Weaponizing Good

Sermon for Sunday, Sept. 3, 2023
Matthew 16:21-28; Romans 12:9-21

Following Jesus is no walk in the park.  That shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that his path included public execution.  But well before Good Friday, if we’re listening, we hear Jesus being pretty clear that the path ahead of him is rocky – and that he’s inviting us to come along.

Today’s gospel reading flows from where we left off last Sunday.  Jesus and his friends have been at Caesarea Phillipi, standing in the midst of Roman religion and the imperial power that had coopted it.  As Mtr. Jean said last week, there was a deep cave at Caesarea Phillipi that had been a worship site for centuries.  A temple to the god Pan stood there, and people sacrificed sheep and goats by tossing them off the cliff into a cave called the gates of Hades.  Later, the local client king Herod the Great built a temple there to the Emperor Augustus, who saw himself as divine.  Standing next to these symbols of idolatry, Jesus asks his friends who they think he is; and Peter names him as God’s anointed king – the true emperor who will take on Caesar and all the other pretenders to God’s throne.

We remember Peter’s words as a bold proclamation of faith, and they were.  But they were also sedition, and the Romans didn’t take kindly to traveling miracle workers proclaiming themselves to be king.

Today, we pick up the story with Jesus telling his friends just what all that means – for him and for them.  Their challenge to the culture around them will be costly.  Their own religious leaders, collaborating with the empire, will arrest him, torture him, and kill him; but then God will raise him from the dead.  Peter, the new lieutenant, takes Jesus aside and says, “Hey, wait a minute; that can’t be the path for God’s anointed king.” 

So, Jesus draws a stark contrast between the culture’s definition of power and the power of God.  Remember, he began his ministry spending weeks alone in the desert.  With Jesus weak and hungry, Satan appeared and offered him a shortcut, saying, “Look, just worship me, and I’ll give you an easy path to power.”  So, in Peter’s attempt to be supportive, Jesus hears Satan’s call again.  And he has to turn away decisively because he knows the lure of easy power will dangle before his friends’ eyes, too.  He tells them this road they’re taking, bringing in God’s empire to replace Caesar’s – it’ll take everything they’ve got.  “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” (Matt 16:24-25)  And this isn’t just a recommended best practice; this is the king’s decree.  If you follow me, Jesus says, these are your marching orders, and your choice whether to follow has very long-term consequences:  “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done” (Matt 16:27) – or not.

Well, that’s a lot to take in on a pleasant holiday weekend.  What are we supposed to do with this very tough assignment?  I mean, at least for me, it’s easier to imagine following Jesus in the context of ancient occupied Palestine.  One of the real strengths of the series The Chosen, which we’re watching and discussing at Trailside on Thursdays, is the way it shows the people’s everyday oppression by Roman imperial officials.  The empire was very present, even in a backwater fishing village like Capernaum, where officials would shake you down for their cut of your catch.  Being faithful to God, and being faithful to your oppressed community, overlapped in very practical ways, like whether you chose to keep Shabbat or go to work fishing after sundown on the Sabbath.  Getting along with the empire was a way of life … and Jesus was inviting them not to, despite the cost.

For the people of first-century Palestine, just keeping their culture was an act of resistance.  For us, we’re so immersed in our culture that we’re fish who can’t see the water they’re swimming in, and we’ve got to jump out of that water to see the reality above.  We’ve been taught to value the individual so highly that we can’t see forces that give some individuals a much rougher road than others.  But when we do start to see those individuals, and serve them as Jesus directed, and begin to know their stories, then we glimpse the world that the empire of individualism creates for them.  And we begin to say and do things that align with a different worldview, the land we’ve glimpsed when we jump like flying fish out of our culture’s water.  That land, that “better country” (Hebrews 11:16), is the kingdom of God.  And when we identify with God’s reign and rule first, we begin to set aside our own advantage, choosing not to save our lives but to lose them sometimes.  As one commentator puts it, to save “one’s life means not confronting the injustice of the present, but settling for safe self-interest.  To lose one’s life is to embrace the alternative practices and community that embody God’s empire” instead.¹

Well, as if Jesus’ words weren’t challenging enough, then we get the reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans.  If Jesus is calling his followers to commit themselves to God’s reign and rule, Paul takes the cue and tells us what that transformed life looks like.  “Love one another with mutual affection,” he says; “outdo one another in showing honor” (12:10).  Rejoice in hope; be patient in suffering; persevere in prayer; contribute to each other’s needs; extend hospitality to strangers.  

OK; good enough.  I mean, all that’s really hard, but it’s not surprising:  Serve God; love the members of your community; welcome strangers.  That sounds familiar.  Oh, but wait, Paul says; there’s more:  “Bless those who persecute you” (12:14).  “Live peaceably with all” (12:18).  “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink” (12:20) – not because Christians are supposed to be holy wimps but because this is the way to defeat your enemies, and enemies of the way of love deserve defeat.  Here’s how to do it, Paul says:  “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good” (12:21).

What on earth might that look like?  Well, it turns out, there’s at least one place on earth where it’s happening.  It’s a farm in the Holy Land, about six miles southwest of Bethlehem, in the occupied territory of Palestine.  The place is called Tent of Nations²; and on my pilgrimage this spring, we were blessed to talk with a member of the family who owns the farm, a man named Daoud Nassar. 

The Nassar family has owned this land since 1916, when it was part of the Ottoman Empire; and they have a deed from 1924 under the British.  But for the last 32 years, the Israeli government has been trying to confiscate the farm, arguing the family’s legal documentation is insufficient. Meanwhile, the Nassars have been surrounded by five illegal Israeli settlements, and the farm’s water and electricity have been cut off.  Settlers and soldiers have destroyed their orchards and threatened Daoud’s family members.  It doesn’t take a political scientist to see that the settlers and the government are trying to push the Nassars off their fertile land to make way for more Israeli settlements. 

As Daoud told us, over the decades of his family’s struggle, they had to make a choice about how to respond to all this.  They could have pulled up stakes and left their land.  They could have returned the violence they’ve endured.  But what they’ve chosen instead is constructive nonviolent resistance, turning their farm into this organization called Tent of Nations. Its mission is to build bridges among people, and between people and the land.  Tent of Nations runs educational programs and kids’ summer camps about organic farming, and through the years they’ve welcomed thousands of people from more than 40 countries. The farm is becoming self-sufficient in terms of water and electricity.  But more important, it’s become a center where people from vastly different places come together to learn, to share, and to build understanding. 

Now, as I’ve told this story, you might have pictured Daoud Nassar and his family as Muslims, but it turns out they’re not.  The family has been Christian for longer than anyone can remember.  They’re part of the 1 percent of Palestinians who are Christian.  And it’s from their countercultural faith that the Nassar’s strategy comes.  Faced with violence from their neighbors, obstruction by the courts, and land seizures by the government, the Nassar family looked to the apostle Paul’s words in Romans this morning and said, “We will not be overcome by evil.  We will overcome evil with good.”  As Daoud told us, “We refuse to be enemies. Instead, we live in hope for a better future.” 

Here at home, we get a lot of input about what it should look like to follow Jesus.  Our political parties are more than happy to tell you what to do.  It’s a messy thing, teasing out their interest in people from their interest in power.  But I actually believe following Jesus is a political act, in the sense that, on this side of eternity, following him can only happen in the lived experience of our world.  And especially in a democracy, political processes have a lot to do with how we choose to manage this world God gives us.  But we might gain some clarity by looking beyond the boxed-in options our political culture gives us, instead rising above like flying fish and glimpsing a reality beyond the muddy waters in which we swim.  My hunch is that, anytime we’re faced with the question of what’s the right thing to do, we’d be representing God’s kingdom well by asking two questions in response:  One is the classic, “What would Jesus do?”  But even before that comes the question I think Jesus was challenging his friends to ask themselves: What empire am I representing? 

I believe the only way out of the intractable conflicts that beset us, the knots of priority and policy that only tighten as we fight to untangle them – the only way out is a path in contrast to the culture.  We must love, and love hard.  “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good,” Paul said.  Because good, in fact, is love’s weapon; and with it, God will complete evil’s defeat.  And our call from Jesus is to join in that fight.  Evil is not to be tolerated or endured; it is to be resisted by the choice to rise above, in love.  After all, the words of the old spiritual do not say, “We shall tolerate.”  They say, “We shall overcome.”

1.      New Interpreter’s Study Bible.  Nashville: Abingdon, 2003. 1776-1777 (note).

2.      Tent of Nations website, https://tentofnations.com/. Accessed Sept. 1, 2023.