We open with a wide shot of beautiful – but desolate –
mountains, with a small dusty town in the foreground, an on-screen caption
tells us it’s New 'Salem Arizona and the camera swoops on into town, and we see
the towns-folk going about their business, the blacksmith and saloon keeper and
ol' Doc Roberts . . . but we soon learn that all is not well in New Salem . . a
ruthless cattle baron – Jacob McCreedy by name – lives just outside of town,
and he's bought and paid for just about anybody who's anybody in these parts .
. . the Sheriff is his creature, the judge his poker buddy . . . the mayor owes
his job and his high standard of living and his Kansas City girlfriend
to the cattle baron, and the city aldermen?
Well, let's just say they know where their
bread is buttered. Even the local
preacher is beholden to the cattleman, because his is the biggest annual pledge
and the brand new church-house – built with a generous donation from Missus McCreedy–
stands on McCreedy land. And all the
townsfolk and the local dirt-farmers buy their food at the general store –
owned by McCreedy's brother Will – and prices are just a little too high so
that in bad years folks can’t earn enough to make ends meet, so they're in debt
to the McCreedys a little more each year, some have lost their farms to the
McCreedy Savings and Loan, and if anybody complains about it, they find
themselves in the poky mighty quick . . .
And there's a rumor – just a hint blown in on the Autumn wind –
of a mysterious stranger from the wilderness, he's thought to be a gunslinger
from up North, a town cleaner-upper. Doc
Roberts says he rode into Mt. Tabor, Kansas and faced down the crooked marshall
and a whole passel of hired guns, just faced 'em on down and ran 'em out of
town . . . and Mrs. Barton's brother’s cousin arrives full of excitement and
stories about how this stranger did the same thing in his home town of Dothan and he says rumor has it he’s heading this
way!
Then they hear that he’s right outside of town, and they
quiver with excitement, because they long to be shut of Jacob McCreedy and all
his toadies . . . but the sheriff and the judge and the preacher – and all
their hired guns – wait in calm anticipation, biding their time, sure that they
can handle an itinerant rabble-rouser and his mangy followers.
At Bethphage, on the Eastern outskirts of the City, within an
arrow's flight of the Temple walls, this stranger reclines in the shade of a
fig tree. . . and by and by he sends two of his followers into town to inquire
about a ride into town. "Go into the village," he says, "and
you'll find a donkey tied and a colt with her . . . untie them and bring 'em to
me. And if the owner asks what you’re
doing, tell him the Lord needs them . . ." and so they do it – they
go into Bethphage and sure enough there are a couple of pack animals tied up,
and sure enough, as they start to untie the animals the owner comes out and
asks "what do you think you're doing, untying my animals?" and the disciples say they're for the Lord,
and they bring them back to the stranger who immediately climbs up on top of
them and makes a pronouncement: "Tell the daughter of Zion," that’s
Jerusalem "tell Jerusalem: see! your king is coming to you, humble, and
mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of the donkey." And he starts into town.
Out of the New Salem dust rides the stranger, with his
hard-luck companions at his side. The
camera follows them as they ride, and then suddenly we're overhead, looking
down onto the street as they enter town . . . townsfolk lining the road, some
of them hollering, some just standing and staring, and as the camera pans
across their faces we can see the hope . . . it’s in their eyes, in the way
they hold their heads . . . expectantly, with anticipation . . .
But we can also see, lurking in the background, leaning
insolently under the eaves, gunmen, thugs on the McCreedy payroll, their dead
eyes following the stranger's progress . . . up on the roof-tops other men
crouch behind the false store-fronts, Winchester repeating rifles in their
hands . . . some of them have badges on their shirts . . .
The stranger rides slowly into town, looking neither left or
right, and stops in front of the hotel . . . he swings his leg over his horses'
back and lowers himself from the saddle, and his companions do the same . . .
out into the street steps the sheriff, to confront them. "This here’s a peaceful
town. We don't want no
trouble." The stranger glances at
the gunmen on the roofs – he knew they were there all along – and says "I
don't want trouble either."
"Then you won't mind giving up your guns," says the
sheriff, and they can all hear the ratcheting click of cocking firearms, and
the stranger slowly unbuckles his gun-belt and lets it drop, and his companions
do the same.
As Jesus rides into town, people line the dusty street . . .
and you can see the hope on their faces, feel it bubbling up inside . . . and
they throw their cloaks on the ground before his donkey, their cloaks,
the most expensive clothing they own, and they wave palm branches and throw them
on the streets, so that not one spot of bare roadway is showing, and they’re
shouting "Hosanna! Hosanna to the
son of David! Blessed is the one that
comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!"
And the centurions are lurking under the eaves, waiting for
things to get ugly, and they’re up on the mud roofs, and they’re nervous,
because the city's already in turmoil
. . . after all, it's almost Passover, and its packed with Jews from all over
Palestine and the middle east . . . but it seems worse than usual, more on the
edge of violence . . . and there's a question going around, it's on everyone's
lips: Who is this guy? Who is
this stranger who rides into town, not on a white stallion – like Pontius
Biggus Maximus, the last Roman general who paraded into the city –
but on lowly pack mules like some servant . . . who is this guy? And an answer was making the rounds: It's the
prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.
In the saloon, the stranger is playing poker with his
companions . . . there are townsfolk looking in through the windows, reporting
everything that goes on to their friends, and inside, hard-looking men with
guns and badges, lounging at the bar, openly hostile . . . and one by one, they
pick fights with the stranger’s companions, and arrest them and haul them off
to jail . . . and each time, the stranger looks up from his cards, and asks
what the charge is – each time the answer’s the same "disturbin’ the
peace," and each time his remaining companions look to their leader in
supplication – do something, their looks say – but he just returns to
his cards. "I'm a man of
peace," he says.
Outside the saloon, the crowd is taken aback. What kind of town cleaner-upper is this? What kind of savior lets his guns get taken,
then his buddies drug off to jail, and doesn't do a thing? And as the hours progress, one by one the
companions are taken away, and the murmuring in the crowd gets louder and more
hostile, until there's only the stranger left and one other – young Billy, son
of his sister Maggie, just barely out of his teens . . . and a deputy saunters
over to the table and says to the boy "You're under arrest . . ." and
Billy gives his uncle an anguished look, lunges for the deputy's gun, and is
shot square in the chest. And as he
cradles his dying nephew in his arms, the stranger’s face bears the sorrow of
the world, but we can see something else there as well . . .
In the garden, Jesus prays while Peter and James and John sleep
. . . three times he wakes them up, telling them "watch with me
awhile" but each time they fall asleep . . . on the third time, he tells
them "get up, my betrayer is at hand." And just then, at the entrance to the garden,
a jangling commotion is heard, and a large armed crowd appears with Judas at
it's head. He strides up to Jesus,
kisses him on the cheek and says "Greetings, Rabbi!" And the armed men lay their hands upon Jesus
and they arrest him.
Suddenly, a disciple draws his sword and cuts off the ear of
one of the crowd . . . but Jesus says "put away your sword back into it's
place, for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword," and his
face bears the sorrow of the world …
As the life drains from the boy's eyes, the stranger's face is
dead calm, but we can see something there . . . we can see a steely hardness
forming, first in the eyes, then in the set of the mouth, and as the armed men
lay their hands on the stranger, he springs into action, goaded into it at last
. . . he grabs a gun from it's holster – they react too slowly, they're not
expecting it – and starts shooting . . . first one, then another . . . and
before he has to reload – after all it is a movie – he's killed every gunman in the bar. The bartender tosses him a shotgun and he
strides into the street, and shoots with uncanny accuracy all the bad guys
converging on the saloon. Out of the
corner of his eye, he sees Jacob McCreedy duck into the barbershop – coward
that he is – and without a moment’s hesitation goes in after him, ducking just
in time to avoid the rancher's shotgun blast, and blows him away – in self defense, of course. As he walks out of the barbershop, he can
hear the cheers of the crowd, and the town of New 'Salem becomes peaceful and
prosperous, and never is heard a discouraging word.
Jesus’ face bears the sorrow of the world as he's taken away to
appear before the chief priest Caiaphas, who's in the pay of the McCreedys, I
mean, the Roman oppressors. On Friday
morning, Caiaphas and the chief priests of the corrupted temple authorities
bind Jesus hand and foot and deliver him to Pilate, the governor of Judea. Pilate pronounces him innocent, but giving in
to the crowd – which by that time had turned on Jesus – sentences him to death. Trying one more time, and being warned by his
wife to have nothing to do with this Jesus person, Pilate offers the crowd a
choice: either Jesus or the brigand Barabbas . . . "Let us have
Barabbas," they shout. "What then shall I do with Jesus?" Pilate asks.
"Crucify him," says the crowd.
"Crucify him."
And so they do. They
lead him out to Golgotha, making Simon carry his cross, and when they get there
they offer him wine mixed with gall, to ease the pain – he refuses – and then
they crucify him between two thieves, pounding the nails into his hands and
feet. Over his head they nail a sign:
"This is Jesus, King of the Jews."
And the crowd is mollified, and order is restored, and there is no
uprising against the Romans by the Passover revelers. Peace reigns.
What are we to say about these two stories? One is repeated over and over again, in
multiple genres – cop shows, science fiction, ancient spectacle – with only
slight variation . . . our hero, a man of peace, is confronted with a great violent
evil . . . and he doesn't want to get violent in response – did I
mention he's a man of peace? – but things build up, he's pushed to it, and
finally, he just has to fight
back. He just has to duke it out with the bad guys, or have a gunfight on the
streets of New York, or duel mano a mano with the emperor in the Roman
coliseum. He doesn't want to do it, you
understand, he's a man of peace, all he wants to do is live quietly with his
family, but they push him to it, it's the only way left to him, it's violence as
a last resort.
This myth of redemptive violence, the notion that, in
the end and as a last resort, it's ok to use violence to attain justice,
pervades all the world’s literature, and all of our stories are molded by it,
our foreign policies are governed by it – Saddam Hussein just pushed us too far
– and even our theology is shaped by it . . . One of the criteria for just war
theory – first developed by St. Augustine 1600 years ago – is that a war is
just only if it’s the last resort. The
notion that violence can be redemptive is a foundational myth in human history,
so fundamental that we rarely question it . . .
And yet Jesus, in his last hours, said that those who take up
the sword die by it . . . and as he rode into Jerusalem, the crowd went wild .
. . they thought he’d come to clean up the town, to end the oppressive rule of
the Roman overlords and their hired hands . .
. Hosanna, they cried, blessed is he who comes in the name of the
Lord! And there in the garden, when they
came to get him, the disciples thought it was surely time, that the last
extremity had surely come . . . but Jesus said put down your sword . . . and
finally, when he was nailed onto the tree, as he gasped and struggled and
breathed his final breaths, surely he could have called down angels – as Satan
suggested, back at the beginning of Lent – to save himself, but he wouldn’t . .
. he wouldn’t retaliate, even as a last resort, even to save his own life.
Jesus chose non-violence, he
chose not to retaliate, and thereby we all are rescued from bondage to
evil . . . it was his choice not to defend himself with force that did it. The way of the world is that violence begets
violence, it’s used to stop itself, so that it really never ends, it just
repeats itself in an endless spiral.
But the way of God is that power is perfected in weakness, and that
weakness, that non-retaliatory, non-threatening, non-militant story has
saved the world. That’s the way of the
Cross, and what we remember at this, Christianity’s holiest time. Amen.
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