Peter has performed “a good deed done to a cripple.” He has healed him. Peter does not take credit for doing so. He says the man has been healed “in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean.” Peter then makes a statement that has unfortunately been twisted in its meaning. He says, “There is no salvation through anyone other.”
For centuries rulers of institutional christianity have misused and abused Jesus as well as Peter’s salvation statement about him. Rulers have done so in service to their own salvation plan, salvation through violence. Belief in salvation through violence is borrowed from the Old Testament. It has been promoted by crucifixion obsessed self-titled Christians for millennia; especially Paul, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. (Luther “Salvation comes only through the cross and a crucified Christ.” Calvin, “Scripture,… to define the mode of salvation, ascribes it peculiarly and specially to the death of Christ.”) Salvation through violence is a cruel belief and, when dogmatized in Jesus’ name, perverse and crippling. Every person who has ever grieved a loved one killed through violence knows violence’s perverse and crippling nature. Kathe Kollwitz (1867-1945), whose anniversary of her passing we mark this month, was forced into the perverse and crippling nature of violence. It happened when Germany’s rulers forced her youngest son to be killed in the violence of WWI. In her body and in her soul she knew there was no salvation in violence. Kathe became committed to nonviolence and began to express her passion for it through art. Again and again she created images showing there is no salvation in violence. She is perhaps best known for her Grieving Parents sculpture modeled on her and her husband in the aftermath of their son’s death. The father stares into oblivion his arms wrapped around himself, all that is keeping him from falling into pieces. The mother is bent over clutching her heart. Though Kathe’s own heart had indeed suffered a cruel and perverse blow she would not be crippled by the violent ones. As WWI faded into the rule of Hitler and WWII her work was banned but she kept creating healing art. Her life in Nazi ruled Germany was difficult but she survived, always proclaiming there is no salvation in violence, there is only SALVE-ation in healing.
Institutional christianity has the habit of obliterating or ignoring the truth that Jesus was usually talking to rulers when speaking difficult truths. Commentators do the same with these words of Pater. When Peter affirms healing is in the name of Jesus and him alone he is speaking his words to the violent rulers who crucified Christ. “Leaders of the people and elders… know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified… (that) this man stands before you healed.” For Jesus, Peter, Kathe, and all artists, they know salve-ation is through healing alone.
Prayer: Spirit of Healing, we vow to spread healing salve.
Question: How am I more influenced by theologians interpreting Jesus than I am by Jesus’ witness?
April 22, 2018 Gospel John 10:11-18 Fourth Sunday of Easter