Unsummoned Angels

Unsummoned Angels--March 19, 2019

"Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said, 'Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?' At that hour, Jesus said to the crowds, 'Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But all this has taken place, so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.' Then all his disciples deserted him and fled." [Matthew 26:51-56]

Jesus has the opportunity to protect himself, to put himself first, and to keep himself and his group safe from outside threat.  And he chooses not to.

Jesus had a position of privilege, I suppose, and he could have used that access to call down angel armies to fight off the religious leaders, the Empire-backed police force, and the volatile crowd.  Jesus could have asked for an easy out from his dad to step in and intervene and make the problem go away, I suppose.  Jesus--this same one who speaks to the winds and waves and they obey him--could have called down for lightning to strike the lynch-mob and walked away unscathed as screaming enemies fell and flames billowed behind him, in action-movie-style slow motion, no less.  He could have even just zapped one--just one measly person, maybe even Judas who surely deserved it!--to make an example out of him, and then sent the rest away running for their lives in fear.  Or, if Jesus had preferred not to use any pyrotechnics at all, he simply could have let one of his followers just keep the crowd at bay with his sword drawn.  Jesus could have gotten himself his own sword, too, if he didn't want to have to make his disciples do his dirty work for him, I guess.  

Jesus could have done any of those things, and he knows it... but he does not.

Let us be clear, then: this is Jesus' intentional choice not to answer the violence of the whipped-up crowd with violence of his own. He deliberately chooses not to meet the evil they have aimed at him with malice of his own.  The unsummoned angels are left up in heaven on purpose--because Jesus has chosen the way of self-giving love.

Now, you could say, if you wanted to, that Jesus just chooses not to carry his own weapons or call down angelic bodyguards because, as he says, "the scriptures must be fulfilled."  But Jesus doesn't seem to mean that in an impersonally fatalistic sense, like something out of a Greek tragedy, wherein the power of "fate" simply decrees that he must die, no matter how much he would strain against it.  Jesus doesn't mean that he wishes he could get out his angel-army-summoning-satellite-phone and dial up Michael the archangel to wreak havoc, but alas, some inexplicable predictions of dead soothsaying oracles prevent him from it.  Jesus means that the Scriptures themselves have made it clear that God's way is not to answer evil for evil.  Jesus knows that God's way of defeating the powers of evil is to die at their hands, not to kill them.  The way of the cross is not a blip on the radar, some kind of exception to the rule of how God is "supposed" to operate--it is the defining, essential picture of how God does things.

And that is the real wonder here.  If ever someone had the right, the authority, and the opportunity, to call down supernatural assistance to scare off his attackers, it is Jesus there in the garden.  If ever anyone had the inalienable right to defend himself, or even just to threaten with his lightning-bolt finger a little bit, it is this scene. The fact that Jesus does not, but instead surrenders to the powers of the day, cannot be seen as anything other than a conscious choice.  It is the way God wins the battle, despite the fact that it looks like an utter defeat.

And it is a clear-cut renunciation of the impulse to put "Me and My Group First," even when the "Me" in question is none other than Jesus.

So often we treat Jesus as an exception to the rule rather than the touchstone for how God operates in the world.  So often we respectable religious folks will say things like, "Well, ok, Jesus didn't let his disciples attack with swords or the angels swoop down with flaming divine vengeance, but that's only because for one brief instant in God's plan God made an exception to the usual kill-or-be-killed rules of the universe."  We may allow (because the Scriptures undeniably insist) that Jesus refused to carry around a sword to keep himself "safe", but we end up tying ourselves in knots trying to make Jesus the outlier, and looking for our own ways justify the old persistent "Me-and-My-Group-First" mindset that would let us line our coats with knives and daggers to use on "those people" who make us afraid.

But Jesus doesn't let us get away with that kind of move, at least not with any honesty or integrity.  If, as we so often confess in other areas of our faith, Jesus really is the unique center of everything, why is it that we are so insistent on convincing ourselves to ignore these scene from the gospels?  Why do we say, "Jesus is the key to everything else in our faith--but just don't pay attention to him when he says and does things that undermine the Me-and-My-Group First imperative?"  Why do respectable religious folks and church leaders make such a very big fuss about pinning down the very moment you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior... and then promptly ignore Jesus' dogged insistence NOT to preserve his own life at the cost of others' lives?  Why, in other words, do we give ourselves permission to say, "Jesus is the Lord of my life... except any time he tells me that I should not put my own needs or wants first"?

I am reminded of a line of Kierkegaard's along these lines, where he says that we respectable church folks have a way of being a bunch of "scheming swindlers" (I love that phrase from the translation I know best of this quote) who want to talk a lot about Jesus but not actually listen to what he tells us or do what he models for us.

And maybe that's just it.  We are glad to use Jesus as our mascot, our figurehead, and our rallying cry.  We are happy to have the name "Jesus" to shout and to lament about how people don't talk about Jesus "like they used to" anymore, as a way of looking down at the un-religious and puffing ourselves up.  But when it comes to actually looking at how Jesus handled real life situations with people who were undeniably out to get him, we look for any reason, any dodge, and excuse or loophole, to say that his choices don't have any implication for us or that we can't be expected to actually pattern our lives around Jesus' way of life in the world.  Because honestly, the moment we actually consider how Jesus responds to his actual enemies here in the garden, we will realize that the "Me and My Group First" mindset is incompatible with the way of Jesus, and we don't want to let go of either the mindset or the illusion that Jesus endorses it.  We want to stay self-centered, and to have God's blessing on our us-against-them way of seeing the world, because as long as I can keep seeing the world in Us and Them terms, I am allowed (no, divinely required!) to look out for my own interests first and to hate the "other."

There is only one problem with that: Jesus insists on keeping us honest.  The central moment of our faith--the suffering and death of Jesus--is predicated on Jesus' refusal to put his own well-being, safety, and comfort before the needs of others, even of his enemies.  Jesus forces us to choose between him and the Me-and-My-Group-First way of thinking, no matter how popular it is, how well it polls, or how convenient and comfortable it feels.  

Jesus compels us, in other words, to leave the angels unsummoned so that we can follow him in the way of the cross.

What will we do with the day in front of us?

Lord Jesus, turn our eyes to you, and keep us fixed on the way you give yourself away at the cross, and all along the way there.