Jesus & the Intersection of State and Spiritual Violence

The bible text for this week’s sermon can be found at https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=516093225

As we move further toward the fullness of the mystery of Easter…there is a grizzly reality along the way that we simply cannot skirt around. I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly tried to ignore or quickly hustle through any unpleasantness as I hurl myself toward confetti and celebration, but it never really works or truly serves me in the end. With the cross in sight, and what’s on the other side seeming both beyond our reach and just around the corner…we must face this moment that brings us closer. Jesus is betrayed, ambushed, mocked, degraded, misrepresented, condemned and it is ultimately pronounced that the only thing left for him is death. Both state and spiritual violence are in the mix in personal and systemic ways. Somehow we’ve come from signs and wonders and healing and hope…to this.

One version of telling this story says that we should look at all that Jesus suffered and feel personally bad for their pain because it’s at least partially our fault. Heaping on the guilt and shame so that we would recognize how much we need a savior. Plenty of preachers, far too many, tell it this way. I think this is a mistake. Yes, what Jesus experienced was awful, yes we should examine the whys and the hows that produce such pain because it still continues. But, perhaps the very hurt and suffering that are often manipulated for shame and said to create distance between us and God are actually the things that reflect our closeness. 

The fact that God does not exempt Godself from the very human realities of heartache, confusion, betrayal, physical, emotional, and spiritual pain…points to a God who cares about and draws close to us in our own experiences of these things. When we can scarcely find the words to respond to our life situations and look out on a horizon with no good options, God has been there and is there with us. God through Jesus knows and is intimately familiar with this kind of pain. But let’s not pretend there isn’t pain disguised under the shouts for shaming and condemning of another.

The Jewish people lived a relatively stable but tenuous existence under the Roman Empire, with clear demonstrations of their military occupier’s power all around them. They had certain levels of power, but it was always the deal that such power was contingent on that power prioritizing, protecting, and ultimately serving the Empire. Jewish Kings like Herod were set in place and had the potential to be dangerous, but only Caesar was known as the Son of God with palaces for politics but also temples for their worship. Jesus challenged such claims and is so positioned as a political and spiritual threat to the entire system. The threat is made explicit as they shout, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”

If this Jesus isn’t addressed it could topple the world power, but first it would destroy the fragile existence of the religious institution and its communities. This conflict with Jesus is perhaps partly from a sense of misguided righteousness, but mainly from fear in its various forms.

The tactic is a kind of CYA , a kind of twisted survivalist approach. In order to preserve their security and status, the religious institution feels is must cast Jesus out or else the wrath of Rome which won’t distinguish between them. They also have to pin it on Rome to curtail revolt. 

To be clear, this isn’t the doing of the Jewish people as representative of the whole, a teaching which has been perpetuated in service to racist ideologies. This was a calculated move by those trying to preserve their flimsy structures of power, religious leaders and politicians alike. They want it done, they might even argue that they NEED it done, and they want the mess to be someone else’s fault.

This is exactly why theologian James Cone connects the cross to the lynching tree.  It is the same logic and the same stakes that justified the cultural terrorism and extreme violence across this country. It’s a bizarre ethical contortion, but this thinking continues even now as an understanding that this gross control of black bodies MUST be done in order to preserve safety for “us all,” “our people”, “our neighborhoods.” It even claims to be the compassionate and moral thing to do. There’s a rationale that harming one will protect the many, when in reality we are all harmed in this process, albeit in significantly different ways.

I wonder what else we sacrifice in the name of our own survival and that of the systems we think will save us. Even those things that we believe others or circumstances forced us to do. Our relationships? Our communities? Our identities? Our dreams? Our bodies? Our souls?

Trying to get by.

I wonder is sometimes we sacrifice the very thing that was saving us all along.

But God, as God typically does, turns injustice on its head. 

As a kid I watched Bugs bunny Cartoons and had my picture taken on Splash Mountain which winds through Disney’s tale of Song of the South – a movie and ride criticized for its use of anti-black racist tropes. I only fairly recently learned that Bugs and Briar Rabbit are both descendants of an African folk tale that the enslaved people brought with them. Zomo the Rabbit plays the part of the trickster who can not match the speed and strength of the fox, traps the fox and gets themselves free using the very tools of the fox’s own making.   Bugs bunny is the unlikely hero and Elmer Fudd is a blundering buffoon. Briar Rabbit escape through the thorns meant to torture him. It’s a tale of the under-resourced, outsmarting the dominant character. The story appropriated by white supremacist capitalism, unknowingly passes on the tradition that satirizes itself. You love to see it.

As they place a spiny laurel on Jesus’ head, it is the same symbol of victorious authority that Caesar wears.  They wrap a poor person in regalia reserved only for the rich. They pronounce and worship his cosmic power even as they try to deny him of it. They dignify what they tried to mock and perpetuate what they hoped to silence. 

Through God, even our pain and fear and death are subverted for the blessing of liberation and life. I don’t believe in redemptive violence which too often justifies continued harm, but I do believe that God is trying to convince, show us, and transform us with how to let go of our systems of sacrifice, because they don’t accomplish anything anyway, not really, not in a way that can endure. Even on the way to crucifixion, Jesus declares in the simple heart of his being that nothing can ultimately keep God and the Gospel down. Amen.