Victory
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.-Jeanette Rankin
When my sons were small and got grumpy, we used to say what they needed was “a change of air.” That meant if we were inside we needed to get out under the sky. If we were outdoors, it was probably a good idea to find shelter. If it was hot and dry, a dip in a lake or pool or a quick squirt of the hose would work wonders. It was a pretty sweet parenting hack–one that I pass along whenever I get the chance to spend time with younger folks who are getting to know new members of their families–or anybody who takes up the challenge and joy of caring for children.
It also works with adults, by the way; I would benefit from changing my air more often, especially when the news of the day or the state of the world keeps me too long in the stale space of bitterly watching history repeat along the Black Sea and on the Temple Mount, or sense unprecedented perils like the long emergency of climate change slowly boil the water off of California and the American West.
I spent part of my day today (the 75th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine for what it;s worth) wandering through the work of the late Walter Wink. Wink’s most well-known work The Powers that Be made a theological and Christological argument against the myth of redemptive violence that undergirds most of the history of civilization.
Against the mythic and modern patterns of vengeance and victory–of dominance and submission, Wink offers Jesus’ way of embodied resistance and subversion as a creative alternative to violence. The risen Jesus, who eschews the just path of revenge-seeking and turns himself and his followers instead to lives of transformed and transformative relationship. In this reality, victory is an experience that no longer requires winners and losers, the dominators and the destroyed.
Part of the power at work in God’s resurrection of Jesus is this deep shift in the mythic underpinnings of human imagination. Following Jesus on this path changes our air. He ushers us out of the stale patterns and closed-up boxes by which we mapped and measured the world and its winners.
Now we stand refreshed and ready to see everything as new–including our worn and weary selves and this God-loved planet we share with so many.
Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
-Isaiah 42