Jesus - once was a warrior

From Wellington Cathedral of St Paul

Jesus – once was a warrior: Talk No 4: Frank Nelson Good Friday 2011

Shortly after we arrived in this country I saw the film “Once were Warriors.” Based on Alan Duff’s book, Jake the Muss is the ultimate loser. Ostensibly the story of urban Maori, it is also the story of much of the world’s population as the drift to the cities and megalopolises continues. Adrift from their tribal roots, the sense of identity and belonging is lost – an identity often forged on heroic stories of battles which grow in the telling. Just think for a moment of the stories that will be recounted next Monday on ANZAC Day. At much the same time as “Once were Warriors” was doing the circuit, at least one cathedral in this country was beavering away at producing a collection of hymns where any reference to things military had been removed. I guess the thinking behind this was that Christianity is a religion which promotes peace not war – perhaps too the influence of a generation which protested and made clear their opposition to the Vietnam War, rather than looking back to the glory days, at least in some peoples’ minds, of Gallipoli.

God as a mighty warrior is a strong and frequently found metaphor. Read the Old Testament and sooner or later there will be reference to the warrior-god worshipped by that ragtag nomadic band known as the Hebrews. For a small nation which carved out a place to call its own in the teeth of immense and continual opposition, it made sense to see God as the great warrior. It would have been with great satisfaction that one could go into battle, knowing the God was on our side. Nor is it only in those blood thirsty pages found in the books of Joshua and Judges.

At what must have been one of Jeremiah’s darkest hours, locked in the stocks by his powerful enemy Pashur, convinced he is about to die, Jeremiah utters these words.

But the LORD is with me like a dread warrior;

  therefore my persecutors will stumble,
  and they will not prevail.

They will be greatly shamed,

  for they will not succeed.

Their eternal dishonour

  will never be forgotten. 

O LORD of hosts, you test the righteous,

  you see the heart and the mind;

let me see your retribution upon them,

  for to you I have committed my cause. 

Sing to the LORD;

  praise the LORD!

For he has delivered the life of the needy

  from the hands of evildoers. 	Jeremiah 20: 11 – 13

O Lord of hosts – the prophet cries to the commander in chief of the heavenly armies to save him from his enemies. The fact that Jeremiah is locked up to try and silence his disturbing and demoralizing utterances of doom and gloom on his own people seems beside the point.

In the Book of Job we wrestle with the possibility of good and evil falling indiscriminately on a person. Here God is not so much a liberator in the sense of the mighty warrior fighting on our side against forces of flesh and blood, but the redeemer from the satanic forces opposed to God. The dualism of later Gnostic thinking will see the separation of good from evil. But in Job it is not yet quite so clear cut, and Satan is actually God’s trouble shooter, testing a good man’s steel. Unable to fathom why he has lost all that he had, Job nonetheless clings to faith in God who will, he believes, ultimately rescue him – even from death. In a beautiful, but often wrongly interpreted, passage we find these words:

For I know that my Redeemer lives,

  and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; 

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,

  then in my flesh I shall see God, 

whom I shall see on my side,

  and my eyes shall behold, and not another.	(Job 19: 25 – 27)

Once we get into the Gospels we are confronted with a full-on war between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death. Jesus of course, represents the good, the light, the truth, the life; while the devil and his minions (among them the Pharisees and those who opposed what Jesus was doing, even, disturbingly at times, the disciples) are clearly evil and of the darkness.

St John draws the lines most clearly. No beating about the bush for him. Jesus is portrayed as the redeemer, the saviour, who will rescue his own people out of the clutches of the devil. In John chapter 8 Jesus seems quite deliberately to goad those who would follow him to choose once and for all. So John 8: 31 “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.” A little later: “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (8:34); and then, “Abraham is our father,” to which Jesus replies, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.” (8:39-40) The conversation intensifies, “Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and so did the prophets; yet you say, ‘whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be?” (8: 52-53) This section of John’s Gospel ends with Jesus’ bald statement, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.” (8:58) Faced with stoning for blasphemy, Jesus hides himself and leaves the temple.

Almost from the beginning the Synoptic Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke, show Jesus taking on the power of the devil – from the tussle in the wilderness which we recall in the forty days of Lent, to the apparently carefully selected and staged acts of healing – the leper, the man born blind, the daughter of the leader of the synagogue, the Gerasene demoniac, even the hostile forces of nature which threaten to swamp the fishermen’s boat. Expectations as to the outcome of this continual battle continue to rise as Jesus works his way from the northern province of Galilee towards and then into, the holy city of Jerusalem.

And yet, strangely, while Jesus might take on the authorities in debate, the power of evil in healing the sick and casting out of demons, he does not accept the expected trappings of a warrior king. Instead, as we saw on Palm Sunday, he chooses a donkey rather than a white charger, and, when the crunch comes, refuses to fight. He stands alone and silent before accusers and judge. Far from being the all-conquering military hero, Jesus appears firmly in the ‘once were warriors’ class. His ignominious death is only slightly redeemed by the officer overseeing his crucifixion when, at the point of death, he says: “Truly, this man was God’s Son.” (Mark 15: 39)

It is left to the anonymous writer of the letter to the Hebrews to interpret Jesus’ death as a victory. “Since the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil. (Hebrews 2: 14 – 15) Now, finally, we can indeed say, with Job: “I know that my redeemer lives.”

• Prayers

Assist us mercifully, Lord God of our salvation, to contemplate those mighty acts by which you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. ANZPB pg 581

God of grace, we thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, who, by his death has destroyed the power of death, and by his glorious resurrection has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Grant us to know that because Christ lives we shall live also, and that neither death nor life shall be able to separate us from your love. Amen. ANZPB pg 834 Funeral prayers

• Hymn: 547 Oft in danger, oft in woe