From then on Jesus started to indicate to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly there at the hands of the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and to be put to death ... -- Matthew 16:21
Every detail of Holy Week points to a person who knew exactly what he was doing and why. Indeed, months before, Jesus had sent word to the authorities, who he was told were out to kill him, "Tell that fox [King Herod] 'Today and tomorrow I cast out devils and perform cures, and on the third day my purpose is accomplished'" (Luke 13:32). He told his disciples on several occasions just what his end would be and allowed no opposition to that purpose.
It is clear then that Jesus freely accepted his death, both in terms of its timing and its manner. It is also clear that he had other options right up until the moment of the crucifixion. Before allowing himself to be taken in Gethsemane, for example, he could have made his escape and joined the Zealot party, which favored armed struggle against the Roman occupiers.
Surely Jesus could just as well have struck a deal with the Roman authorities before he was killed. Pilate was intrigued at Jesus' serenity during that Friday's interrogation. There is ample reason to believe that Pilate did not really want to put Jesus to death. Had Jesus opted for either the revolutionary alternative or an accommodation to Roman authority, he would have lived out the rest of his life and never been heard from again.
The Lamb of God
However, Jesus was in Jerusalem ready to fulfill to the end God's will for him. Not by chance it was Passover time, the season when Jews celebrate in most solemn fashion their deliverance from Egypt, that seminal event in the nation's history. Each year, as prescribed in Exodus, the chosen people re-enacted the events of that night long ago when lamb's blood on their doorposts saved them from the avenging hand of God (Exodus 12:1ff). Jesus chose precisely this occasion to offer himself as the Universal Lamb who would on that significant Jewish anniversary save his people and all peoples from God's judgment.
Jesus brings to fulfillment the already wonderful experience of liberation that God afforded the Jewish nation centuries before. This time, however, it is not the blood of an animal that signals freedom, but the blood of God's son; this time it is not only the Jewish people who find their way out of slavery, but all of humanity; this time it is not a temporal promised land to which the freedwomen and men are pointed, but an eternal and universal reign.
We are faced with the historic, unique, and truly incredible fact that the redemption of the human race came about through a supreme act of powerlessness on the part of one who could have acted otherwise. Through the obedience of Christ unto death on the cross, all humanity has been saved.
Powerlessness In the Face of Immense Evil
At the outset we must say that as an act of powerlessness and self-immolation the Calvary event is something we do not like to contemplate. Good Friday is not one of our favorite days. We tend to pass quickly from the consolation of Thursday and the supper of the Lord to Easter Sunday and the glory of the resurrection. But if we are to understand the central fact about Jesus -- how evil is finally overcome -- and understand something about contemporary history, we have to look long and hard at Jesus' crucifixion.
In dying as he did, Jesus submitted to the very evil against which he was pitted. While for three years he spoke out against the injustices that his people suffered, in the end he allowed himself to be overtaken by those same injustices -- to be crushed, broken, extinguished.
Such an inversion of all logic points to the amazing fact that the tragedies visited on humanity by personal or social sin can only be stopped by absorbing in one's own flesh those very wrongs being done. Put starkly, Jesus' example teaches that power will not effect change -- only powerlessness will.
The devastating nature of Jesus' suffering and death offers a measure of the immensity of the evil he confronted. If it took the annihilation of God's son to save humanity from our personal and societal sinfulness, it cannot surprise us that the forces of darkness possess such frightening intensity and staying power.
This belief in Jesus' way of salvation lies at the heart of dedication to nonviolence as a way of overcoming wrong. Faith-filled practitioners of nonviolence understand what the cross ultimately meant -- that we shall not prevail against suffering, injustice, and oppression without somehow submitting to these evils. Aggression, hostility, anger, and violence at any level of human existence are mitigated, won over, reduced, and converted when confronted by people willing to absorb them in their own person.
Just like the cross itself, the powerlessness of nonviolence is not a popular concept nowadays, even for some people of faith. In our affluent world we shun suffering. We shrink back from what we see as "dying to oneself" and an absence of immediate "success" that Jesus' way holds for us.
This should not surprise us. The Lord himself gave clear indications of the same repugnance and fear: "Take this cup from me," he prayed just before his arrest (Mark 14:36). "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he cried just before he died (Matthew 27:46).
In the end, nevertheless, what we have is the cross. There is no way around the fact that redemption came about through the obedience of him who "like a lamb led to slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, was silent and opened not his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7). It calls us to an attitude of living that is so radical few can stomach it.
Holy Week in Wartime
Given the radical notion that abdicating power and taking evil on oneself ultimately brings about good, the Christian can hardly justify the [first Gulf war]. Reacting to the admittedly unjust, wrongful, and brutal occupation of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein by launching equally savage military force flies in the face of our understanding of Jesus' conduct toward the evil of his time.
The launching of the first Gulf war by President Bush [was] a disaster not only for geopolitical, economic, sociological, and humanitarian reasons. It [was] a disaster theologically as well. God's sons and daughters [were] trying to overcome the evil of invasion and occupation by another evil -- bombing, killing, and hatred.
Jesus' crucifixion taught that the Saddam Husseins of history can be overcome ultimately only by taking on their wickedness. Jesus said it clearly at that crucial moment of his arrest in Gethsemane: "Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it" (Matthew 26:52).
Given the dreadful fact that war [was] launched by the United States, Christians now have the task in light of the cross to mitigate the war's unspeakable consequences. Our reliance on Jesus' way of powerlessness impels us to face the reality of ... war and strive for its quick end as well as for the lessening of its horror as long as it may last.
Thus, for example, we must speak out against the unconditional surrender now demanded by our government. Any and all conditions which will bring an end to hostilities are welcome. Likewise, the demonizing of the Iraqi leader as an excuse to launch any type of military action against him and his people cannot be condoned. From the cross Jesus gave us the example: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).
The conduct of this disastrous war must come in for scrutiny, too, in light of Jesus' suffering and death. We cannot justify the intensity of air strikes against Baghdad; we cannot justify the risk being run of involving other countries of the Middle East; we cannot justify large- or small-scale killing of innocent human beings; we cannot justify even veiled threats to use nuclear weapons or any intent to do so.
Nonviolent Opposition
As people of faith participate in the peace movement, ours is the nonviolent tactic, putting into practice concretely that which we know from the cross. We cannot strike back even verbally at those who believe in this war. We do not hate Saddam Hussein (or George Bush). We are not enemies of the men and women fighting against each other on the sands of the Arabian Peninsula, we are their brothers and sisters who feel for them and wish them home psychologically and physically intact. We do not hate America, for all our country's sins; we love our country and wish for it only the best.
Hence flag burnings, offensive slogans, and rioting against the war do not find acceptance among us. Our acts of civil disobedience are meant only to show how deeply we feel that the way of war cannot bring peace. This, we believe, is the way of Calvary, the way of the Savior.
Deep in our hearts, this nonviolent conviction -- based on him who lived it unto death on a cross -- is a principal part of our own conversion process. For we recognize in ourselves the seeds, and even more than the seeds, of that same violence being used to crush Iraq. We even detect a certain complacency at times when Saddam's invaders are forced back.
Nonviolence, however strong our gospel convictions, does not come easily. This war, for all its injustices and horrors, affords us dramatic opportunities for putting into practice what we say are our beliefs about redemption -- that it came through one who overcame our sin by submitting to that sin.
In the Paschal Mystery is Hope
Finally and above all, we continue to believe despite the horrors of this war that out of such a test of our faith in the crucified Jesus will come a new day. We are people of hope; we know that Passover Friday gave way to resurrection Sunday in Jesus' life.
So it is today with this crisis. For us to take our example once again from the Man of Sorrows and remain faithful to his vision of salvific suffering will mean a conquest of the baseness involved in this war. The new world order, so confidently predicted by U.S. leaders, will prove very different from their expectations if we will remain faithful to the cross.
Rather than an order based on U.S. might, we shall live our way into an order based on love; rather than a world run by one powerful country, we shall evolve into a community of nations; rather than triumphalism, we shall have respect among peoples. It all depends on how we conduct ourselves, we the people of biblical faith, during these times of grave temptation to be what we say we are not. "I have overcome the world," Jesus said the night before he died (John 16:33). Take heart!
Joe Nangle, OFM, was executive director of the Franciscan Mission Service in Washington, DC when this article appeared.
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