Lent: Day 24

Scripture: Luke 13: 1-5

Jesus says the most troubling things sometimes. Since Lent is a time for wrestling with them, Luke 13 isn’t a bad place to start. Why does he threaten destruction on the crowd here? Isn’t this a little unlike the Jesus we’re used to?

In fact, Jesus isn’t threatening the crowd with God’s wrath. He’s trying to point out to them the self-destructiveness of the path they’re set on: rebellion against Rome, rising up in violent resistance to the violence that’s already coming their way from a mighty Empire. The cycle of violence, Jesus keeps on saying, only begets violence. The way out is not to meet this fire with fire, but to meet it with the waters of peace, righteousness and grace. You can still demand change and seek for justice: but to do so violently is, to say the least, counter-productive.

Jesus was prepared to go to the death himself to prove the truth of his life’s teaching. He met violence and the human urge always to find scapegoats with grace and peace, infused with his staunch passion for peace. Above all things, his death shatters the cycle of violence by its unflinching, uncompromising determination to expose the way human hatred and the blame game work, and how they always fail to resolve our deepest problems. The resurrection was God’s way of confirming that Jesus had it right.

About three centuries before Jesus, the great Indian emperor Ashoka, after a particularly bloody war, suddenly saw through its futility and cost, and renounced violence. He set up edicts on columns across his great kingdom, calling for “non-violence and happiness for all creatures.” All religions were tolerated and even celebrated; the country’s army was retired. It was an extraordinary exercise in statecraft; as one historian put it, Ashoka “had hit on one of the most dangerous ideas in history.”

It’s the dangerous idea at the heart of our faith, too. Can we lay aside the superfluous things, and finally embrace it?

Prayer: Generous God, you desire peace for your people, and wholeness and healing for your world. Bring us face to face with Jesus again, that we may learn the lessons of his life and the truth of his example. Give us courage, that we may journey with him, even to Jerusalem, and stand with him against violence and oppression in all their forms. Teach us this dangerous secret, and how to build our lives – and the life of the world – upon its truth, and upon the one who taught it to us. We pray in his name: Amen.