The Empire Strikes Back Again and Again

To the world the church is largely irrelevant The world doesn’t want the message we proclaim And We (the church) don’t want the message Jesus proclaimed “Life with Christ doesn’t just have to do with forgiveness, but more than anything, it has to with relationship to real life.” Dallas Willard There’s no us and them If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors…. So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. James 2:8-9,12-13 Christ came to reveal… No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. Jn.1:18 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. Jn.6:46 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.” Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Jn.14:6-9 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. I Jn.4:12 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice (reconciliation), and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 Again How the Kingdom of this World Responds to the Kingdom of God And Again… And Again… And Again “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.” —MAHATMA GANDHI "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." —Dr. Martin Luther King Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 1964 “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt 10:34) Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. (Matt.26:52) Peacefully standing up to the violent power structures is a sure way to suffer consequences. The powers and principalities do not take too kindly to those who would challenge their authority, yet some are called to challenge them nonetheless. The estimated death tolls for the top ten bloodiest wars in human history: 1. Mongol Conquests (1206–1324): 40–70 million 2. World War II (1939–1945): 40–60 million 3. Three Kingdoms/End of the Han Dynasty (184– 280): 36–40 million 4. Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945): 25 million 5. Qing Dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty (1616– 1662): 25 million 6. Taiping Rebellion (1850– 1864): 20–100 million 7. World War I (1914–1918): 20 million 8. An Lushan Rebellion (755–763): 13–36 million 9. Dungan Revolt (1862–1877): 8–20 million 10. Chinese Civil War (1927–1949): 8 million This list even includes direct and premeditated attacks on civilians throughout the more “enlightened” twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For instance, on August 6 and August 8, 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The combined death toll of both events, although impossible to estimate precisely due to the overwhelming chaos created, was in the hundreds of thousands On September 11, 2001, two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, knocking down three buildings and killing nearly 3,000 civilians. A more recent major crisis is the Syrian Civil War, which has led to the death of an estimated 220,000 people (as of January 15, 2015). “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” Albert Einstein Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who worked to develop the atomic bomb under the infamous moniker “The Manhattan Project.” This is how he described the feelings in the room when they decided to drop the bomb. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” I suppose we all thought that, one way or another” Aiko Takakura’s account of the day the bomb was dropped in her city Mordechai Ronen, a survivor of the Shoah. He explaining the conditions of multiple Nazi concentration camps, including the dreaded Auschwitz wrote… General William Tecumseh Sherman from his address to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy (19 June 1879) “I’ve been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It’s entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don’t know the horrible aspects of war. I’ve been through two wars and I know. I’ve seen cities and homes in ashes. I’ve seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is Hell!” Staff Sergeant Dominic Moes, who is now medically retired after having spent ten years serving as a soldier in the United States Army. Concerning the crisis in the Middle East said… We all are deceived towards our propensity for violence It is time for us to know the truth and be set free So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Jn.8:36 Jesus’ lesson on violence John 8 is sandwiched between two attempts of stoning Stoning….collective violence What was “freedom” to the Jews? To Jesus? To the Jews, freedom was attained and maintained by killing their enemies. The way of Cain To Jesus, freedom was another word for choosing to love his enemies For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. Gal. 5:14-15 What did the Jews (prospective disciples) “do?” (v.38) What did Jesus mean when he said, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did.”? Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; James 2:2-22 Abraham’s “work” was to stop the killing God is NOT a God of violence “We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.” The Talmud We do not see God as He is; we see Him as we are We will become what we worship What did Cain do after he killed his brother? Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. Gen.4:16-17 By faith he (Abraham) went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Heb.11:9-10 Did Israel learn the lesson? And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:41-44 Satan (the Accuser) is about hate and violence God is about love and peace On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” Jn.20:19-21 “Unless we are prepared to risk injury and death in nonviolent opposition to the injustice our societies foster, we don’t dare even whisper another word about pacifism to our sisters and brothers in those desperate lands. Unless we are ready to die developing new nonviolent attempts to reduce international conflict, we should confess that we never really meant the cross was an alternative to the sword. Unless the majority of our people in nuclear nations are ready as congregations to risk social disapproval and government harassment in a clear call to live without nuclear weapons, we should sadly acknowledge that we have betrayed our peacemaking heritage. Making peace is as costly as waging war. Unless we are prepared to pay the cost of peacemaking, we have no right to claim the label or preach the message.” Ron Sider - Mennonite World Conference 1984