Holy Week is at once the most agonizing and the most glorious time of the Christian year. After Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we plunge into the end — and the new beginning.
We are there on Maundy Thursday as Jesus washes the feet of his disciples and institutes the Eucharist — and then is betrayed by one of his 12 chosen disciples. We walk by his side on Good Friday as he is flogged and mocked and spit upon and nailed onto a wooden cross and hung out in the blazing sun, for hour upon agonizing hour of suffering none of us can imagine.
And then we awaken to the glorious resurrection, the completion of a sacrificial drama that gives us all eternal life if we will only accept it.
Scoppe
This year, we were still caught up in the euphoria of Palm Sunday when I happened upon a cartoon by my old friend Robert Ariail, showing Pete Hegseth declaring “We will rain down death and destruction from the sky” and “bring overwhelming violence against our enemies” and concluding: “In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
I make a point of avoiding the talking heads and the anger of anti-social media and the daily dramas that fixate the political class, so I had to go looking for an explanation.
It turns out that Robert’s cartoon was more transcript than satire. Just before Holy Week, the defense secretary delivered a prayer at the Pentagon that The Nation magazine described as “bloodcurdling in its extremist belligerence and invocation of religion to justify mass slaughter.”
Borrowing text from a military chaplain sending troops to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, he prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy” and urged God “By the blast of your anger” to “let the evil perish.”
He asked God to “let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them” and concluded: “We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings, and amen.”
Calling on the God of peace and love and mercy to exercise such wrath would be disorienting at any time. But in this most holy of holy times, this time when we suffer alongside the absolute antithesis of a warrior God, it was startling.
I’m not one who’s offended by the public invocation of the Christian God, or by the idea that God would condone what theologians call just war. My critique is the opposite: I’m heartbroken that someone so prominent would model for non-Christians this caricature of a wrathful God who viciously crushes our enemies — and the many innocent victims in harm’s way. I’m horrified that he represents this bloodthirsty God, a God who condones the sort of barbarism that the Roman soldiers gloried in, as the God we are called to share with the world. In fact, I do not recognize the secretary’s God.
This is at best the Old Testament God — who would reset his relationship with humanity when he sent his only begotten son into our broken world as a sacrifice to renew, transform and save the world by overturning the whole relationship between human and divine. To make of us a new creation. To produce the miraculous resurrection and transformation that we celebrate on this day.
My God, the Prince of Peace, taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves, taught us that our neighbors are all people — including our tribal enemies. He taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If someone strikes us on the cheek, my God said, turn the other cheek. If someone steals our coat, give him our cloak as well. My God taught us that all people have inherent dignity and worth and must be treated as our brothers and sisters.
My God created all people to be his children, and taught us that if we are so audacious as to call ourselves followers of Christ, we must treat them as such. That this, in fact, is the primary reason we were put here.
My God said whatever we do to the least of these among us, we do to him: If we feed them, we feed him. If we care for them, we care for him. If we abandon them, we abandon him. I don’t think it’s a leap to say that if we fire down weapons of war indiscriminately on the least of them, we fire down weapons of war on our God.
On the night in which he was betrayed, when St. Peter tried to defend him from arrest by slicing off the ear of a priest’s slave, Jesus rebuked him — and restored the man’s ear.
As we pray the Stations of the Cross, we are reminded that like a lamb, Jesus was led to the slaughter; like a sheep that before its shearers is mute, he opened not his mouth. Instead, he made the agonizing journey to the cross, to die in torment, to rise again in glory and make the whole creation new. Not so the United States or any other nation could execute “overwhelming violence” and show “no remorse” against enemies who “deserve no mercy.” But so we could have life, and have it more abundantly.
Today I will pray for the safety of our troops — and of the people of Iran and all the world. I will pray that negotiators find a just end to the fighting.
I join my God of peace and love and mercy in wishing you a blessed and joyous Easter.
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