“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. A life will be taken and the takers will misunderstand their own life, spending it on killing. Local Israelites who arrest Jesus will be denied from killing him. They are denied the political authority to kill by other takers of life, who spend their lives killing on an even larger scale. They are the men of a military empire, Rome. 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.” Whatever is the given territory, the decision to spend one’s life killing, has been normalized. It is so sad. It is so replicated. Whereas Israel was once a colony of Rome that killed its inhabitants, Israel is now a colonizer killing Palestinians. It is that occupying colonial force, conniving to kill them, that the Palestinian people are attempting to change. Some Israelis are attempting to change it as well. Neither group accepts that killing is normal or that killers are their saviors. Together they are attempting to stop the killing some people do and build a community of life. Jesus was attempting the same and knew that other men, perhaps the Zealots, eventually the Romans, certainly the elders, chief priests, and scribes, would kill him. Is Jesus anti-male? Is he antisemitic, anti-Roman? Is he anti-soldier? Militarism operates as a global colonizing killer of our imaginations. It influences the average person to devote themselves to the work of the warrior class, killing, as if it is normal, worse, as if it saves lives. Militarism influences us to bizarrely think that if a person is against killing they must be against life. But it is killers who are against life. 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 sharing with his disciples today the same devotion to gentle living as he shared with them after stating the truth that he would be 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