Advent 2, 2011

Reading for the 2nd Sunday in Advent:
Isaiah 40:1-11; Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

O God, whose will is justice for the poor and peace for the afflicted,
    let your herald's urgent voice pierce our hardened hearts
        and announce the dawn of your kingdom.
Before the advent of the One who baptizes with the fire of the Holy Spirit,
    let our complacency give way to conversion, oppression to justice,
        and conflict to acceptance of one another in Christ.
We ask this through the One whose coming is certain,
    whose day draws near:
    your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
    who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
    one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

~ Sacramentary, USA, 20th Cent.

Lighting the 2nd Advent Candle:

We light this candle as a symbol of Christ the Way.
May the Word sent from God through the prophets
    let us to the way of salvation.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.

~ United Methodist Book of Worship

This week we continue to look at the cultural context into which Jesus was born. Jesus supported non-violent resistance. The early church had a ban upon military service. The late Dean Emeritus of Boston University, Muller?, mentioned in a class I was taking that at the start of World War II, 95% of the denominations in the United States were pacifists. The propaganda machine was so strong that at the end of World War II only 10-15% of the denominations remained pacifist.

Non-violent resistance didn't start with Jesus. This week, I continue to bring up the resistance moments within Judea and the Galilee. I am referring to Richard A. Horsley's book Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 1993) which I recommend reading. Just as last week, the very nature of a blog means that this will be a brief look at our topic.

Horsley writes:

The several movements of various forms that have been misunderstood as part of one sizable and long-standing "Zealot" movement or linked with the "Zealots" (i.e., the Zealots proper, the Sicarii), various bands of brigands, and both the popular prophetic and the popular messianic movements, have all recently been analyzed in terms of their social-historical context and distinctive social forms.
    Besides these movements, however, there was a variety of other resistance, some of which has already been mentioned in chapter 2. These other phenomena were not movements with distinctive forms, but more ad hoc responses to particular incidents or situations. ...
    Such protests are of particular relevance to the issue of violence in the context of the imperial situation of Jewish Palestine because they were basically nonviolent. Thus an examination of these other popular protests provides a fitting way of illustrating that, contrary to the picture often evoked of Palestinian Jewish society as being a hotbed of revolutionary violence, the people resisted their unacceptable situation with considerable patience and discipline. As was noted above, for seventy years, from 4 BCE to 66 CE, the Jewish people with the exception of the Sicarii, engaged in a series of nonviolent protests of different sorts, despite the often-violent response by the Romans. ... [Horsley divides these into two groups: Intellectuals' resistance and a more widespread or popular protests. T]he protests led by the scholar-teachers [intellectuals] occurred earlier and prior to the time of Jesus, while with one exception the protests by the urban mob and the peasants [popular] occurred later, shortly after the ministry of Jesus.

~ Horsley. Jesus and the Spiral of Violence. 61-2

Intellectual Resistance:
Horsley points out that these teachers-sages-lawyers-scribes were likely part of the retainer class (see last weeks posting (here) about the social strata). The book of Daniel was likely written by this class as a way to instruct the people in who their God is (amongst the Hellenistic/Roman imperial world) and how they were to worship and society was to operate. Where does their hope come? Horsley writes, "The [intellectuals] believed not only that their people would experience deliverance but also that if they suffered they themselves would be restored to life in glorious fashion. This hope, nurtured by apocalyptic visions such as those in Daniel ... enabled them to persevere in their resistance" (64).

Horsley point out that the textual evidence doesn't allow us to know the theoretical thinking behind the intellectual resistance. Where they resisting nonviolently because they believed in the practice and/or methodology of nonviolence, or where they resisting nonviolently as in natural to intellectuals who long for a traditional way of life while awaiting God's actions?

None-the-less, the intellectuals were involved in leadership, visioning, encouraging noncooperation (tax and census resistance, even daring to remove the golden eagle from the Temple as Herod lay dying), and when it came to it martyrdom.

Popular Mass Protests:
Horsley mentions several events, but I'm going to discuss one, and in doing so, I point out that sometimes the protests were successful (getting the governor to do what the protesters want) and at other times, unsuccessful.

When Pilate entered Jerusalem for the first time as governor, he did so under the standards. This action created an uproar amongst the Jews for this was against the Torah.
Horsley writes of the action:

The protest also appears to have been spontaneous in origin yet disciplined in execution. Word of the entry of the troops with images of Caesar into Jerusalem apparently spread quickly through the countryside ([Josephus] War 2.170). ... The demonstrators were especially impressive for their discipline in maintaining their vigil in orderly and nonviolent fashion. There must have been no serious flare-up of violent outrage, or Pilate would have sent in the military to terminate the demonstration around his official residence. It is extremely difficult for any group of demonstrators to sustain its morale and to avoid falling back into the usual pattern of fear about repression, which results in submission - which in turn would result in a continuation of the objectionable action.
   When Pilate had the demonstrators suddenly surrounded by his troops with arms at the ready, the Jews' response surprised Pilate himself. Summoning an even higher degree of fearlessness and discipline than in the previous five days and nights, the protesters offered their necks to the soldiers' drawn swords in solidarity of passive resistance. Rather than follow through with a bloody massacre, Pilate ordered the images removed from Jerusalem.

~ Horsley. Jesus and the Spiral of Violence. 104.

Horsley sums up:

It would seem clear that we can put behind us the picture of Jewish society at the time of Jesus as a hotbed of violent rebellion. ... The only occurrence of violent resistance was the terrorism of the Sicarii directed against their own high priests. Otherwise the Jewish resistance to Roman rule throughout the period, whether the two actions led by scholar-teachers in 4 BCE and 6 CE, the protests of the Jerusalem crowd or the wider popular demonstrations, was fundamentally nonviolent.
     Moreover, aside from the two earlier actions led by intellectuals, Jewish protests against Roman provocations during the first century were largely spontaneous expressions of concern by the common people. ...

~ Horsley. Jesus and the Spiral of Violence. 116ff

Into such a cultural context of resistance was Jesus born and raised.

Blessed Be