ironic that followers of Jesus have often been the violent persecutors of those they’ve claimed to be responsible for Jesus’ death, the Jews.

Here we might remember the Mirror model of René Girard. What God did in the crucifixion was to show vividly that violent sacrifice gets us nowhere. Violence doesn’t mitigate violence. It’s a dead end.

One of the differences you may have noticed in churches is that Protestant churches have an empty cross at the front of the sanctuary, while the crosses in Catholic churches—commonly called crucifixes—have a likeness of the dead Jesus on them. Growing up Protestant, I was told this is because we focus on the victory of resurrection, and that the cross will be empty forevermore. (More than once it was also implied that Catholics are a bit morbid to keep Jesus’ corpse up there on the cross.) But if Girard is right, then there’s something powerful about a Christian worshipper being confronted by the body of the crucified Savior. If we can fight the tendency to let it become so familiar that we don’t notice it, we can be challenged every week to remember that God doesn’t want our bloody victories and that sacrifice doesn’t really overcome our rivalries. At least for Christians, that crucifix should be the emblem of the end of violence. Like a memorial on a Civil War battlefield, the cross should say to us, “The very last sacrifice happened here, and no religious violence need ever happen again.”

Taking Action Against Violence

My friend Shane Claiborne is taking a page right out of Bonhoeffer’s playbook. He’s not just waiting around for God to solve the problems of violence in the world; he’s using his freedom to act responsibly. Hebrew prophecy has inspired Shane:

           He shall judge between the nations,

             and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

           they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

             and their spears into pruning hooks;

           nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

             neither shall they learn war any more.⁵

So he and his friends in North Philadelphia have taken this literally. On September 11, 2011, a welder among them took a donated AK47 semiautomatic rifle, melted it down, and turned it into a rake and a shovel. Since then, Shane has taken welding lessons himself, and he’s solicited people to send him weapons, which he promises to turn into garden tools and mail back. He says,

           We refuse to wait any longer. We’ve prayed for peace, and we will continue to pray for peace. But we’ve also realized that sometimes we think we’re waiting on God, and God may actually be waiting on us. We cannot wait for politicians or governments. The new world that the prophets spoke of begins with us.⁶

Shane’s right. We cannot wait to end violence. And it starts with us. When a law passed in Minnesota that allowed registered citizens to carry concealed guns, one Lutheran church stood up. The law allowed guns to be carried in virtually every building except schools without a large sign at every entrance prohibiting guns. Edina Community Lutheran Church sued the state, saying that their religious freedom was being violated, and over five years of hearings, they consistently won. During those years, they had a large sign over their door: “Blessed are the peacemakers. Firearms are prohibited in this place of sanctuary.” They won in court, and firearms are now prohibited in places of worship in Minnesota.

Naysayers are quick to point out that the church has often authorized violence. Yes, that’s true. But the church’s history is also replete with peacemakers. Every generation has them, and some of them are household names: Francis of Assisi, Menno Simons, Martin Luther King Jr. Others should be remembered, like Martin of Tours. Born in 316, only three years after the emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, Martin began attending church at age ten, against his parents’ wishes. At fifteen, Martin joined the army, as required by his family’s rank, for a twenty-five-year term. According to his biographer, sometime during that tenure, as his unit approached a battle, Martin said, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.” Jailed for cowardice, he offered to go to the front lines without a weapon, but instead he was released from the military. Another story about Martin tells that he did once use his sword: he cut his cloak in two and gave half to a beggar. Out of the army, Martin joined the priesthood, became the bishop of Tours in 371, and was known among the ruling class as someone who would beg for the forgiveness and release of prisoners.

One of the roles that the church must take up in the twenty-first century is that of standing for peace in the midst of violence. This will be complex, and I’m not unaware of the politics involved. I’ve admitted that I’m a hunter. I’m also a gun owner—three shotguns, kept in a secured safe with trigger locks. Gun violence is a scourge on the United States, and yet I try to be a responsible gun owner in the face of that.

In a passage that vexes pacifists, Jesus himself showed some ambivalence toward weaponry. On the night of his arrest, Jesus was with his disciples. Luke tells us,

           He said to them, “When I sent you out without a purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “No, not a thing.” He said to them, “But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was counted among the lawless’; and indeed what is written about me is being fulfilled.” They said, “Lord, look, here are two swords.” He replied, “It is enough.”⁷

Weapons, it seems, are a part of life. But later that evening, when one of Jesus’ disciples used a sword to slice off the ear of the high priest’s servant, Jesus rebuked his disciple and healed the slave.

Through the course of that night and into the next morning, Jesus is the victim of violence—lashings and beatings, culminating in his crucifixion. He neither resists arrest nor fights back. Maybe that’s because resisting the Roman Empire was futile. But throughout history, Jesus has been seen as a submissive victim. Where does this leave victims of violence? Does Jesus’ torturous death mean that we should suffer willingly and without resistance?

You may remember the feminist theologians referenced in chapter 17; they recount harrowing stories of clergymen who’ve told women to gladly bear the abuse they receive from their husbands, just as Christ bore his suffering. Here is where it’s so important to affirm that God was in Jesus and that Jesus was God incarnate. Jesus was not just a victim, one among many. Jesus was God, fully immersed in the human experience. In suffering and death, God found new solidarity with humanity, and especially with those who suffer. God identified with the victims. God stood with them. And God stands with them still.

The church, as the community founded on Jesus’ life and death, must now stand with the victims, just as God did in Jesus. We need to be the ones who are in solidarity with the victims of domestic abuse, those sold into sex slavery, and ethnic minorities who face violence simply because of the tribe into which they were born.

If there’s a message in the crucifixion for the church, it’s that God abdicated power and stood with the powerless. Now the church, formed by the cross, must do the same.

Ceasing Our Inner Violence

I’ve had my own journey in this area. In my late twenties and early thirties, I was a pastor at a large, suburban church—the same church in which I was reared. Although life seemed good on the outside, I had internal struggles. I was in a troubled marriage that sapped me. And I exhibited a youthful, brash arrogance that served to hide deep insecurities. One day, I blew up in rage at the church’s head custodian over a long-since-forgotten slight. In a back hallway, blowing off steam, I slammed a storage room door so hard that the hinge mechanism atop the door burst open, spewing hydraulic fluid across the wall and ceiling.

Sometime later, that same rage flared up at a committee meeting. For whatever reason, I’d felt disrespected, so I let fly invective at a dozen church volunteers. Fortunately, they were all older and wiser than me. They decided to help me rather than fire me. I remember their names—Linda, Doug, and Mark, in particular—and they encouraged me to take an anger-management course, which I did. There I learned to address the fear that underlies anger, the anger that leads to violence. Thank God, my own violent outbursts were confined to slamming doors and shouting, and now I live with much more peace than I did then.

The irony is not lost on me. I worked in a building founded on the crucifixion of Jesus, and my posture was one of aggression instead of peace. Once I gained some control of my inner turmoil, I began to see Jesus’ crucifixion as my channel to peace. During those years, I took up a study of ancient spiritual practices. I began earnestly practicing yoga, something I do even more frequently now that my wife, Courtney, is a yoga instructor.

I also simplified my prayers. Rather than barraging God with requests, pleas, and praises, I focused almost exclusively on a prayer formulated by desert monks in the fifth century:

           Lord Jesus Christ,

           Son of God,

           have mercy on me,

           a sinner.

To this day, over ten years later, that prayer, said in rhythm with my breath, makes up about 90 percent of my prayer life. I suppose this prayer has brought me so much peace because it’s not frantic, not urgent, not frightened.

During that same time, I first studied and then began to acquire icons of the Orthodox Church, my favorite being the icon of the San Damiano cross, which depicts Jesus on the cross and angels, women, and John attending to him. The Eastern Church teaches that icons are not merely paintings, but they are windows into heaven, conduits to God’s presence. That icon went from an object of study to an object of veneration for me when I visited Taizé, a monastic community in France. Once a week, on Friday night, at the end of evening prayer, a six-foot-tall version of the San Damiano cross icon is brought to the center of the massive sanctuary and laid on the floor. In a procession that can take over an hour, hundreds of youth crawl to the cross, touch their foreheads to it, and kiss it. Many weep.

The first time I saw it, it took my breath away. But this adoration of the cross also reveals the nexus of the crucifixion and peace, that surprising oxymoron that we’re trying to understand. At Taizé, the violence of the crucifixion and the peace of the monastery make perfect sense. But it’s not an intellectual sense—it’s a mystical sense. In the mysticism of the moment—the singing, the prayers, the crawling, the tears—the humility of God on the cross comes into perfect focus.

This is another challenge for me, as it may be for you. I tend to intellectualize these questions, trying to solve the mystery of how peace can come from such a violent event. But when the intellect can be made submissive to the spirit, something new can be learned. The ancient Desert Fathers and Mothers who came up with my favorite prayer also gave instructions about how to pray it. They said that the pray-er should allow the mind to descend to the place of the heart. They even recommend that you rest your chin on your chest and, with your eyes closed, look toward your heart. They seem to be saying that this prayer will only do what it’s supposed to if you can quiet your mind and allow your heart to take the lead.

For some, the cross is a sign of crusade, for others a sign of violence, for still others a sign of victory. For me, the cross has become a symbol of peace, and it has brought me peace. And in this I believe I have finally discovered what God meant all along.

The church still has so much to learn about this cross-inspired, peaceful way of life. In so many of the churches in which I’ve been involved, nothing is really different because of the cross. We still operate by the same schemes and rhythms of the world around us. Just think of the reaction to Mel Gibson’s brutal movie, The Passion of the Christ. More than one Christian leader gleefully called it the “greatest evangelistic tool of all time.” Instead, we should have watched that movie with René Girard and seen that we are all implicated in the very violence that resulted in Jesus’ death. That movie should have been a mirror reflecting our own violence back at us.

We need to unlearn violence. It’s deep in our evolutionary psyches, but in the cross God is calling us to unlearn it and take on new habits—the habits of peace, solidarity, and love. The church should be on the forefront of a movement of peace. And at the front of that procession should be Jesus, on a cross, for that symbol condemns all our violence and cries out, “Never again!”