Jesus was a victim of political violence. But the real political violence against Jesus began before he was ever beaten, whipped, or killed. It began long before the night he was arrested. From very early in Jesus’ public ministry there are accounts of people plotting to silence him by force. The first time he preached at his home synagogue, he outraged his neighbors such that they sought to throw him off a cliff. The narrative of his ministry is laced with the threat of violence against him.
But the political violence against Jesus goes further back than that. Shortly after his birth, his parents were forced to take him and flee the country: Herod, then the king of Israel, sought to kill the baby he saw as a threat to his power. The violence against Jesus went further – as Jesus was born into an occupied country; his safety and the safety of his family contingent upon the whims of the Roman Empire, subject to their ability to accept their systemic oppression without resistance.
I’ve been thinking more and more about how Dr. King said, “True peace is not merely the absence of some negative force—tension, confusion or war; it is the presence of some positive force—justice, good will and brotherhood.” He observed repeatedly that one does not need to strike or stab or shoot in order to be violent: Violence exists in the threat of violence; violence exists in the creation and perpetuation of a system that maintains the status quo through the threat of violence.
So it is accurate to call Jesus a victim of political violence. But if we say that merely because of his passion and death, we misunderstand political violence. Political violence was not an isolated incident at the end of Jesus’ life: It was an underlying reality that shaped and accompanied him from the beginning of his life.
Political violence has been at the forefront of our collective dialogue since the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk – as well it should be. The line that we are hearing again and again is that political violence is bad, that it is unacceptable. And I agree. That sounds right. If we are going to say it with any honesty, then we should stand ready to acknowledge all political violence, and not just overt violent outbursts.
Integrity requires us to acknowledge the violent conditions that surround an awful moment. Kirk himself was widely quoted for saying that a certain number of shootings – including school shootings – were an acceptable cost for the principle of widespread gun ownership. His oft stated preference for a way forward was more guns – a more heavily armed citizenry, a culture kept in check by the fear of vigilante justice and violence. It is a terrible irony that his own life was taken in exactly that way.
It is unquestionably true that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an act of political violence, that it was heinous, unacceptable, evil. It is also true that if Tyler Robinson had decided instead to set his rifle’s sights on an elementary school, we wouldn’t even remember his name right now, nor would we remember any of his victims. We have allowed ourselves as a people to accept school shootings as the cost of doing business. We have incorporated them into our shared life. We have supported and upheld a system that normalizes gun violence against children. We have voted again and again for people who have no intention of changing this reality. We have fallen to our knees and offered momentary thoughts and prayers, and then gone swiftly back to accepting a way of life that murders our youth. This is political violence. This is political violence.
There is a man in the synagogue on the sabbath who has a withered hand. In a primarily agrarian culture, this man’s disability severely impacts his economic opportunities, measurably hinders his life. Jesus, who is teaching in the synagogue, sees him and decides to heal him. Jesus’ opponents are outraged at the prospect that he would heal someone on the Sabbath because they see that as work, and since you’re not supposed to work on the Sabbath, they interpret Jesus’ actions as breaking the Sabbath commandment.
There are a lot of ways Jesus could counter their argument. The avenue he chooses is fascinating. He says, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath? To save life or destroy it?” Jesus’ argument, essentially, is that if someone in front of me needs help, and I refuse to help them even though I am perfectly capable of doing so, I am choosing harm and destruction. I am choosing violence. Saying “it’s the law” doesn’t make violence less violent.
If anything, the contrary is true. What is more violent than culturally accepted, legally codified violence? If Jesus was kidnapped and killed by terrorists for something he said or did it would be awful – but I could blame it on some rogue violent group and simply decry political violence and move on with my life. Jesus, however, was arrested and executed legally and lawfully because what he said and did challenged the politically violent status quo. To take this seriously requires me to look at our current system and be honest about its violence. And to take Jesus seriously requires me to look for ways to reform our system – to help make it one that saves lives whenever possible.
Decrying political violence is empty noise if it seeks only to condemn isolated acts. If I weep at the death of Jesus while paying no mind to the system that conditioned people so readily to kill him, I do not understand the scope of the salvation Jesus brings. I am free to point fingers at Pilate or Caiaphas or Herod as individually corrupt or violent men and go about my day unmoved, untransformed. The deliverance of Jesus Christ is so much bigger. It is not just a ticket to Heaven offered on an individual basis to a willing recipient: Jesus is offering deliverance from a politically violent way of living in the world, from a culture of death.
Today Jesus looks at us – we who have been given everything we need in order to take care of one another – and asks, “Will you choose to save or to destroy?”
