POWER BASED ON LOVE

            Sometimes the passion and execution of Jesus seems rather puzzling to us. How come someone who went about doing good, someone who was clearly “good news” in the fullest sense of the term, ended up being put to death by the authorities - with the enthusiastic support of the people?

            Jesus was the living embodiment of the love of God for his people. How come then that so many of them reacted against him to the point of wanting to get rid of him? How come he came to be seen not as God’s gift to his people, but as a threat?

            He was a threat to those whose power was not based on love and justice. He could not, and he would not, defeat them by force, but his goodness and his integrity gave him a moral authority which undermined theirs, and they knew it.

The power of the Jewish leaders depended entirely on the good will of the Romans. So they cooperated and collaborated. All with the best of intentions, of course, so as to preserve as far as possible the institutions and the identity of the nation. The same sort of reasons as motivated the Vichy régime in France.

The Jewish leaders were constantly afraid of losing the favour of the Romans. So fear was their chief motivation in getting rid of Jesus. They were afraid of the Romans, and so they were afraid of this man of peace and love.

The power of the Romans was based on force, on coercion. Exemplary punishments, such as crucifixion, were a means of keeping potentially rebellious peoples, and not least the unpredictable Jews, under control. Cruelty was used a means of maintaining control, and so we see gratuitous violence by the soldiers and the use of flogging pour encourager les autres.

The fact is that the world finds it difficult to think of any secure basis for power other than force. You will remember that terrible first phase of the invasion of Iraq when the explicit objective was to create “shock and awe” so as to terrify the enemy into submission.

Well, you can indeed shock and awe people into submission but you cannot shock and awe them into willing acceptance of your power. And willing acceptance is the only basis for durable power, for power than lasts, as the Americans and their allies have had to learn the hard way.

Last week we were reminded how we look to NATO for our security, and we feel reasonably safe in Europe because NATO is the world’s most powerful military machine. So, without really thinking about it very much, we would have to admit that most of us are putting our trust in military force.

So the pacifists who tried to march in Strasbourg last week (and I mean the real pacifists of course, not the black-clad destroyers) were raising real and legitimate questions which are bound to make Christians feel uncomfortable. Because our faith, and especially our Good Friday faith, is based on the belief that there is indeed a better way than the way of force and military power.

In the short term, force can crush love (we see it all the time), and the powerful can crush goodness, but Jesus shows that the only basis for lasting power is the power of love. That is why he rebuked Peter for resorting to force and told him to put his sword away. And so, later on, Jesus was able to point out to Pilate that his power was not a threat because his followers were not fighting to save him.

The thing about love is that it creates a bond, a freely chosen bond, a bond that we will go to great lengths to preserve. Whereas fear and force create not a bond but shackles, shackles that you will look for the first opportunity to throw off. And that is why even the worst tyrannies never last for ever; they are always overthrown in the end. The moment people cease, for one reason or another, to be afraid of them, they disintegate overnight (the power of the Soviet Union is the most obvious example).

The love of God, if we recognise it for what it is, creates a bond between us and him. Often of course we try to throw off that bond because we do not understand that God loves us and that his commandments, which seem to us like irksome restrictions, are an expression of that love. As we read in Hosea:

When Israel was a child, I loved him...

[but] the more I called them, the more they went from me...

they did not know that I ... led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.

            But even when we turn away from him, God goes on loving us, and will go to any lengths to restore the damaged bond of love. He will even go so far as to give his only Son, and his Son will choose freely to go to his death.  “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son to the end that all that believe in him should not perish but should have everlasting life”.

Reverend John Murray, Strasbourg Anglican Chaplaincy

Good Friday, 10 April 2009