ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
October 25, 2022
Over the years, I have referenced and quoted Father Richard Rohr many, many times. He is brilliant, insightful, funny and often painfully revealing. If you have not heard, Richard Rohr stepped down from his position at the Center for Action and Contemplation because he has cancer. This breaks my heart.
Recently, in one of his daily writings, he wrote:
“Part of the genius of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968), inspired by the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi, was that he was able to show people that violence was not only immoral but also impractical and, finally, futile.”
Those words have been resonating with me in recent days. I’m thinking of more than physical violence (though it is real and prevalent), for there are many ways in which violence manifests itself: the power of manipulation; those with resources who use those resources to get their way at the expense of those without resources; those who play on the insecurities and fears of others; those with a platform from which they tell lies and use the tactic of scapegoating; those who play the victim card as a way of turning attention away from the real victims. These are only a few ways in which violence plays itself out emotionally and spiritually.
In Proverbs 3:31, it says: “Do not envy the violent or choose any of their ways.” The sad thing is that violence works, or at least it appears to in the short term. And too many people are only interested in immediate results. As a follower of Jesus, I believe, as Richard Rohr suggested, that all violence is immoral, impractical and ultimately futile. Though they are risky, Jesus offered alternatives to violence. Yet the vision for the life that Jesus embodied a sort of required risk taken in faith.
Give me courage, O God, and when that is not enough, provide me an additional infusion of the vision lived and revealed in Jesus. There is such beauty and hope and joy found in this vision, and it is not relegated to those with resources, power or privilege. It is a vision that includes all and uplifts all. May I be a full participant, even if it is risky, in such a life. Amen.
