I'd like to post some ideas from a talk given by
John Dear at Greenbelt this year.
John Dear is an American Jesuit priest, pastor, activist, peacemaker, retreat leader and author.
He's banned from voting in the US because his non-violent activism has not been appreciated by the US administration!
He posed the following question:
Where is God in peace and justice?
His answer was: Jesus is leading the movement.
What's our response?
To make our story fit the story of the peacemaking Jesus.
He said that we have a choice:
Choose between non-violence or non-existence.
Non-violence
In order to be people of non-violence:
we shouldn't cooperate with the violence in 'self'
Practice interpersonal non-violence
Develop grass-roots non-violence movement(s)
We should be visionaries of non-violence. Jesus had a great vision - he called it the Reign of God.
Jesus organized a non-violent movement when he went into the Temple - he demonstrated non-violent resistance (over turning the tables of the money changers). In the garden he told Peter to put down his sword. In the synoptic gospels we see Jesus as resisting the Empire in a non-violent manner - which eventually got him executed!
John Dear then developed the passage in
John 11 - the story of lazarus.
Lazarus represents humanity - the human race is dead. Jesus is calling humanity out of death.
That death is partly the social system which is decaying.
The male disciples plead with Jesus not to go because the authorities wanted to kill him.
But Jesus went back and faced the authorities (non-violently) -Jesus walks non-violently towards humanity of death.
The women (martha/mary) are the voices of hopelessness "it's too late"
Jesus weeps because everyone abandoned him.
Jesus then takes action. He approaches the tomb - He confronts the 'structures of death'
Jesus gave three commandments:
1)
Take away the stone
(we're often confortable with the society of death- but we need to get rid of it)
2)
Lazarus come out
(come out of the society of death and violence - weapons of mass destruction etc.)
3)
Unbind him
(unbind humanity from death to live in non-violence)
We are called to be a people of resurrection and stop being a people of death. We are to partake in a revolution of love with the role of peacemakers in our society.
Be of courage -
"Do not depend on the hope of results." (Tomas Merton)
Don't put our hope in politics and administrations but in a movement - Jesus is our movement leader!
