the good news is… revealed through nonviolence
READ
Luke 22:47-53; Luke 23:33-38, 44-46
COMMENTARY
Nonviolent Resistance
The Son of Man is on a mission—to resist the powers, human and otherwise, that foment injustice and tolerate brokenness. He speaks for the poor, advocates for release of the imprisoned, grants vision to the blind, and champions the oppressed.26
Judas betrays Jesus, and his emancipatory mission, with a kiss that signals to the authorities: he is the one you seek! He is the one whose ministry resists the human inclination to legitimize the diminishment of society’s most vulnerable through laws and glorified traditions. Consistently, defiantly, furiously—but always nonviolently—Jesus challenged those laws, even the Sabbath law,27 and reframed many traditions28whenever those laws and traditions were treated as more important than delivering wholeness, healing, and liberation to shattered human lives.
Jesus’ defiance made him a marked man. The authorities sought his arrest, but feared apprehending him publicly lest the people he fought for rise up in his defense. So, with Judas’s treachery, they seize him secretly. In the chaos of the moment, forgetting the nonviolence Jesus has modeled, his disciples ready their weapons. One even swings his sword and cuts off the ear of an arresting official. Immediately, Jesus reminds his people that they fight with words, ideas, and vision. To press the point, he touches the wounded officer and heals him. The power of God that Jesus represents shows care even for the oppressor—even as Jesus uses God’s power to overturn systems of oppression.
Dying on the cross, Jesus reinforces his message of nonviolent resistance in the most heartbreaking of ways. As the authorities crucify him for proclaiming and prosecuting the hope of liberation for all God’s people, Jesus asks God to forgive them. To the end, he fights them by loving them.
Our calling is to go and do likewise.29Fight: Consistently. Defiantly. Furiously. Nonviolently. Whenever and wherever we encounter brokenness, injustice, and oppression. To do otherwise is to betray everything for which he lived and died.
Written by Rev. Dr. Brian Blount
REFLECT
What might it look like to fight injustice with “words, ideas, and vision”?
26 Luke 4:16-21
27 Luke 6:1-11
28 Luke 5:12-39
29 Luke 10:37