The Jesus story is a rabbit hole.
Maybe it’s better to say that it’s a network of rabbit holes all connected to a Wonderland of wakefulness, an upside-down dream world that invites us to throw everything away in the belief that it is, in fact, the truth.
Of Power
One way in is the terror of a storm at sea. Confronted with ultimate, uncontrollable power, the disciples are called to repose in faith. Like Jesus.
One way in is the emptiness of the desert. Confronted with a world’s supply of scarcity, the disciples are commanded to entrust themselves to the power of the creator God and feed the masses. Which Jesus enables.
One way in is to put the options on the table: you can wield your power and exercise your authority like the Gentiles. Or, you can choose a different manifestation of power. You can be like the Human One who did not come to be served, but to serve.
One way in is the child. In the patriarchal world, the child sits at the bottom of the totem pole. Under the power of women. Under the power of slaves. And so Jesus says, “Whoever receives one of these children in my name receives me.” The great teacher and master has chosen to identify with the bottom, rejecting the top himself and summoning his disciples to walk in the same way.
The rabbit hole is this: at its heart the gospel is about power. At its most beautiful, it is an empowering of the position of weakness. It is a summons to reject the notion that we have the power to protect ourselves, that we must receive from the world the power to feed ourselves, that glory comes from the power to exert our wills over the other, that the power and status to which we have attained is the requisite norm for being God’s agent of cosmic power.
Of Failure
The beauty of the world here in Wonderland is that our inevitable failure in our attempts to climb the ladder to greatness put it right into the position of greatness.
The wonder of this world is that our inevitable blindness to the ways we perpetuate the inherited system of standing and worth creates the shame that enables us to discover that the crucified Christ has identified with us. With me.
Failure is weakness, is shame, is defeat–is Christ crucified.
It is only to the thrice-denying Peter that Jesus can three times say, “Do you love me? Feed my sheep.”
It is only in blinding Paul and defeating his empowered mission that Jesus can say to him, “I will show you how much you must suffer for my sake.” And it is only in the defeat of dying daily that Paul works life among the nations.
Confessing Christ crucified is consenting to live by this story. It is confessing to live without power. It is trusting that in the place of the powerless we find goodness, grace, strength, and the very life we were clawing for as we strived to uphold the positions of power we had been given and to climb even higher.
Of Firearms
Firearms are agents of power. They are agents of power designed to preserve us from those who have power greater than we might wield.
But the problem is that power comes in all shapes. The power of social exclusion becomes an oppressive force, weighing down on us. Depression becomes a hostile enemy whose agents we see in the lives of the people around us. World events to which we are exposed overwhelm us with their magnitude, and so we imagine agents. And so we imagine scapegoats.
And so our love of self-defense, our fearful yearning for power, leads to death.
The place of arms in a hostile world is a complex question. Tribalism and Imperialism continue to threaten the lives of would-be peaceful people all around the world. A completely pacifist position might well be critiqued as the luxury of someone living in a country whose peace is maintained by dropping its bombs on other people’s soil.
But, the story preserving our gun culture is a narrative that the gospel story calls us away from. Person by person we are asked whether we will follow Jesus down the rabbit hole. Will we believe that laying aside power is truly the way to find life? Will we lose it rather than take it?
So, yes, the Jesus story increasingly prejudices me against one telling of our American story.
But you don’t have to agree with me about all this to see that it’s time for a fundamental change in American law.
The Second Amendment Has to Go
The narrative that possession of life-taking machines by any who want to have one as a source of life-protecting power is a basic right has played itself out, repeatedly, in expected ways. Life is taken, and no life is given.
In the United States in 2013, some 33,000 deaths (out of less than 2.6 million, or 1 out of 78) were the result of firearms discharged by someone other than a law enforcement official in the line of duty. As a point of comparison, fewer than 4,500 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, just over 2,300 died in Afghanistan.
With yet another shooting death today, at Umpqua Community College, we need to just come out and say it: the interpretive history of the Second Amendment and the legislation that it currently protects has been disastrous for the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the American people.
It is time to repeal or replace the Second Amendment. And I think that I would promise my vote to anyone who made this a platform of their congressional or presidential campaign.
Featured image courtesy of YaiSirichai at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
