Review and Response to “Fight Like Jesus” by Jason Porterfield
I read this book during Lent, which was the perfect time to read such a book. And let me just say – WOW! Great book. I highly recommend it.
For our purposes here, I’m going to break down the review of the book similar to what the book does – takes a fresh look at each day of Holy Week. But for today, I’m starting with the lens that we are called to see Holy Week through. It sets up everything else for the entire week.
Porterfield lays the argument out right at the beginning – Christianity has been missing the the proper lens of Holy Week for a long time. In our Palm Sunday Lectionary, we leave out the essential passage that would give us a different perspective for seeing the whole of Holy Week and what Jesus was up to. But when we read the fuller context, it changes so much to Holy Week, and in a deeper, more meaningful way. A way that I find to be much richer and inspiring.
Porterfield argues that the key to understanding Holy Week takes place on Sunday as Jesus enters Jerusalem – The crowds are cheering and waving palm branches, they have an expectation of what the Messiah will do. And they are off. “Amid all the excitement, nobody seemed to notice that one person was not celebrating. He was not rejoicing. He was not smiling. He was not having a good time. In fact, he was crying. The Gospel of Luke tells us that while the crowd shouting cheers, Jesus shed tears. (Luke 19:41).” (Pg. 19)
Jesus laments his entry into Jerusalem because as Luke 19 tells us, “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” (Luke 19:41-42)
The missing lens…is peace. If you look at the events of Holy Week through the lens that Jesus was wagging peace while everyone else was waging violence, and you’ll see Holy Week in a whole different light. And it raises questions for us – how are we to respond to Jesus and his waging peace in the midst of great violence and death?
Lent is a time of self-examination and this book is an ideal partner to walk with in that examination, opening ourselves to what Jesus is up to in our lives, and how we are transformed so that we can participate in what God is up to, inviting others into God’s work of bringing about the Kingdom of God in our midst.
Once we have this lens, the next question becomes how we define peace. For many reasons expressed in the book, peace = shalom. Shalom though goes far beyond what we think of as peace in our secular culture. Shalom is the very essence of the Kingdom of God. “It indicates harmony, health, and wholeness in all aspects of life. Shalom exists when all our relationships are flourishing; our relationship with God, with each other, with creation, and even with ourselves. It is the state in which everything is as it ought to be, as God intended for it to be.” (Pg. 24).
And Shalom, that peace, “can never coexist with injustice.” (Pg. 24-25).
Sunday, I’ll share with you how Jesus waged peace on Palm Sunday.
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Comment
Looks like I need to put yet another of your recommendations on my to read list.
I will work on that.
In the meantime, here are my thoughts in response to your assessment (and to the book filtered through you):
I really like the lens developed here. I have heard sermons preached on this in the past, but few, very few, and not in a very long time. But those chanting crowds upon the “Triumphal Entry” have expectations of divine violence which will save them. They think Jesus is going to whip Roman tail AND probably a few unlawful Jews too. Their idea about HOW that is going to happen pretty close to the exact opposite of what Jesus actually does.
Jesus saves, he whips tail, he does all of that in a way so utterly unforeseen and unexpected. It all happens, but is unrecognizable to nearly everyone except those chosen to witness it from a specific point of view as disciples. Even some of them don’t get it.
Here is where I get to the rub… the difficult part even for me.
Is it right to pit PEACE against VIOLENCE?
You did an excellent job of describing PEACE as Shalom – not merely the absence of conflict, but the PRESENCE of HARMONY in its place. I get that. But we SEEM, in my view, to treat PEACE as the OPPOSITE of VIOLENCE. Even I am apt to view it that way, but when it comes to Jesus, that always leaves me a little unsatisfied, and I struggle to understand why.
I really love Jon Kaufman’s blog about Christian nonviolence. His blog picks up the mantel Dr. King carried until his death. Man, I really appreciate THAT. I love the movie HACKSAW RIDGE. The courage of this conscientious objector is inspiring. It’s even very Christ-LIKE, but it isn’t actually what Christ does.
Gandhi influenced MLK, and as I get it, he too looked critically at Jesus and came back with non-violence, and nearly changed the world with his nonviolent revolution. But in the end, I think there is more of Gandhi in nonviolence than Jesus.
I really could be wrong about it. But something isn’t clicking there, and I can’t get past it.
I sense that Kaufman tries to rewrite the Bible, even books like Joshua, in an effort to take the divine violence out of it. I just don’t see that.
Here is what I see, or what I think I see:
Jesus’s death is very violent, and it’s not just a flat divine violence that somehow satisfies an angry god’s wrath, but rather that God’s people are hell bent on violence and Jesus LOVES the creatures so much that he endures it in their place FOR them (us).
This has me thinking either we need to change the equation from PEACE opposite VIOLENCE to LOVE opposite VIOLENCE or change violence to something else. Because, just like there is PAX vs. Shalom, there is also Shalom vs non violence. However, there is no shalom vs. LOVE. In fact there is no shalom without LOVE.
How to sort out these distinctions is still my problem, but that they are there is where I seem to be unique in this discussion, I think.
I don’t think peace is the opposite of violence. That would be assuming that violence is the norm that we measure against. While peace is not the opposite of violence, I think it can be argued that violence is the opposite of peace. But it’s not an equal equation. Peace is the norm that we should be measuring against, and anything that veers off the path is the outlier. Jesus’ way in Holy Week wasn’t the outlier. It was the norm to measure everything through. The people, Rome, the Temple authorities, etc. all went against the norm. They tried to legitimize their own way. But that’s not even an option. How could it be? If Shalom is wholeness and completeness, then there is nothing missing. To choose a different way from something whole and complete makes no sense. Not only is violence the opposite of peace, it is an attempt to redefine what wholeness and completeness is – thus abusing God and using God for one’s own purpose. That’s the very definition of blasphemy.
To me Love is integrated into shalom. Again, love isn’t the opposite of violence, it is the norm. Violence though is an opposite of love.
I hope that makes sense.