Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.” ~ Luke 23: 34
Over twenty years ago, Jennifer and I moved to Mancos with our two young children—Andie was going into Mrs. Epps’s second grade class and Ro was entering Mrs. Zufelt’s first grade class.
I remember we arrived in town late in the evening. There was a note on the parsonage door. “Welcome, Craig, Jennifer, and kids. We just cleaned the carpets, but they are not dry yet. If you want a dry place to sleep, go to Amy and Michele’s at 301 South Mesa Street.” This was before the days of GPS, so we didn’t know where to go, but a short woman wearing thick glasses and a smile bigger than Texas arrived to show us the way.
My mom moved into town about a month later with our niece Morgan who was going to live with us. She would hold her nose when we told her to eat at least one piece of broccoli. Jennifer would make homemade trail mix and Morgan would pick out the peanuts and the raisins and eat the M&M’s. “Why don’t you just give me a package of M&M’s Aunt Jenny?” she would ask.
That first summer we sank into our new community. We made late evening trips to the P & D Grocery store for ice cream. Bill and Phyllis Johnson’s grandson Zack worked in the pizza/ice cream parlor. He would pack the cone with ice cream and put a large dip on top and ask, “Do you want more?” We always said, “Yes.” Then Zack would charge us $1 a cone no matter how much ice cream we got. We thought we had died and gone to ice cream heaven.
Years later, I told Pete, the owner of P&D, how great it was when Zack Brown made pizza and dished out ice cream. Pete looked at me, shook his head, and said, “Yeah, I lost money when Zack worked here. Everybody loved him though.”
The kids started school in late August, and Andie and Ro would hold my hand when I walked with them the short two blocks to the elementary school. They would give me a hug at the front door and all three of us would hold back our tears.
Morgan would walk with us to Grand Avenue but disappear as soon as her new middle school friends could see her walking with her uncle. Between the Mancos Schools and the United Methodist Church, all three kids lived ninety percent of their new lives in a fragile cocoon within two blocks of the parsonage.
About four weeks after school started, Morgan came home troubled one evening. “Jenny and Craig, my social studies teacher wants to have a class debate on capital punishment. What should I do? I think some kids know my story but not everyone.”
Just eleven months previously, Morgan’s mother, my sister, was shot multiple times and killed by her boyfriend, Roosevelt. He pleaded guilty to murder and kidnapping and was awaiting sentencing in the Jefferson County Jail.
“Morgan, you will have a different perspective than most of the kids in your class. You know the effects of violence firsthand. You can share your thoughts, or you can stay at home if you’d like. It’s up to you.”
Is violence necessary? Does capital punishment offer vindication? Is violence the way of Jesus?
We are Easter people living in a Good Friday World. We believe in the power of God’s grace, love, and forgiveness to restore and renew us and the world. We long for the days when the lion and the lamb will lie down together. Yet, we live in a very violent, unjust world.
None of us can live life without being wounded. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “On Good Friday, we hear the familiar painful story of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, rejection, beating, interrogation, condemnation, and death.” We know this story well on a personal level. We know hate, anger, and abuse in relationships. We cherish moments when there is peace at the dinner table.
Do we ever know non-violent peace as a nation or a world community?
Countless children have been murdered by shooters. We mourn the loss of life, but rage at the idea that an assault rifle might be made illegal to own. We pray for peace but most of our tax money is spent preparing and participating in wars. “What else can we do? Nothing stops a bad guy with a gun like a good guy with a gun,” we scream in fear.
“From Popeye to Batman to Teenage Ninja Turtles, we have taught our children that violence is bad only if the bad guys do it. If the good guys do it, then everyone is allowed to cheer. Or, in the words of Dick Tracy, ‘Violence is golden, when it is used to put evil down,’” writes Barbara Brown Taylor.
Jennifer and I went to see “Wonder Woman” with our daughter Andie while she was in college. She said, “I liked the portrayal of strong women, but it’s the same false myth of redemptive violence.”
Theologian Walter Wink describes this myth of redemptive violence as such, “The only way the world can be saved is to get the weapons out of the hands of the hoodlums and into the hands of the righteous, who can be trusted to hurt bad guys only and whom God will pardon for the blood they spill. Think Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Bruce Willis. Superheroes redeem the world with their guns and fists and sophisticated explosives. This is the myth of redemptive violence.”
Does our world, our politics, and even the church revolve around the myth of redemptive violence? Does it work or does the cycle of violence and unnecessary death and suffering just continue?
When the authorities who enforce law and order come to arrest Jesus, he tells Peter to put his sword away. “All who take the sword will perish by the sword,” (Matthew 26:52). When the powers to be crucify Jesus, he says from the cross, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing,” (Luke 23:34).
Taylor writes, “We are collaborators in the myth of redemptive violence, even if all we do is sit and watch. Jesus hangs on the cross, stubbornly refusing to fight at all. He will not return violence for violence. Abused, he will not abuse. Condemned, he will not condemn. Abandoned, he will remain faithful. By choosing to die rather than to retaliate, he disarms the bomb of redemptive violence. Jesus shows us another way to live.”
Morgan’s middle school teacher asked his class, “Do you believe in capital punishment?” Every hand immediately shot up except one, Morgan’s. “Morgan, do you believe in capital punishment?”
“No, I don’t. If we kill someone who has killed another person, wouldn’t that make us just like them? My mom was murdered and the pain I’m in I would not wish upon anyone else. Executing the man who killed my mom will not bring her back.”
Barbara Brown Taylor says Jeus invites us to follow him and not some superhero or strong man who promises to rid the world of evil by killing all the bad actors (according to their view) by any means necessary. Jesus, along with Ghandi, King and others, “replace the myth of redemptive violence with the truth of indestructible love.”
“May we live to show him we got the message,” writes Taylor. May we have the courage to say yes to the transformative power of God’s love and may we say no to the myth of redemptive violence.
Blessings and peace,
Craig