“You’re too idealistic”
“Mr. Randolph, that sounds an awful lot like socialism….are you a socialist?”
“Do you even support our troops, cause you sound unpatriotic”
“Ever hear of “just-war” theory Mr. Randolph….huh, huh?” (imagine the ever so slight puffing up of the chest)
I’ve come across each of these statements, and many more (at least the ones people are willing to express while in my presence) and more often than not it is when discussing Jesus’ sermon on the mount….that radical, counterintuitive, counter cultural discourse recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew. Even the fact that I refer to the sermon as radical might give you some insight into which lens I use by which to understand those powerful words!
Yes, I am idealistic, I am a follower of Jesus! I’m crazy enough to believe, like many of you reading this, that the creator of the universe stepped into our reality, wearing flesh like us, and that he offered us another way to live and interact with the world around us. I’m crazy enough to believe that the beautiful system of Shalom, as presented in the opening poem of Genesis, paints a picture of whole and complete relationships between humans and God, humans and other humans, humans and the earth and each individual human with herself/himself. I’m idealistic enough to believe, although humanity has contributed to the destruction of Shalom, that the way of Jesus offers us the path towards the restoration of all things! I’m idealistic enough to believe Jesus when he teaches us to pray that what goes on in the Kingdom of God would also manifest here on earth all around us! I’m crazy enough to believe that each individual has a role to play in the restoration process…..I’m not a socialist, I’m a broken, hypocritical, cynical but also idealistic to a fault, dreamer, and follower of the way of weakness, the way of Jesus.
My brother-in-law is in the U.S. Navy…he’s like the real deal too, overseeing the maintenance of very expensive and powerful weapons of war, the F-18 super hornet. I love my brother, he’s rad, his wife is rad and his little boy is rad……I want him to live an amazing long life with his family, which is why I think of him when I pray for peace in our world! I can’t think of a better way to support the men and women wearing a military uniform from any country than by praying for peace and the restoration of all things! Side note….when we say God bless the troops, by what criteria do we use to decide which troops to bless? Which side gets to be the recipients of those blessings? What criteria do you think God uses? Too ornery?
My friend Chris Seals…..maybe you’ve heard of him, wrote a cool song that reminds us that we pledge our allegiance to the one who dies for friends and enemies. John, Jesus’ beloved, reminds us that God loved the entire world enough to allow a part of himself to die for it. Jesus reminds us that his heavenly father causes the rain and sun to fall and rise on the good and the bad and that we should reflect that type of love in the world!
I’m getting preachy again.
Chris asked me how I teach pacifism or how would I if I was in the classroom again. So here goes it….many of us Christ followers grew up being reminded of the original sin (eve+snake+apple = hell) but I wasn’t introduced to the concept of the original blessing until my adult years, and boy did that change things for me! Suddenly, I had reference point for how things should have been. I was given the gift of seeing God’s intention for existence right there in the beginning and I can trace a narrative thread throughout all of scripture that points to a future restoration of his intention. What might this intention be…….the overlapping of heaven and earth (God’s space and our space). A place where there are right, whole relationships, not lacking anything between every aspect of creation and the Creator! SHALOM!
Sooooo I would walk my students though the garden story and have them compare our world now to the one described in the story. We’d unpack the 4 relationships of Shalom (as stated in an earlier rant) and press into those areas where we see it lacking in our world and in our lives. We’d compare God’s requirements for a King as outlined in Deuteronomy (Deut 17:14-20) (read it, I dare you!) with our own ideas for the qualifications of the leader of a nation. Maybe we’d also compare the criteria for “just-war” theory with God’s requirements for a king to align ourselves to God’s heart, not man’s!
When the space is created for students to sit with these ideas, inevitably there will be some push back.
I often hear that we shouldn’t interpret Jesus’ words, in the sermon on the mount, as literal (interesting that it’s usually from the same brothers and sisters that tell me to read Genesis 1-3 literally).
Here’s my push back……Stephen, Peter, Perpetua, MLK Jr, and Oscar Romero to name a few. Each of these followers of Jesus died for their beliefs and understood that fighting back would not be in adherence to loving one’s enemy. So if I was still in the classroom I would have students break into small groups to further research the life and death of the first 4 names on my list above. Hopefully this would allow us to have some very serious, soul searching, type discussions. We’d probably end our unit watching the film “Romero”, about the life and eventual murder of Oscar Romero. This dude navigated the tension between the power of the state and the twisted view of some in the church who were resorting to armed violence to combat the government. He chooses the third way…the way of weakness that leads to the cross, the way of Jesus. His deep understanding of Christ’s sacrificial love inspired him to say things like ““We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.” ― Oscar A. Romero, The Violence of Love.
Let us all work towards the restoration of this world, let us all participate in putting things back together…in the restoration of Shalom and the ushering in of the Kingdom of Heaven!
