Against the Mexican Standoff

Against the Mexican Standoff--October 9, 2017

"I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety." [Hosea 2:18]

Imagine something with me. 

[The following is a thought experiment, not an account of a real conversation.]

Let's say my son comes to me one day after school, and he has a big, wide grin on his face as he says to me, "Daddy, I know what I'm going to do when I grow up!  I know what my life will be like when I am an adult!"

Well, surely that would invite further conversation, yes?  Let's imagine I ask him to tell me about all that he has figured out about his future. Let's imagine I say, "Son, please tell me--what are you seeing for yourself in the future that has gotten you so excited, so hopeful, and so confident?" And, to continue our little thought experiment, my son says to me, "I'm going to have a house of my own to live in, and I'll be a dad, too, and I'll have plenty of money to take care of my kids and family when I'm a grown up!"

"That sounds wonderful, son!" I imagine I would say in reply.  This seems like a very thorough, very positive picture of the future, after all.  But let's imagine I probe just a bit further and ask him to tell me where all of this "plenty of money" will come from, so that he can have a nice house and provide for his future hypothetical family.  

Now... what if, in our little thought experiment, he says to me, "Oh, getting the money will be easy.  I'll make half my fortune on lottery tickets, and the other half from bank robbery!"?  What if his charming, idyllic vision of grown-up life is made possible in his mind by plans to gamble and steal?

All of a sudden this endearing depiction of the future is tainted, isn't it?  It's not really hopeful, but is sad and frightening.  It is both foolhardy and immoral--the bank robbery plan sounds sociopathic, and the plans to build a life on hoping to win the lottery is just plain silly. You would say, I imagine, that the goal of growing up to have a house and a family is lovely, even admirable--but once you hear the idea of robbing banks and pinning your hopes on winning the Powerball jackpot, everything turns to ashes at once.  

And you would be right. On both counts, the lottery-larceny combo is doubly terrible.  You cannot adequately provide for a family simply by blowing all your money on lottery tickets hoping to win big--that's putting trust and staking your family's livelihood on something with astronomical odds against your winning.  And at the same time, it is terribly wicked to plan to finance your family's needs by stealing from other people--that's hardly fair to others from whom you would intend to steal, after all, people who are just trying to get by and provide for their own families, too, after all.

So, the conclusion of our little thought experiment?  It would seem that it is possible that a vision of the future can have a worthy goal to aim for, but still be ruined by terrible plans for how to get to that future.  It would seem that trusting the wrong means for getting to your hoped-for future has a way of causing the hope itself to sour.  Everyone wants their kids to grow up as healthy, successful, productive adults--but no one wants their kids to try to get the house and family and all the rest by means of lottery tickets and armed robbery. 

Some means are simply inadequate for achieving good ends, and if you attempt to use bad means for achieving them, you ruin what you were hoping to accomplish.  Telling your family you are going to Italy on vacation sounds like a lovely gesture... until you tell them you are doing to drive a car (across an ocean!) to get there... and going to commandeer the vehicle of some poor schlub going to work in order to do it!  The destination is important, but the way you get there is just as essential...

Well, if we are clear about why it would be both wicked and woefully stupid to try and build a home life out of scratch-off tickets and stick-up robberies, then we are in the right frame of mind to ask the same question about God's promised future.  We need to ask, not just what God's promised future is, but also how God proposes that we get there.  

Because time and again--and today's verse from the book of the prophet Hosea is a case in point--there is a wide disconnect between how we think we can secure the peace and security of God's promised future, and how God sees that coming about.  And the difference is basically this: we are still convinced that the way to keep ourselves secure, the way to establish peace (or, in the biblical language, "shalom", which is closer to "wholeness" or "completion"), is through threatening each other with weapons... and God's way of bringing about the peace for which we are aching is to abolish bows, swords, spears, chariots, wars, and all the rest.  Literally, the Hebrew says that God will "break" those weapons of war--not simply lock them away in a vault, in case someone has a change of mind later on, or in case an even bigger enemy comes skulking around and God needs to up the firepower.  Put simply, our proposed way (we violent humans) of acquiring peace is to wave our bows and swords at each other from a distance to try and keep everybody else from shooting at us... and God's way of creating peace is to make a whole new kind of covenant with all creation, a whole new order for the day, in which nobody waves a bow or a sword or a spear at anybody else, because we will not need to be afraid anymore.

It's funny how nonsensical we can be sometimes: we know now that it generally doesn't help someone who is bleeding to put leeches on them to suck more of their blood, or to give them new cuts to "fix" the old ones.  And yet we still fall for the curious thinking that says we will ultimately find security for all by giving us all swords and bows and spears to threaten each other with... or we justify ourselves by saying, "Well, if he's got a sword, I should have one too... just in case."  

God, apparently, does not buy into that logic. The covenant God will make with all creation is not an elaborate Mexican standoff, where we all just point our pistols at each other forever, hoping nobody flinches or moves. You don't see God here in Hosea (or anywhere else in the Bible, for that matter) saying, "They have swords over there, and that makes you fearful, so I'll help the situation by giving you a sword to threaten them back with."  But rather, the opposite.  God, by plain and simple divine fiat, simply "abolishes" the whole arsenal from stem to stern.  The future God promises is ultimately one in which peace is not confused for a mere cease-fire, and it one that includes all of creation--it is a covenant made, not just with human beings, but with the animals, birds, and "creeping things," just like the covenant made with the rainbow after the Flood, when God famously hung up the divine bow, too.  It would seem that this promise here in Hosea is simply finishing what God began all the way back then outside the Ark: God not only hangs up Heaven's set of arrows and snaps the bow in half over a big ol' divine knee like a twig, but God insists on breaking our bows, swords, and spears, too.

Now, of course, it is important to remember (to read the newspaper or watch TV, how could one forget?!) that the world in which we live is not yet like this, and that we do not currently live free of the fear of those who threaten and intimidate.  The people of God are not meant to see the present moment with rose-colored lenses or pretend that there is no evil in the world.  But it is our calling, our purpose, you could say, to remind the world around us of what God's promise is.  Our mission as people moved by Mercy into God's future is to begin to practice what it will be like to be caught up in that shalom that encompasses all creatures.  Our task, in a sense, is to remind the world that it simply will not work to try and make a livelihood from bank robbery and lotto tickets. Those things are simply not capable of sustaining a family (and even if you could generate a consistent income robbing banks, that is clearly not good for the whole neighborhood, which means it won't work as a strategy for one household either).  If Jesus is right that you cannot serve God and Mammon, then it would seem a corollary is that you cannot place your ultimate faith in God and Ammo at the same time.

In the same way, grounding our hopes for peace in the tools of violence is ultimately self-defeating.  If, every time I feel threatened or afraid, I run for my sword or my bow, thinking that the ability to harm or kill someone else will at least keep me and my house safe, I am still given over to being ruled by fear.  And worse, I am perpetuating the fear that makes someone else feel the need to point their sword at me.  And what do you know, but all of a sudden, we're back at having ourselves a worldwide Mexican standoff!

Today, while we will no doubt be reminded that the world around us is full of violence, wickedness, cruelty, and injustice, we also hold onto two other things in our memories: for one, the promise of a destination at this future Hosea dreamed of in which no one has to be afraid any longer, and then with that, the means and road we take to get there: the life of peaceable vulnerability in the mean time.  That is what we will offer our children--it is, at least, what I will offer to mine--when they dream of good, hopeful lives with houses and families of their own: that there is another way to get to that future, a better way, than pinning their hopes on lottery tickets and bank robbery.  The future of peace and wholeness we keep--it's the means of getting there that we may redirect them on. 

We are a whole race of people still wrestling with the urge to get to a good destination with a bad choice of vehicle. We are still trying to force a world of peace with our swords and bows drawn at everyone else.  We are trying to drive a stolen car across the ocean. 

The promise of the living God says instead, "Here is my boat. I will take you to shalom myself."

Lord God, as the old poet says, "cure your children's warring madness."  Cure us indeed.