Sunday, June 13, 2025

Sermon Notes

Several species on earth are social: dolphins form pods, wolves form packs, ravens form conspiracies, and chimpanzees form troops. These species are able to form simple communities which provide mutual aid, support, and protection. A small number of species on earth are eusocial, able to form more complex communities where more advanced levels of social organization are able to emerge. Bees, ants, and naked mole rats fall under this category. In the natural world, eusocial societies are matriarchal, with one female who leads the group. While all of these communities are sometimes drawn into conflict with one another, they mostly stay out of each-other’s way, and are limited in the size that they can support.

Human Beings show the most complex social structures on earth, starting from simple social communities of families and villages, to exceedingly complex global cultural systems. 5,000-6,000 years ago the first city-states appeared in Mesopotamia, gathering a much higher density of people into one place. These city-states formed alliances, and eventually kingdoms. Around 4,000 years ago the first empires emerged, ruling over multiple kingdoms. As human societies become more and more complex, they generally become more violent (perhaps due to their more patriarchal nature?) in order to maintain control. The kings of those cities were seen as divine, the mighty men and gods of old.

The ancient world generally had two options in response to this violence: more violence, or non-violence. The response of violence was a natural one, the battles and wars and conquests of human history. The victors of these wars took dominance over those defeated by them. The option of non-violence was usually a capitulation to the violent power of a greater force. Arms were laid down in order to preserve life, rule was accepted.

Mighty empires like Rome knew how to deal with both options. No army could stand up to the military might of Rome (in fact it was the internal threat of that military might that turned Rome from a Republic to a Autocratic empire). As the Roman Empire expanded, kingdoms and cultures who tried to oppose them could not compete with the constant supply of soldiers and supplies that the empire could produce. When more local violent resistance arose, like the zealot groups of Judea, they were systematically executed. Accounts of the Galilean Resistance (in the early years of the first century) describe literal miles of crucified would-be violent resisters. These public executions were as much to warn as they were to punish. This violence or threat of violence created the Pax Romana the Peace of Rome, and compelled all under her rule to choose non-violent capitulation or face the brutal consequences.

However, in the early part of the first century, a new ‘third way’ began to emerge, that of non-violent resistance. Unlike simple non-violence, non-violent resistors did not simply give-in to the violent threats of Rome. They provided and inspired real resistance to Rome’s rule by pointing out the hypocrisy and inequities of its power structure. Yet they also refused to take up violence as a tool either. Instead of resisting with the tools of swords and spears (where the Romans excelled), they resisted using the tools of thoughts and ideals. They used some of the same rhetoric that (occasionally) held sway in places like the Roman Senate, and swayed public opinion. They reminded the people that they too held power.

Non-violent resistors called the people back to a communal view of taking care of one another. Perhaps they called them back to a view of all of humanity as bearers of the divine image; not just the kings, priests, and emperors who declared themselves to be gods. Like prophets and philosophers before them, these non-violent resistors used symbolic action to make their points. They used powerful symbolism like baptism, rooted in Hebrew religious practice, to remind the people of their call to righteousness, a call to repentance, and a renewal of the covenant their ancestors had made with God.

According to Luke’s gospel, Jesus, who had been gathering support for his version of non-violent resistance for the last few years, has finally come to Jerusalem. With a multitude of his disciples, he stages a protest march on the Mount of Olives, outside the East Gate of Jerusalem. This march is a direct reference to and satire of the royal procession of a king, governor, or emperor would make when entering a city. In fact, with both Pontius Pilate and Harrod Antipas in Jerusalem this Passover, such a procession would be fresh on the minds of Jerusalemites. Jesus, however, does not enter on a war horse or chariot (signs of violent power) but on a young donkey. He then enters the Temple (the common first-stop of a visiting king or emperor) and stages another symbolic demonstration, driving out those who are selling animals for sacrifice, and calling it a den of robbers.

These symbols of non-violent resistance drew the ire of religious and political leaders alike. Within a week, Jesus received the standard Roman price for those who disturbed the peace, crucifixion. In their experience, leaders of non-violent resistance needed to be killed, but there was little need to execute their followers. Little did they know that the blood of the martyrs would be the seeds of the church. That the resurrection of Jesus would vindicate not only him, but the Kin-dom of God that he began. Jesus showed by his symbolic actions a new way to resist the coercive violence of empire, and the world would never be the same.

Questions

– How do you respond to violence when you have encountered it?

– How was what Jesus doing different to the usual ways that people responded (or respond) to oppressive structures?

– What is your reaction to non-violent resistance?