The world finds
itself in a very perilous moment.
Thinking about what led to both of the World Wars in the last century,
it would not take a whole lot to set off the global powder keg once again. And with the technological advances that
we've made since the end of World War II, the amount of violence and death
would be staggering in the event of a global conflict. And it's not only about geopolitics and
global religious movements - hardly a week goes by without another account of
gun violence in the US. Some days, it
seems as if civilization is teetering on the edge.
The answer to what
plagues us is love, specifically the love of God revealed in Jesus. The difficulty with that, as revealed by the cross, is that God's love in the context of a
sinful world is always a sacrificial love.
This is why Jesus talks so much about the cost of discipleship -
followers of Jesus have always lived in a world where selfless love and
voluntary servanthood are misunderstood or cynically disbelieved, then hated and
rejected, in turn giving rise to the possibility of violence and death. So it is in our world in the present.
The good news is
that the sacrificial love of God revealed in Jesus is stronger than sin and
death. This is why the resurrection of
Jesus Christ is the central reality of the Christian faith. Without the resurrection, sin and death are
stronger than love, the
Christian faith is futile, and we are still in our sins, as Paul says in I Corinthians 15. The reality of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ is my conviction as a follower of Jesus.
My faith is in the God Who desires peace, reconciliation, and love for a
broken world. The God Who desires life.
To love as Jesus
loves is to risk death. Yes, of course
it also means risking discomfort, being mocked, being attacked, etc. But, in the world as it is, loving as Jesus
loves is to court death. This is why
Jesus teaches us that we should not fear human attackers. He did not tell us this so that we might be
irresponsible or careless with our lives, but rather that our love might outweigh our fear. What is motivating all the unrest in the
world right now is, at bottom, fear. And
of course it's not as simple as that.
The fears at the root of all of this - the Israeli/Palestinian conflict,
the barbarity of ISIS in Iraq, the continued conflict in Ukraine, the situation
in Ferguson, MO - are all contextually specific. Each situation is a tangled web of history,
cultural differences, old wounds, hoped-for futures, and competing accounts of
reality.
However, if we were
to dig deep enough, what is there at the center in each situation is fear. Fear of loss and change. Fear of "the other" and the
stranger. Fear of pain and death. Fear of what other fearful people intend to
do to you and your family if you don't strike first. Fear of
humiliation and defeat. Fear of
death. These fears are very real, very powerful, and are not easily quelled.
The Church around the world, in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, has
an obligation as disciples of Jesus Christ to embody the love of God which drives out
fear. To live out this sacrificial love may very well lead to pain, rejection and even death. But it is a desperately needed
witness to a fearful world that love is stronger than that fear.
Grace and Peace,
Wes
