Tuesday of Holy Week 2016 and we awake again to news of unspeakable violence – this time in Brussels. My heart breaks for the victims, of course, but it also aches for all of us who now suffer from a new wave of fear, anger and despair. The death toll will be much higher than whatever the final gruesome body count is in Belgium because fear and anger will spawn new and very natural responses of revenge. Violence begets violence. We know, but we seem powerless to respond in any other way. I get that, but I also know that if we continue down that wide well-traveled road the only destination is more destruction.
If we demand an eye for an eye, blood for blood, it will not make us safer. We have the power as some have suggested to bomb the enemy into oblivion and in doing so we would lose our soul. Terrorism would win and it would be reborn somewhere else while we waste our resources on more instruments of death instead of spending our time and money and energy on education and humanitarian efforts that make for peace and understanding.
I would suggest we use this latest attack as a motivation to take the passion of Holy Week more seriously. Let’s ask the hard questions about what Jesus’ death and resurrection really mean in a world gone mad in 2016. Is it more than an ancient story we re-enact in bad bathrobe dramas? Is it more than jumping easily from Palm Sunday to Easter morning because the middle part of the story is too hard to swallow?
I believe that the popular substitutionary atonement theology of the cross is largely to blame for our failure to apply the hard parts of the Gospel to our lives. The abridged version of that theology says that Christ died in our place as a substitute for our sins in order to offer eternal salvation to everyone who accepts Christ as his or her Savior. There are several problems with that theology, but the basic one is that it lets us off the hook too easily so we don’t have to take the hard truths of Jesus’ teaching seriously. It makes the cross something Jesus did once and for all, but that Gospel ignores the fact that the Scriptures tell us multiple times that Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me” (Matt. 10:38, 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23). Luke even adds we have to do it “daily.”
Jesus doesn’t need or want worshippers or Sunday only Christians, he wants followers; and that means just what it says—imitating how he lived and practicing what he taught. And here’s the intersection between Brussels and Gethsemane that we don’t want to hear. Matthew (26: 47-56) tells us that when they came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday night “one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. ‘Put your sword back in its place,’ Jesus said to him, ‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.’” He doesn’t invoke the second amendment or argue for peace through strength. He says, “My way is not the way of the world. The way of the sword has never brought peace and it never will because one cannot bring life through the instruments of death.”
We don’t want to hear it because we’re afraid, but we must grow some ears that can hear Christ’s truth before it is too late and the way of the sword continues to fester and spread like a plague. Doing the right thing is easy for most of us when there is little to lose by doing so. Jesus followers do it when it’s seemingly impossible and impractical according to the ways of the world. Real Jesus followers make hard choices when everyone around them and their own instincts insist on the way of the sword.
It comes down to practicing what Jesus preached even when it’s unbelievably difficult. For example, in both the Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain Jesus says we are not to resist evil but to turn the other cheek when someone strikes us (Matt. 5:39; Luke 6:29). It’s very easy to say that in a safe sermon by the seashore or from a comfortable pulpit. I’ve preached and taught those words hundreds of times, but how often have I lived them when the going got really rough? Jesus does. As he is about to be arrested and most certainly executed, he lives what he taught. With his earthly life on the line he is true to the eternal truth he came to show us and says, “Put away your sword.”
That’s the Gospel, the good news, during this Holy Week when the sword seems to be winning. Is cheek turning and pacifism practical? Will it work against a hurricane of hate? We don’t know because it has never really been tried on any global scale. A few martyrs have followed Jesus’ example, and they inspire us from afar. But Brussels is real life here and now, and if we let the way of the sword prevail again, if we let fear and anger triumph over peace and love, even for our enemies, then terror wins and Jesus loses.
I don’t pretend to have the faith I need to lay down my life for my faith. But I wrestle with these hard truths from Holy Week because I still believe deep in my soul that it is the way and the truth and the life. The way of the sword has been tried forever in human history, and it has failed to bring about a lasting peace. Jesus followers are called to wrestle with both the words and example of Christ who is still saying to us during this Holy Week “Put away your sword.”
I don’t have the answers, but we who call ourselves Christians must wrestle with the questions. We desperately need meaningful dialogue on this topic. Please share any thoughts or suggestions or questions you have about what peacemaking looks like on a personal or global scale for you.
Peacefully Harsh 
Thank you, Steve. Very grateful for your words.