Push and Pull

Push and Pull--April 5, 2019

[Jesus said:] "Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die." [John 12:31-33]

Long ago, a grade school science teacher taught me that there are two kinds, two directions, of force in this world: push and pull.

My science teacher meant it in the physical sense--that if you want to move an object, your options are really limited either to getting behind it and pushing it, or attaching a rope (or something) to it and pulling it from in front.  Whether it's sliding a box along the kitchen floor horizontally, or pulleys that raise and lower and elevator vertically, you are still basically either pushing or pulling to get things moving.  Just about everything else--at least for the purposes of elementary school science--is a variation on one or the other: push, or pull.

You could say that there are the same two options in the world of people and groups, too: there either push, or pull.  And to be honest, most of the time, the world only seems to recognize "pushing."  That's how so much of human history has been directed, hasn't it?  One group pushing another, like an invading army conquering a neighboring land.  One person pushing others around, like a king or a bully barking orders through intimidation.  One group of people with money pushing out the people with no money.  One empire pushing its subjects to stay in line and pay their tribute through threats and force.  It's all the same old power of push.

And because so much of history has been consumed with us pushing each other around, we often think that it is the only way to get things done.  If you want to motivate people, so the thinking goes, you must push them to do what you want by threatening them, intimidating them, or using force to make them move.  If you want to stay in power, you have to show that you aren't afraid to push people around.  Certainly that was the way the Roman Empire did things as it occupied the land where Jesus grew up and lived.  And it has really been the calling card of every empire since--that you have to threaten and bully if you want to keep yourself in charge. The names and logos of the empires change, but the playbook stays the same.  

Jesus is sharp that way.  He sees that behind the mask of the Roman Empire, and every other empire in the dustbin of history, there has been the same Power of evil working behind the scenes.  The powers of evil don't care what "brand" is on the packaging--the Romans, after all, were simply taking over for the Greeks, who had ruled before the Persians, who followed the Babylonians, who came after the Assyrians, and so on back through the mists of history, past Pharaoh ordering the Hebrew slaves around, even back to Cain murdering Abel to try to get his way.  The powers of the day may change their appearance, but the same destructive power of push is underneath them all.  Jesus just calls it out.  And he exposes how ultimately that way of doing things is just empty.  Whether it's Caesar barking orders from Rome, Pontius Pilate as his local lackey in Jerusalem, Herod the puppet king, or any other bellowing blowhard of any era, Jesus says their power is ultimately empty.  Bullies get their way for a while, but they are ultimately going to be exposed, unmasked, and stripped of their power.  Eventually the power of "pushing" gives out.

That's why Jesus sees that the powers of the world, and the diabolical "ruler of this world" (the Evil One, the Accuser) being driven out and judged by the cross--where Jesus is "lifted up from the earth."  The cross--yes, of all places, the cross!--is the point at which all the pushing, intimidating, threatening power of history is revealed to be impotent, because the bullying power of empires cannot stop Jesus from gathering "all people" to himself as he died.  Jesus explains that there is another kind of force in the world, and it doesn't operate the same way as pushing and bullying and threatening.  Jesus offers the pull of love.

That's really what he says happens at the cross.  "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth," he says, "will draw all people to myself."  The image isn't of a pushing kind of force--it's a pull.  Like drawing in a fishing net.  Like the pull of a magnet on all those paper clips you dropped on the floor.  Like the tug of gravity that holds the planets in their obits around the sun.  Jesus offers his own life up at the cross--being "lifted up" on a Roman death stake--as the means of a different kind of force.  While the powers of the day rage and shout and threaten as they try to push people by fear and coercion to get their way, Jesus offers a completely different kind of force--the kind that pulls by self-giving love.  That kind of pull is still real force--it is compelling and real and strong.  But it is not the coercive, angry, threatening force that Rome and every other empire has used to get their way.

So, Jesus says, in one moment in history, God does two amazing things.  At the cross of Calvary, the empires of history and the violent powers of the world are exposed as ultimately empty, AND at the same time, God draws all people (ALL PEOPLE!) to himself through Christ.  Jesus does through death what Rome couldn't fully accomplish by killing--the gathering together of all peoples.  Every time Rome tried to force people where it wanted them by marching in some centurions to crucify troublemakers, some pocket of resistance or invasion would pop up somewhere else, rejecting Rome's rule and flouting Caesar's decrees.  But Jesus points to a different way of getting things done--not by threatening to kill people or to take away good things from them if they don't fall in line, but by giving himself away for them... for us.

That's what it means to say that Jesus "draws all people to himself" at the cross.  Over against a world full of pushing, cajoling, and threatening bullies, Jesus compellingly pulls us to himself.

That is good news.

Lord Jesus, draw us all over again to yourself, with each day, with each breath.