I’ve
been wondering about this story of Jesus being attacked on a cliff
for as long as I can remember.  How did Jesus get out?  Perhaps
because of Sunday School materials from my childhood, I have an image
in my head of people fighting and kicking up a cloud of dust, out of
which Jesus walks unscathed. Or, perhaps this really is the
implication of the end of the story, “But he passed through the
midst of them and went on his way.” (4:30)  🤷🏻‍♀️

The
long standing question of “how did get out of such a dangerous
situation” has often distracted me from a far simpler reality:
this is a disturbing story.  Jesus is at home, a place we might think
he would be particularly safe.  Jesus is speaking in the center of
religious worship, a place we might hope would be particularly
nonviolent.  Jesus is claiming the care of God for the people of God,
to people who definitely knew God and needed care – a gift that we
might hope would be well received.

Instead,
they were “filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the
town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was
built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”  (4:28b-29)
Now, I can analyze what was going on that made them so mad.  (Jesus
claimed more “honor” than was his fair share, in a system where
honor was a 0-sum game.) But in terms of the story being a disturbing
one, it doesn’t matter that much.  This attack on Jesus by his
people, a potentially deadly attack, is just awful.

Scholars
think Luke is using this story to foreshadow how Jesus’ message will
be received – that while some will listen and be moved, others will
respond with violence to maintain the status quo.  And, that actually
helps, because it brings into focus that the end of Jesus’s life is
really disturbing too.  I have never managed to come to iaece with
capital punishment, and I find each instance of state-sponsored
killing to be … well, a lot more than disturbing.  But let’s stick
with disturbing for a moment.

While
I had the opportunity to regularly hear fantastic preachers as a
kid, and had thoughtful Sunday School teachers and intentional Youth
Group leaders, the US culture’s basic atonement theory still
penetrated my consciousness.  I grew up thinking that I was supposed
to believe that “Jesus died for my sins” and, since that was
something I was supposed to be grateful for, that meant that Jesus’
death was … useful?  Good?  (You might think I’d avoid “good”
but if so, consider “Good Friday.”)  

As
I’ve grown, I’ve been blessed with spaciousness to consider what I
really believe, and to question things that don’t make sense to me.
While I seek to extend that spaciousness to others, and respect
differences in faith, for me that has meant leaving behind “Jesus
died for my sins” and leaving in its place, “Jesus died because
his movement threatened the power of the powerful and whenever I am
complicit in protecting existent power structures, I am engaging in
the same behavior that got him killed.”  (I’ll admit, it has less
of a ring to it.)

I’ve
come back around to finding it disturbing that Jesus, who was a
powerful prophet, a man of incredible morality,
a truly amazing teacher, a notable healer, a wise mystic, AND a
liberator of the oppressed was killed because of exactly those
things.  In fact, I’m back to finding it disturbing when people are
killed, and that includes those who are killed by state-sponsored
violence.

So,
this early narrative in Luke is a disturbing story that foreshadows a
disturbing story, which end up bookending most of Jesus’
ministry.  All that Jesus offers in teaching, healing, and empowering
has over it the shadow of how threatening people find it to have
systems disrupted.

Luke
uses Isaiah’s vision of someone acting on God’s behalf to

• bring
  good news to the oppressed,
• bind
  up the broken-hearted,
• proclaim
  liberty to the captives,
• release
  to the prisoners;
• proclaim
  the year of the Lord’s favor,
• to
  comfort all who mourn;
• repair
  the ruined cities,
  (etc)

and
Luke notes, right from the get-go, that this vision of God and being
one called upon to enact it is DANGEROUS work.

In
the end, Jesus’ untimely death was initiated by the powerful
religious authorities, who thought that his movement threatened the
well-being of the entire Jewish population.  It feels like a
parallel to this story, where it seems that the hometown
faithful were terrified by the implications of what Jesus was going
to do.

They
would all have been saying to Jesus, “Don’t rock the boat!”  Now,
“Don’t rock the boat,” is very good advice for getting ahead in
life, moving up ladders of institutional power, being generally
well-liked, and… in lots of cases… surviving.  However, it turns
out that it is not the Jesus way, and that means it isn’t the way of
Jesus followers either.

Jesus
followed the path of nonviolence.  That one is a difficult path, but
one that is abundant in grace and hope.  If we think about the work
named in Isaiah 61, it becomes clear that this is profoundly
nonviolent work.  Not only is the work itself NOT violent (a good
starting point) but it is aimed at disentangling the power of
violence that disrupts life itself.  

It
is far too easy to ONLY take notice of direct, visible, physical
violence – and miss all the other kinds.  Those of us who have been
trained in Safe Sanctuaries were reminded that abuse itself can look
like physical abuse, OR it can look like sexual abuse, OR it can look
like emotional abuse, OR it can look like neglect.  Furthermore,
violence can also look like the simple threat of violence that is
used to keep people in check, even if it isn’t regularly used.  

And,
on top of that, violence can also be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  
Violence includes allowing people to be hungry when there is abundant
food – because some people don’t “earn enough” to eat.  That’s
a violence that looks like societal neglect.  Violence looks like
people not being able to get health care, or get access to necessary
medication, or get life-saving treatment because of who they are or
what they have.  That’s a violence that kills, but more out of LACK
of access than direct attacks.  Violence looks like campaigns to
doctors to prescribe opiates, knowing they’d lead to addiction,
knowing they’d lead to death – but choosing profit over lives.
Violence looks like the laws we have that prevent people with
convictions from being able to have places to live, or food to eat,
or jobs to provide for their needs – even when convictions
themselves have more to do with our “justice” system than they do
with individual actions.

Or,
to make this a little bit more concise, all forms of inequity and
hierarchy are less visible forms of violence.  

So.
Violence is a lot.

Which
means that non-violence is a lot.

And,
for those of you tuning in for the first time, Jesus led a movement
of NON-VIOLENCE and to choose to be a Jesus follower is to choose the
ways of NON-VIOLENCE.  

There
was a fun note in the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels¹
that said, “an over-quick resort to violence is often an unintended
public admission of failure.  In honor challenge, the party that
first resorts to violence loses the exchange: a resort to violence
indicates that wits have failed and bully tactics have taken over.”²
So part of what we’re seeing in this story is that violence tries to
take Jesus down, which itself proves Jesus right, and he does NOT
resort to violence, but rather walks away from it.

And,
then he spends his ministry as a non-violent religious leader who
attempts to CHANGE the systems of oppression that are less visible
forms of violence.  And then he invites us to follow him.

One
of the most visible nonviolent religious followers of Jesus in recent
times was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and The King Center
continues to teach the principles and practices of non-violence.  I
regularly reread them, and seek further education on nonviolence as a
way of following Jesus and respecting the movement Dr. King was a
part of.³
The King Center states, “The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and
MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle.”
and expands on what that means, as well as naming the principles of
nonviolence and steps in nonviolent social change.  For example:

PRINCIPLE
ONE: Nonviolence Is a Way of Life for Courageous People.

•  It
  is not a method for cowards; it does resist.
• It
  is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
• It
  is aggressive spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

I
highly recommend the teachings of the King Center as further reading,
for good living.

For
this moment, however, I have a very pragmatic suggestion about
nonviolence.  I have seen that there are HIGH levels of angst and
anxiety pretty much everywhere right now.  I’m told others have
noticed this too, and it is often being seen via emotional outbursts
at strangers (particularly ones who work in some form of customer
service) or at loved ones (because that’s where we most often let go
of steam).  

I
believe that one of the most powerful tools of nonviolence is
COMPASSION, and I believe it is needed in TWO directions.  One
direction is towards others who are struggling, with a hope that we
might respond with calm, caring, empathy when others need it.  The
other is towards ourselves – which is BOTH how we gain the capacity
to respond with calm to others AND how we work towards fewer
outbursts of our own.

This
week a fellow clergy person asked for help in dealing with her pent
up anger, and asked clergy sisters how they do it.  The responses
were so helpful:  exercise!  Therapy!  Throwing things that are safe
to throw and not at anything living!  Medicine!  Screaming!  …. and
also self compassion.  (I was asked, I answered.)  To deal with
anger, for me, means I need to know what is under it – what value I
hold or need I have is being violated, so I can figure out how I want
to respond.⁴

Although,
sometimes before I can get to dealing with the anger, I have to do
the work of admitting that I’m angry, and to do that I take the
advice of Thich Naht Hahn, and breath in “I’m angry” and breath
out “I’m angry” until I get the sense that the anger has been
acknowledged.  Then I can look at the why under the anger.  

We
can’t build God’s kindom without doing it nonviolently.  

Violence
isn’t going to get us to nonviolent justice.  And to be nonviolent is
WORK. It takes INTENTION, and PRACTICE, and COMMUNITY, and heaps of
GRACE.  It means we are constantly working on it, in ourselves and
with each other.  It means every moment is an opportunity to try
again.

The
world responded with violence to God’s vision of nonviolence, and to
Jesus’ teachings of justice.  But Jesus responded with the power of
nonviolence anyway, and it turns out that was enough so that we’re
still here, following in his way, 2000 years later.  Nonviolence
isn’t the fastest way, but it is the only way.  May God help us along
our way.  Amen

As
we all grow and learn, we’re trying to learn how to listen to the
lessons of our emotions AND learn how to allow our emotions space to
be our teachers WITHOUT letting them hurt us or others.  May God help
us learn those lessons.  Amen

1I’m
well aware that my sermons could be set up as Bingo games, with this
book being one of the squares, Walter Brueggemann being another,
etc.  Just acknowledging reality here.

2 Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Mark 1:21-34” p. 244.

3
https://thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/the-king-philosophy/

4
https://workcollaboratively.files.wordpress.com/…/wc…)

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

February 6, 2022