September 14, 2008 — 6:06 PM
Divine Comforter or Holy Terror?
Texts: Exodus 14:19-31 and Matthew 18:21-35
Introduction:
The two texts that I chose from the lectionary passages for today struck me because of their seemingly opposite messages: one focuses on the fact that God is powerful, as demonstrated in a very violent act; while the other focuses on the fact that God is merciful, as demonstrated by a very generous act of forgiveness.
Having these two characteristics of God is such stark relief gave me great pause. I myself am a pacifist. I like to focus more on the forgiving/peaceful passages of the bible. But what am I to do with the passages where God and Jesus are anything but - passages where violence is a very real part of the faith tradition? And what does it say about God and us, being created in God's image, to have these competing characteristics all within one being?
These are topics I would like to explore with you all today. I by no means have the definitive answers to these questions. I am truly interested in hearing your thoughts on them. Together I hope to discuss what the answers to these questions mean for how we live as Christians.
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Let us pray. Loving God, you are a mystery to us. Open our ears that we may hear your word for us today. Open our hearts that we might be changed by it. Help us to be true followers of you in all of our words and deeds. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
I was talking with a colleague at the seminary, telling him the topic I was thinking about preaching on today and he said, "Wow! Just jump right in there, Leslie! Violence in the bible - that's a really big topic."
This colleague wasn't telling me anything I didn't know. When the idea first hit me I realized that I was going to try to tackle a large topic. But I couldn't deny that the thing that struck me most from the Exodus passage was the violent death of all the Egyptian warriors. And that made me think of other passages in the bible that also include violence.
I know that this is a topic that weighs heavily on many people at some time or another.
I am a part of a group email list of folks who knew each other in my undergraduate studies at Calvin College. Calvin is a liberal arts college founded and mainly funded by the Christian Reformed Church in America. The CRC is a conservative cousin to the Presbyterian Church, of which we are a part.
A couple summers ago our email list lit up with a discussion spurred on by the recent onslaught of books by atheists such as "The God Delusion" and "God Is Dead." It wasn't the discussion I would have imagined coming from this group. Quite a few of the members saw this as an opportunity to admit to the group that they no longer identified themselves as Christians. Several who spoke up in this discussion now feel that they are atheists and found these books refreshing.
The main reason these friends no longer feel that they can be Christians is because for them faith is just not rational. They liken faith in God to believing in Santa Claus. They need proof and have not found any that would convince them to continue to believe in a divine being. The arguments around this point went on and on ad nauseum - faith isn't faith if there is proof, some argued, including me. But why would one believe in something that cannot be proven? The atheists countered. This was a point on which we never came to any agreement.
But a close second for several folks in why they could no longer be Christian (or religious of any sort, for that matter) was all the violence that has been perpetrated in this world by Christians as well as people of other faiths. There are many examples of violence committed in the name of God - such as the Crusades and the Conquests in the New World. Or, for more modern examples, what we just marked this past week - the September 11th attacks in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. and the War on Terror that followed on the heels of those attacks.
These friends are no longer able to believe in God because they cannot reconcile all of this violence done in God's name with a God who is all good and all powerful as Christianity claims. And they are quick to point out that the propensity for religious violence has a base in the violence that is recorded in Christianity's sacred writings - the bible.
Many others have noticed this difficulty before my friends. And there are various responses to it. One way we deal with difficult topics is to use humor. And, in my opinion, few do it better than Monte Python. As I was thinking about this sermon, I remembered one of my favorite scenes from "The Holy Grail." (Although, really, how is one to choose only one favorite scene from that movie?)
This is a movie that is poking fun at the crusades and all the violence that they inflicted on innocent people. Let's watch a bit from it:
[Holy Hand Grenade scene]
Now, we don't have a Book of Armaments in our Bible, but we do have many violent scenes that cannot be ignored or dismissed.
Q: Are there violent scenes in the bible that have struck and stuck with you? Passages that you have had to come to some understanding about because of the violence contained in them? I think scenes from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament come to mind quicker that from the New Testament, but violence is present in the New Testament as well. Anyone willing to share their thoughts?
[get responses from people]
- Noah and the ark
- The Promised Land conquests
- Jesus saying: Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. (Matthew 10:34)
- Jesus also saying: For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law
(Matthew 10:35)
I believe the segment of the Exodus story that we read this morning is representative of many of the violent passages that we read in the bible. Let's look at that a little closer.
When the story of the crossing of the Red Sea is read, the focus is usually on the Israelites and the fact that God saved them. After all, this is their story. And when we read it with that focus, we put ourselves in the place of the Israelites. We identify with them and claim God's saving acts for ourselves.
From this view, the violent act of drowning the Egyptian army is a good thing. The army was chasing after the Israelites to either kill them or bring them back into slavery. The army was after them to do violence to them. So they kind of got a taste of their own medicine, one could say.
The point of the story is to show how God works in mighty ways to save God's chosen people from sure destruction. When the Israelite people left on this journey following the Passover, they weren't so sure of this point. Now they know that it is true. After witnessing the waters parting for them but closing on the Egyptians, they believe in God and God's saving powers.
Well, for the time being anyways. Once they get into the desert a ways, they won't be so sure any more. But for right now, they have seen God's miraculous acts and they believe.
We, who believe in this same God, pass on this story and the others in the bible as examples of what God has done in the past as reassurance that God will act in the future in both small and mighty was to protect and provide for those who believe in God.
But, the pacifist in me (and in many people) wishes that the all-powerful God would have found another way to turn the Egyptians back. Wasn't there a way to make the Egyptians have a change of heart so that they just wouldn't have cared about this small band of rag-tag people any more and would have let them go in peace?
Those of us who wish for such a scenario aren't so off-base. We are shored up in our understanding of God as the God of peace just as much by bible passages as the understanding that God is a God of war and violence in the passages we just discussed.
Our passage from Matthew this morning is one such passage that shows that the all-powerful God we worship is also merciful and generous in forgiveness.
Peter asks Jesus how many times one should forgive another and offers what he thinks is a more than generous number of times: seven times. I mean, think about it. If someone does something not so nice to us, acknowledges it, and asks for forgiveness, we would probably be able to forgive that person. If it happened a second time, we would probably pause for a while before forgiving that same act.
But, forgiving someone for doing the same thing seven different times? That just seems like folly. Obviously the person has been insincere in asking for forgiveness because his or her actions have not changed. Why should we continue to take that person at his or her word and forgive him or her?
Peter's suggestion of forgiving someone up to seven times was more than generous. But Jesus pushes back. Not only should we forgive someone seven times, we should forgive them seventy-seven times!
That's just crazy talk. I believe I would have walked away from that person long before I would have the opportunity to forgive him or her seventy-seven times. I just don't think I would be able to put up with someone treating me in such a dismissive and demeaning way.
But that is only a glimpse of what God does. This is the point that Jesus is trying to make to Peter and to us. We continually do things that sadden and offend God, but God continually forgives us and welcomes us into a loving relationship with God. God is patient beyond all human understanding and truly wants to be reconciled to all of creation.
This seems like such a different picture of God than what we see in the Exodus passage. Can you think of other passages in the bible whose message is one of forgiveness or peace?
[get responses from people]
- Isaiah 2:4 - He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nations, nor will they train for war anymore.
- Micah 4:4 - Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD almighty has spoken.
- Luke 6:29 - If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.
Now just a side note about the lectionary (which we've been using for the past several months). Many times readings will carve out the violent parts and only focus on the more palatable verses.
This especially happens with reading from the book of Psalms. Many of the psalms have comforting words or great declarations of faith that are followed by or interspersed with prayers for enemies to be destroyed. Often very violent images are used in these passages.
In many such cases, the people who put together the lectionary selections chose to list only the verses that had the positive tone - of comfort or declaring one's faith. It almost strikes me as comical because it seems to only want to take the easy or positive parts of the passages without dealing with the difficult, dark, or violent parts.
Okay, so where does that leave us? We have the reality that our sacred Scriptures include a lot of violence and show God to be angry and inflicting violence on creation. But we also have many messages of peace and forgiveness and images of God as patient, loving, and forgiving.
How do these two extremes fit together for you in your understanding of God? And what does it mean for us humans who are said to be created in God's image?
[get responses from people]
I am left with the understanding that sometimes violence is necessary for self-protection and self-preservation. This is understanding undergirds the principles of the Just War Theory. We live in a broken world. And as such, sin and corruption bring violence into our lives. We have the right to defend ourselves from that violence.
But violence should never be our first response. The violence in the Exodus story came only after many other efforts by Moses to get the Israelite people out of Egypt peacefully. It was a last resort by a people who had been freed to go and then were pursued by their former captors.
At a worship service n campus this last week I heard a poem by Martin Luther King, Jr. that really moved me and I want to share it with you. It is from his collection called "Strength To Love" written in 1963. It goes like this:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.
Hate multiples hate, violence multiplies violence,
and toughness multiplies toughness
in a descending spiral of destruction.
The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate,
wars begetting wars - must be broken,
or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
We worship a God of abundant mercy and grace. A God who forgives and forgives and forgives beyond all human understanding. That should be our starting point for what it means to be created in God's image.
We need to live in an attitude of mercy and grace - always at the ready to forgive as we have been forgiven. And when we do this, we show glimpses of what will be the reality when Jesus comes again to bring the new heaven and the new earth. Violence will no longer exist. Only peace.
So let us live in this current tension all the while praying, "Come, Lord Jesus. Come."
Amen.
Let us pray. Loving and merciful God, your ways are not our ways. And yet, we want to follow you. We are not always clear about what that means for our lives. Help us to be open to your leading in our lives. And help us to be people of peace who are ready to forgive as we have been forgiven. We pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son. Amen.
