When Headline News and Lectionary Readings Meet

Read this in our morning prayer today:

Matthew 26:51 Then they came on him—grabbed him and roughed him up. One of those with Jesus pulled his sword and, taking a swing at the Chief Priest's servant, cut off his ear.

52-54Jesus said, "Put your sword back where it belongs. All who use swords are destroyed by swords. Don't you realize that I am able right now to call to my Father, and twelve companies—more, if I want them—of fighting angels would be here, battle-ready? But if I did that, how would the Scriptures come true that say this is the way it has to be?"

How is it that we have nuanced and backpeddled so fervently for 2000 years that followers of Jesus can't hear the plainspoken imperative any more to absorb violence rather than to wage warfare and retaliation? This imperative is one of -- if not the most -- uniformly agreed upon ethical emphases in the New Testament, resounding from the Sermon on the Mount to the hammering of nails at Golgotha to the succession of martyrdom from Stephen, Paul, and the Apostles all the way through to the present time, and finally completed with the image of the Victor in Revelation covered in blood -- not the blood of his enemies, but the blood of His own torture -- defeating the powers of violence and greed once and for all.

May Your Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven. Make haste, Prince of Peace to establish Your reign in the Middle East. Vindicate the needless deaths of innocent children throughout the world. And comfort those who mourn.