The war waged by rulers against Jesus ends with their murder of him, as detailed in today’s Gospel. Religious rulers request Jesus’ torture and murder, political rulers order it, and soldiers carry it out. “The soldiers led Jesus away inside the palace… weaving a crown of thorns, placed it on him,… kept striking his head with a reed and spitting upon him… when they had mocked him… brought him to the place of Golgotha — Place of the Skull… Then they crucified him.”
The cross upon which Jesus is murdered is posited as the axis of the Christian faith, the center around which the faith rotates. That the cross, a weapon of war soldiers used to torture and murder Jesus is so glorified, is proof that our faith in Jesus has been replaced by the religion of Militarism. The religion of Militarism, exemplified by soldiers and the cross, has three parts; cult, creed, and code. It has a ruler-based relationship model that ordains domination by a Superior Officer (cult). It has a belief in atonement that glorifies obedient soldiers and their weapons that cause suffering as the will of that Superior (creed). It has an ethic of violence as the most Superior of actions asserting violence saves us (code). Militarism’s takeover of the Christian faith explains why the ruling class preaches Jesus’ suffering and death by soldiers on the cross is our salvation. Militarism shifts the axis of the faith to their cult, creed, and code and away from Jesus’ life witness. Militarism nullifies that a commoner, by freely loving the ‘sinners’ rulers make suffer, and healing them, is humanity’s salve-ation. Militarism’s perverse reversal of truth is the quintessential example of winners writing the history books. The only reason rulers ordering soldiers to torture and murder Jesus on the cross would be interpreted as a saving event, is if the murderers and their soldiers were telling the story. They have been; from Paul and Augustine, onto the Emperor Constantine and soldier Popes, the Big Lie has been told by too many soldier theologians; historic (Martin Luther, John Calvin,…) and current (Paul Ramsey, Michael Walzer, Wayne Grudem,…). Each extol soldiers as saviors and the cross as a saving weapon. But the cross is a weapon of war used by killer soldiers against Christ. A recent addition to the soldier’s weapon of the cross being glorified as people’s salvation is The Crucifixion, by Fleming Rutledge. Rutledge, ruling Episcopal priest, obedient soldier of Militarism, and proponent of its violence, asserts “the cross is good news because it is the solution.” The cross is “God’s victory over Sin.” The cross is “the way that the triune God rectifies all things” The cross is none of these things. The cross is a weapon of death advantageous to rulers, glorified by their obedient soldiers, and sanctified by the religion they invented. Militarism’s theology of the cross is invented to continue the divinization of rulers and their soldiers, to justify their sin of abusing people, and to sanctify their violence. Jesus never attributed glory to the cross. Nor did witnesses to his torture and death on it. The vulnerable people in today’s Gospel, like “Mary Magdalene,” and the “women (who) had followed him when he was in Galilee” and were standing at the foot of the cross, watching one more torturous death on it, never asserted the cross as “good news,” “the solution,” or “God’s victory.” All of the assertions are the propaganda of rulers and their obedient soldiers who sanctify weapons like the cross. The cross is not the axis upon which peacemaking rotates; a commoner who loved, and healed is. We need not bow to the cult of rulers and their soldiers, believe in their creed of their divine right to harm us, nor grant our destroyers their code of violent means to destroy us.
The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe as its handle was made of wood and they thought it was one of them. (Aesop)
Prayer: Spirit of Christ, open our hearts and our hands of any weapons
Question: Why would peacemakers follow rulers, believe in weapons, and glorify killers?
March 28, 2021 Gospel Mark 14:1 – 15:47 Palm Sunday