“Jesus was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him.”
What does it feel like to be a good man and know you are going to be killed? It is so incredibly sad; for a life to be taken and for the takers to misunderstand their lives, devoting them to conniving for killing. The local men who misunderstand their lives are conniving to arrest Jesus but will be prevented from killing him. They have been denied the political authority to kill by other men who misunderstand their lives, devoting them to even greater conniving for killing. They are the men of a military empire, Rome. No one wants to live under colonial rule; not the people being killed, nor, strangely enough, the people who devote themselves to killing. In Politics as a Vocation (1919), Max Weber writes, “A police state successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” What a life that must be, to claim a monopoly on violence, for a whole territory. In Jesus’ time, Israel’s territory was quite small. Rome’s territory was immense with colonies such as Israel across the Mediterranean. Israel’s territory today remains quite small. Their devotion to conniving for killing is larger, with a primary focus on Palestinians. Israel is no longer a colony, rather it is they who act as a colonial force over Palestinians. It is that occupying colonial force, conniving for killing them, that the Palestinians are attempting to change. Not all people in the West understand that truth of what it feels like to live under a violent colonialist empire devoted to killing them. Some people who live in Israel understand what that feels like and are attempting to change their empire’s devotion to killing. Jesus understands being his own man, a nonviolent man living a different life than other men, means other men, perhaps the Zealots, eventually the Romans, certainly the elders, chief priests, and scribes, are conniving to kill him. Is Jesus anti-male? Is he anti-partisan, anti-Roman? Is Jesus antisemitic? Militarism operates as a global colonizing killer of our imaginations, our energy for life, our ethics for healing. Militarists construct much if not all of the world’s frame of reference, influencing the average person to devote themselves to the work of the warrior class, killing. Militarists devote themselves to the right to kill, be they men, Hamas, the U.S. political system, the Israeli Defense Forces, or any other of the myriad groups of warriors the world over. If Jesus were alive today, he would be like most change activists, targeted for violence by men, militia groups, empires, and colonialists to be killed. He would not be a warmaker taking any side in the killing. He would be a peacemaker taking the side of peace among killers. He would be sharing with his disciples today the same devotion to gentle living as he shared with them after his prediction of being killed, “Taking a child, he placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me.”
“If I must die, you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings, (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze— and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself— sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope.” (If I Must Die – Refaat Alareer – written a month prior to his death in an Israeli air strike)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, guide us in Peace.
Question: What are we doing to the children across the world when we force a world of killing upon them?
September 22, 2024 Gospel Mark 9:30-37 Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time