Jesus Wept

From the Gospel of Luke       As Jesus was approaching the path [toward Jerusalem] down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Jesus answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”  (Luke 19:37-44)

From the Book of the Judges             Then the Lord raised up judges, who delivered them out of the power of those who plundered them.  Yet they did not listen even to their judges; for they lusted after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their ancestors had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord; they did not follow their example. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord would be moved to pity by their groaning because of those who persecuted and oppressed them.  But whenever the judge died, they would relapse and behave worse than their ancestors, following other gods, worshiping them and bowing down to them. They would not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel; and he said, “Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their ancestors, and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died.” In order to test Israel, whether or not they would take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their ancestors did, the Lord had left those nations, not driving them out at once, and had not handed them over to Joshua. (Judges 2:16-23)

            At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment. (Judges 4:4-5)

            We watched the movie Lincoln again recently and I was particularly moved by one scene where President Lincoln rides slowly through a still smoldering battlefield. Everywhere he looks, the bodies of soldiers are tumbled together, a horrific grey and blue sculpture of death and destruction. I wept.

It was just after the Civil War that the commemoration of Memorial Day began. Memorial Day was instituted because people wanted to remember the fallen soldiers from both the North and the South. But this time of memorial also forces us to remember our warring madness and the horrible fact that in these years, 750,000 fellow Americans had killed one another. This was also around the same time that Julia Ward Howe initiated a Mother’s Peace Day observance. Too many mothers, too many grandmothers had lowered their bright, brave sons into graves. Too many mothers had wept in the night and still ached with each morning’s light. “Enough is enough,” they said. Julia Howe’s call for peace is now our annual Mothers’ Day celebration but it began in 1870 as a way to remember the weeping of mothers and the waste of war.

On the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem, on the day before he carried his old rugged cross up the hillside, he wept. Not for himself, but for all those who turned their backs on the peace he offered and who instead – as people will do – turned to violence. Jesus saw clearly how this sin against shalom destroys the soul of a person. And so, Jesus took up his cross and walked right into the violence, bearing its burden and thus breaking its power by his own self-giving.

Even today, there are still far too many people who do not recognize the saving, healing work of God. There are still far too many people who turn away and do not recognize the things that make for peace.

In our Living in The Story project, when we come to the reading of Old Testament books like Joshua and Judges, we come to read horrific stories of war and violence. Walter Brueggemann says: “There is no question more troubling for theological interpretation of the Old Testament than the undercurrent of violence that runs through a good bit of the text. There is, moreover, no part of the textual tradition that is more permeated with violence than the conquest traditions of Joshua and Judges” (Brueggemann, 116).     

And so – you may well ask – why on earth are we reading these ancient stories that so offend our modern, civilized sensibilities? What do these stories of Joshua and the defeat of the city of Jericho, of Deborah and the taking of the land of Canaan have to do with us?

Well, for one thing - like making ourselves sit down and watch the movie Lincoln – these stories cause us to remember that this is OUR human story. Violence is a part of who we are. Atrocity is what we all are capable of. We ought to remember that. We must not forget how tempting it is for every one of us humans to sin against shalom.

But when we read these stories in the Church’s Scriptures, there is another aspect that is even more troubling than the persistent reality of human violence. Very often this narrated violence is represented in the Bible to be sanctioned by - even commanded by - God.

When Joshua and the armies of Israel marched around the city of Jericho, when the priests blew the trumpets, when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, the text says Joshua said: “Shout! For the Lord has given you the city. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. … Then they devoted to destruction by the edge of the sword everything in the city - men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys” (Joshua 6).

I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to stomach that this proactive violence is part of our Holy Scripture. I have trouble saying: “The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God” whenever I read something like this.

Here are three helpful insights I’ve gained as I’ve pondered some of these difficult passages in the Bible; maybe they will help you as well.

One – the stories written down and preserved – especially in writings like Joshua and Judges - look back on Israel’s story from the distance of several centuries; these stories reflect on their past from the perspective of their experience in Exile.

God’s people nearly lost themselves in Exile in Babylon six centuries before Christ. As they pondered what had happened to them and reflected on why they had lost their promised land, some interpreted their reality within a deuteronomistic frame: actions have consequences, what goes around comes around, what you give is what you get. As they retold the stories of their past, they told them in such a way that taught their children this fundamental lesson: when we obeyed God, we were wildly successful. When we disobeyed God, we were soundly defeated. It is their way to give God credit for their successes and to hold themselves accountable for the failures. So when they told the stories saying: “God said this” and “God did that,” it was one way of acknowledging God’s power and sovereignty. It was a way to frame the story within the big picture of God’s overarching will.

Two – there is a tragic thread of human history that arises because of our misguided misapplication of these ancient stories to our current day.

·                    The Israelites truly believed God gave them license for genocide against the nations of the Promised Land.

·                    The state of Israel to this day holds onto the promise of the land as a justification for their oppression of the Palestinian people.

·                    The Crusaders slashed and hacked their way through the Holy Land, truly believing God had called them to exterminate the Moslems from the land.

·                    Some early Americans were so convinced God had given them this new continent as a kind of promised land that they claimed it was God’s will that they should decimate the Native Americans.

·                    The Nazis sacrificed six million Jews on the excuse that God’s true chosen people were the Aryan nations.

These stories in The Story are still our story too. Now, just try to convince me that faithful, appropriate biblical interpretation doesn’t matter! Across the ages, too many people have used and misused Scripture in order to justify all kinds of perpetual sins against shalom. So our read through the Bible effort to Live in The Story might challenge some of our previous understandings of what this story means and how to apply truth to our current day, and - if you ask me - that challenge to re-read and re-consider meaning and application is a very good thing.

I know full well this is not an adequate way of explaining the biblical stories of violence; I was really counting on the scholars’ help here but most of them are as puzzled as I am. Some time ago, I went to a preacher’s workshop led by author/churchman/theologian, William Willimon and he cautioned us preachers to resist the temptation of justifying, defending and explaining away the text in these hard stories. Willimon challenges us to admit that The Story is what it is: messy, confusing, contradictory – just as we humans are messy, confusing and contradictory.

Brian McLaren has been thinking and writing about the biblical stories of violence and in his most recent book, he reflects on the tales of conquest in Deuteronomy, Joshua and Judges:

Many religious scholars have assumed that because the Bible makes these claims [that God commands violence], we must defend them as true and good. That approach, however, is morally unacceptable for growing numbers of us, and fortunately, we have another option.

McLaren goes on to say we can 1) acknowledge that the originators of the stories truly believed God directed their actions; 2) acknowledge that in the worldview of this people, divine involvement in the wars of humans was typical and expected; 3) allow that people very often find comfort in a God who will take their side and avenge their oppressors; 4) admit that if we had walked in their sandals, we very likely would have held similar attitudes and done similar things (McLaren, 47-48).

            Again, none of this “explains away” the reality of the ugliness of some of these biblical texts, but it does allow us to re-consider how we will choose to make meaning and find appropriate truth for our own day and age.

Three – I may have trouble saying “thanks be to God” for some of these ancient stories, but I do say thanks be to God for Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that we see God’s will truly done on earth as it is in heaven. It is in Christ that we see God’s authentic character embodied.

No matter what the text of Joshua and Judges represents, there is and always has been an alternative biblical vision of who God is and therefore, who the people of God should be. A counter-cultural witness embedded in Scripture tells a story of the God who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34, Nehemiah 9, Psalms 86, 103, 145). A counter-cultural witness calls the people of God to turn away from violence and live in harmony: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19). It is only when we read Scripture through this kind of alternative lens that we can re-read, re-frame, re-consider what is truly true for our believing and for our living.

Brian McLaren admits (as we must) that even though, throughout history, people of faith have perpetuated violence in God’s name, Jesus Christ has created a new way by showing us God’s way of peace.

In God’s name Jesus would undergo violence, and in so doing, overcome it. And that was why…Jesus spoke of suffering, death, and resurrection as a different kind of strategy for a different kind of victory (McLaren, 119).

Because of the Christ, we have tangible insight into the nature of God and the essence of community that earlier people of God did not have. When we read the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, we do not have to be obligated to ancient, limited understandings. When we read the Old Testament in light of Jesus Christ, we are freed up to be the people of the Christ. And what Jesus the Christ demonstrates is this: self-giving, turn the other cheek, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, die to yourselves, live in shalom.

Even though, again and again throughout human history, Christians have not followed in the way of the Christ, every day offers new opportunities to change inadequate attitudes and actions and to submit ourselves to the way of Christ and the things that make for peace. 
In Phyllis Trible’s classic book: Texts of Terror, she says:

To take to heart these ancient stories is to confess its present reality. But beyond confession, we must take counsel to say: “Never again!” Yet this counsel will not be effective unless we direct our hearts to that most uncompromising of all biblical commands, speaking the word not to others, but to ourselves: “Repent! Repent!” (Trible, 87).

           

A few years ago Brite Divinity School created an important new ministry called Soul Repair. The Soul Repair Center’s vision and work is to support our solders’ recovery from moral injury. Moral injury is different from post-traumatic stress disorder; different from a psychological, emotional injury. Moral injury is a spiritual wound; it is violence done to a person’s deeply held values; it is the breaking of personal promises; it is the betrayal of strong convictions.

“War is hell,” they say, and those who have borne the battle have surely lived for a while in hell. They have seen and heard and experienced horrors most of us cannot fathom. They have had to do things they never imagined they could do. They have been forced to make choices they can scarcely believe they have made. The souls of our soldiers are violated by this our perpetual human violence against shalom. Soul Repair seeks their healing.

In Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, he urged us:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

These words make me weep. Not just because they are so beautiful but because we have not yet learned how to achieve and cherish just and lasting peace.

There is so much injury, so much misery in our human family. Mothers have lost their sons; soldiers have lost their limbs; too many have lost their way. Surely God Almighty weeps. Jesus wept. May we weep as well.

And may we repent.

Let us repent of the ways we turn away because of our own complacency and refusal to change our culture and economy of war. Let us repent of the violence that destroys God’s children and defeats God’s peace. Let us repent of the ways we imagine God is on our side instead of beseeching God to bring us to the side, to the work of the Holy One. Let us repent of our lack of compassion for the brokenness of those who have borne the battle in our place. Let us repent for our failure to care for their widows and orphans. Let us repent of our warring madness and admit that we too have been complicit in sinning against shalom.

May we be bold and courageous to take up our cross and – following Jesus - walk right into the brokenness of the world.  May we be a part of binding up the wounds of God’s people. May each of us individually and all of us together become part of “the things that make for peace.”

Walter Brueggemann, An Introduction to the Old Testament: the Canon and Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003).

Brian D. McLaren (2014-06-10). We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation. FaithWords. Kindle Edition.

Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror (Philadelphia: Fortress Press: 1984).

Soul Repair Center http://brite.edu/academics/programs/soul-repair/   

Crucifixion, mid-1930s (reworked by artist in 1970s)
Elijah Pierce (1892 – 1984), 
Carved and painted wood with glitter on wood panel, 47 ¾ x 30 ¾
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio: