Waging Nonviolence
Isaiah 11:1-9; 2 Cor
12:1-10; Matthew 5:38-48
Introduction
Recently
(CT 24/9/2011, p.20) Bill Clinton
with his prominent wife Hillary and
newly married daughter Chelsea at the
Clinton Global Forum called for a “different way of being” if humanity is
to have a peaceful future. Power and
domination contain no promise; responsibility, compassion and generosity are
called for.
A few days ago three
women received the Nobel Peace Prize
for waging conflict resolution nonviolemtly.
W ELLEN
JOHNSON-SIRLEAF –
W LEYMAH GBOWEE – by prayer and nonviolent public protest helped bring about the peace
agreement in
W TAWAKUL KARMAN – aged 33 who has challenged the repressive regime in her country,
Jemen.
During the last few weeks I have been trying to remind
ourselves what Baptists stand for and
what we can contribute to the wider
church. We talked about our understanding of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism
and Faith. Today I would like to mention
another topic that has been important in our tradition and is very relevant
today: Nonviolence.
A chequered history
Christians on the whole and Baptists in particular have a somewhat chequered reputation when it comes to
nonviolence.
At the same time, the grand narrative of our faith is unambiguous
and clear: in a violent world, Jesus
introduced a new way of being: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will
be called children of God!"
The early
Christians followed Jesus in that. For the first three hundred years
Christians refused military service and tried to live nonviolently. But then, in
the 4th century, when the church became interlocked with the Roman government,
the church also became involved with war and violence.
There are parallels in the Baptist movement. One section of the Baptist and Mennonite movements in 16th century Central
Europe (
And, of course, we are all sadly aware of the chequered history of Christians and churches
with respect to war and violence. “Christ is Lord” the crusaders in the Middle
Ages shouted as they decapitated
heathens. So-called heretics have been drowned
in rivers and lakes and burnt on the
stake. And it has only been months since Christians and so-called Christian
nations including
So we Christians and churches may not be a good example. But that should not hinder us from
retrieving the best of our tradition
and lay it out there as an invitation to a
new way of being where not violence but nonviolence is the default position.
Icons of Nonviolence
Such
a new way of being, grounded in the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus, has not been without its icons.
The apostle Paul challenges us to contrast the
weakness of power with the power of weakness. He expressed his
faith in Jesus Christ in these words: "when I am weak, then I am
strong." Indeed, he heard God whisper into his conscience: "power is
made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9).
Both pastors and theologians, the German Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the African
American Martin Luther King Jr. wanted
to visit Mahatma Gandhi in
Ghandi said famously: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world
blind." And again:
"When I
despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has
always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem
invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always."
Martin Luther King
Jr. visited
Gandhi’s birthplace in 1959. He reported afterwards:
"Since being in
Dietrich Bonhoeffer must have had something like that
in mind when musing about what it means to believe in Christ while you are or when
you feel powerless. He wrote:
"God allows himself to be
pushed out of the world on to the cross. God
is powerless and weak in the world and only as such and in such a way is he
with us and helps us. According to Matthew 8:17 it is clear that Christ does
not help us because of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness, his
suffering![1]
Here is the decisive difference to other religions . . . . only the suffering God can help us." (Letter of July 16, 1944;
emphasis mine).
Living in a culture of violence
These
understandings of faith in Christ – issuing from the lives of Paul, Gandhi,
King and Bonhoeffer –
clash with
the reality that too often determines our life. We live in a violent world, and violence lives in us.
We can fly to the moon, but we have not learned to solve human conflict
without the instrument of war. We have
the intellect and we spend the money to invent the most ingenious and
complicated weapons, but we do not have the political will to increase our aid
budgets, because we have failed to understood that as long as there is poverty,
injustice and racism in the world, there will be violence.
Sometimes I just want to relax. Have a cup of tea or a glass of wine
and watch some TV. I open the program and what do I find: crime and murder shows, indeed crime and murder series. I have never understood why
there are so many murder and crime shows. It is commercial television. They survive
by ratings. They only give us what we want to see. So it is obvious: we want to
see murder and crime shows. Shows that major on violence. Violence seems to be
in. Nonviolence is out.
Jesus
and non-violence
In such a culture of violence, faith that
orients itself on Jesus of Nazareth can only be seen as ridiculous, as irrelevant,
as a spoilsport. Therefore we can't
hear the Beatitudes often enough! They
have their own inherent authenticity.
They are the classic reminder of an alternative to violence and they
strengthen our resolve to witness to another way of being in a violent world.
W Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
W Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for
they will be filled.
W Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
W Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
W Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children
of God. …" (Matthew 5:1-16)
Jesus exhorts people
who are open or committed to this new way of being:
"You have heard that it was
said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone
strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; …" (Mt 5:38-42)
"You have heard that it was
said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you
love those who love you, what reward do you have? … And if you greet only your
brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? … Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly
Father is perfect." (Mt 5:38-48)
We may not like these words. They jar with our way of thinking and living.
We may want to explain them away by
saying that faith is private and has
nothing to do with the ways of the world. The German chancellor Bismarck used to say that you can’t run
the world with the Sermon on the Mount.
But the words are there! They stand as an eloquent reminder to a new way of being.[2]
Waging
nonviolence.
Please note that these words do not call for a passive or disinterested
attitude to life. A commitment to nonviolence
in a violent world is not weakness but strength. It means marching out of
step with the ways of the world. It invites us to swim against the stream. A
commitment to nonviolence does not mean being passive or withdrawing from
responsibility for life. Nonviolence must be pursued. It must be actively
lived. It must be waged!
The “God of Peace”
When
God raised Jesus from the dead, God validated Jesus' new way of being; Jesus' way of nonviolence. And at the same
time God also relativised the powers
of violence that led to Jesus' crucifixion. God's
power of love proved to be stronger than the violence of the world that had
Jesus crucified.
In the Bible there are many metaphors to gather into
words and pictures that by raising Jesus from the dead, God demonstrated that love is stronger than death. “God is love”. “God is light” and in him there is no darkness at all. God is the “shepherd” who protects and rescues his
sheep and leads them besides the still waters. God is a stronghold for the needy; God is a shelter from the storm; God is a shade from the heat of the day (Isa 25:4f.), and the apostle Paul
names God the “God of peace”.
God thereby established
that at the centre of reality
W there is life, not death;
W peace, not war;
W reconciliation, not retaliation;
W nonviolence, not violence.
On the basis of the
resurrection of the Crucified One, we may therefore speak of nonviolence as God's way of being.
On that basis we can affirm in a world of war and violence, that peacemakers are the children of God. We can
confess in a world where political, economic and military power seems to
dictate what is right and what is wrong, that ultimately the meek will inherit the earth. The apostle Paul exhorts us
through the ages: "Therefore,
my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord,
because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain" (1 Cor
15:58).
What can we do?
Can we tune into this new way of being? Can we echo the new lifestyle of nonviolence?
Will we witness to the newness of Christ in a violent world?
1.
May I
remind you that we have already done so.
With our faith in Christ and our baptism into his sphere of influence we have
been born to a new way of living. We
only need to remind each other what this new way of living is, otherwise we
easily fall back into the old ways of violence.
2.
Intentionally
with our prayers, our words and our actions we can tune in to the new
consciousness of letting Christ rule our lives. We shall then be kind with each other, we shall walk softly on the earth, and we shall
seek new and nonviolent ways to deal with
human conflicts.
3.
We need
to examine and unmask elements in our thinking about God and the church to see
whether violence has crept into our language
and thoughts. Whatever we think and do, it must be an echo to the central
Christian confession that "God is love" and that God is the “God of
Peace”.
4.
We can
encourage our churches and our government to contribute to the United Nations Millenium Development Goals. The
reduction of poverty and injustice and the empowerment of the oppressed are
more effective antidotes to terrorism than the ever turning spiral of violence.
There is no better
way to end than to remember the words from the prophets Isaiah and Micah that
are hewn into the United Nations Headquarters in
"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 any more."
TL:
[1] Matthew 8:16-17:
"That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and
he cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick. This was to
fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah, He took our infirmities and bore our diseases."
[2] I am aware, of course, that there are texts in the
gospels that seem to portray another reality.
The Jesus
saying "Do not think that I have
come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword"
(Mt10:34) refers to the "division" (so the parallel text in Lk
A similar metaphorical use of "sword" is found in Luke 22:35-38. It stands for the increasing
opposition that Jesus and his friends encounter on the way to the cross. When
in Jesus' presence someone resorted to violence, Jesus immediately undoes the
damage and acclaims "No more of this!" (Lk 22:49-51).
More often, the so-called temple cleansing is mentioned as a possible illustration that Jesus
resorted to violence (Mk 11:15-17, Mt 21:12f., Lk 19:45f., Jn 2:14-17). The
imagery of Jesus "making a whip of cords" (only in John), turning
over tables and driving the money changers out seems to point in that
direction. But those who are familiar with prophetic symbolism, and realising
that the text refers to two major prophets (Isaiah and Jeremiah) who used such
symbolism, makes it much more likely that Jesus used prophetic symbolism, what
we may call a demonstration or street drama, to make the point that in his view
the temple cult was seeking God in the wrong direction.
Richard B. Hayes
speaks for many when he concludes: "Thus, from Matthew to Revelation we
find a consistent witness against violence and a calling to the community to
follow the example of Jesus in accepting
suffering rather than inflicting
it." (The Moral Vision of the New
Testament. Community, Cross, New Creation [