This Sunday’s long Gospel is about the suffering and violence inflicted upon Jesus. It describes his arrest, trial, torture, and murder. Scripture scholars usually sanctify the violence done to Jesus as in keeping with a ‘suffering servant’ character from Isaiah. Of Isaiah’s 1,292 verses, 30 are so titled. One sample ‘suffering servant’ verse is, “He was oppressed and afflicted … he was led like a lamb to slaughter.” When Bible scholars tell us the Suffering Servant verses describe Jesus and his submission to violence, what they are telling us is a military fable.
Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’ belongs to a much larger military fable. It is told throughout the Old Testament, including in Isaiah, and has nothing to do with Jesus. The verses describe Jesus’ killer, a soldier. Throughout Isaiah in particular, the soldier character is fighting enemies. With sword in hand he values conquest over enemies and achieves justice. He is consistently linked to David’s violent kingdom and David’s violent deity, Yahweh of Armies, as the deity is referred to throughout Isaiah. Reading Isaiah as a whole reveals the character is suffering because he is a warrior and, as Militarism and its fable promotes, all warriors suffer valiantly. They supposedly suffer because they sacrifice themselves for their people. The people are usually cast as undeserving, but soldiers save them nonetheless through warfare. Soldiers are thus honored, even glorified. Militarism’s fable perversely casts Jesus as a warrior. He is a warrior who conquers sin and deserves honor and glory. Jesus suffers when he sacrifices himself by dutifully submitting to the violence of the cross and saves undeserving sinners. Hogwash. All of it. Jesus suffers and dies because soldiers persecute and kill him and he saves us by healing their deadliness in the Resurrection. Militarism’s fable is a lie spun by the soldiers who murder Jesus: “When they came to the place called the Skull, the soldiers crucified him.” The soldiers who murder Jesus tell their military fable to divert us from the very real suffering and violence they, soldiers, inflict upon this living breathing human being, Jesus of Nazareth. Soldiers tell their military fable to divert us from the very real suffering and violence they, soldiers, inflict on so many other living breathing human beings they also torture and murder across history and across the world. Militarists tell and retell their fable of honor, glory, and salvation through suffering and violence every time a soldier, in a system of soldiers, murders someone like Jesus. Militarists retold this fable recently when Honduran nonviolent environmental activist Berta Caceres was murdered by soldiers. Hers was one of a 102 such murders by that nation’s soldiers since an Obama/Clinton supported military coup in 2009. Honduran President Hernandez, Militarism’s handpicked successor, is currently diverting us with falsehoods and fabrications. He is telling us the old military fable of honoring and glorifying this woman because she submitted to suffering and violence and died for the people. Hogwash. All of it.
No fable about Jesus suffering and dying for his people can obscure the reality he was tortured and murdered by Militarism’s soldiers. So too no fable can obscure the reality of Berta Caceres being tortured and murdered by Militarism’s soldiers. The reality of the suffering and murder of Jesus, of Berta, of 101 additional Honduran environmental activists, and so many other Christ-like people is also, in part, the reality of particular soldiers. They too have fables told about them for in reality they sacrifice themselves for the warlord plunderers who invented the military fable. The plunderers invented the fable to provide camouflage for an entire military system that still financially gains from soldiers torturing and murdering Christs today.
Prayer: Spirit of Life, we are honest about violent suffering and death.
Question: How big an influence does Militarism’s fable about Jesus’ death have on my faith life?
March 20, 2016 Gospel Luke 22:14-23:56 Palm Sunday of Jesus’ Passion