On Friday I was listening to the radio
in my car and heard a review of a recently released movie named “Olympus Has
Fallen.” The plot concerns the fall of
the White House and the kidnapping of the President by terrorists. The reviewer talked about graphic, bloody
depictions of violence both by the terrorists and by the Secret Service agent
who gets into the White House without the terrorists realizing he is
there—until, of course, too late.
Although the reviewer said he does enjoy some violent films, this one
crossed the line for him. He lamented
the fact that the depiction of this type and level of violence sells movies in
our culture.
You may also remember seeing or hearing
about the bloody, violent interpretation by Jesus' torture and crucifixion by
Mel Gibson in his movie “The Passion of the Christ.” Gibson's theology of atonement apparently
needed for Christ to suffer bloody violence and excruciating death in front of
us to convince us of the reality of his sacrifice.
And senseless violence has marred and
continues to mar our society, as well as societies throughout the world—Cambodia, Rwanda,
Bosnia, Congo, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, to name a few places.
Which brings us to the account of
Jesus' last hours before his crucifixion and his death in Luke's gospel we
heard read this morning. Does the
violence draw us in, as it did Mel Gibson?
Or do we endure the depiction of violence done to Jesus, because these
dreadful moments contain critical messages about how he lived and how he hopes
that we will live.
Joseph
Pagano, a priest at St. Anne’s Church in Annapolis, MD, notes in Luke’s account
of the crucifixion, “The first words Jesus utters upon the cross are the
prayer: ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And
with this prayer, everything changes.”
Everything? Certainly not the hardness of the human heart
and the evil that inspires it to engage in incredible violence. What really changes? What changes is how we are to respond to
violence if we choose to follow Jesus' teaching and, even more important, his
example. Pagano explains, “With these
words, with this prayer, Christ shatters the glamour of the violence that
blinds us in this world, and sets in its place a vision of reconciliation and
peace . . . What Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount [to love our
enemies], he practiced on Mt. Calvary . . . Jesus reveals God's costly love for
the world, mediating God's forgiveness and friendship even in the midst of our
violent world.”
Benjamin
Stewart, who teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, asserts,
“In the crucifixion narrative, all four Gospels encourage their hearers to
perceive in the violent exercise of political power a hidden story of that
power's great failure and eventual undoing . . . the merciful one is the mighty
one . . . [t]he one without weapons holds the true power . . .”
So in the
end, to transform Rob Bell's book title slightly, love will win. For as
Christians we believe that, through
Christ, love will overcome hate, love will defeat violence, love will
conquer death. Love's winning comes much
more slowly than we wish—and often at great cost—but it comes, it comes. May we, exercising the forgiving and
compassionate love of Christ as best we can, act as agents for Christ's coming
reign.
-----
Joseph
Pagano's sermon for Palm Sunday 2013 can be found on the website Sermons
that Work.
Benjamin
Stewart's commentary on the Lukan passion narrative can be found in Christian
Century, March 20, 2013, p. 22.
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