"Bullying" - an Easter Talk

“Bullying”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, April 5, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Genesis 37:12-24, Luke 22:1-6; TC 130:3; HS 9127

There is a long-standing tradition that says that “the Jews” crucified Jesus.  (Technically, the Romans crucified Jesus, but) what actually happened is that Jesus’s own people betrayed, abandoned, and crucified Him. But if Jesus had been a Christian, (now there is a mind-bending “if”) it would have been the Christians that crucified Him. No matter what ethnic or cultural group into which God chose to be born, that group would have betrayed and destroyed Him, because that is what the heaviest, darkest layer of humankind does to the Divine, every time, in every story.  It tries to kill it. 

So blaming “the Jews” for the crucifixion is just ignorant and makes things worse.

“The Jews” didn't crucify Jesus.  WE did.  Humanity did.  The unenlightened human response to anything going wrong is to find someone “out there” to blame, then to punish them, cut them off, or kill them.  We think we eliminate the problem that way.  We don’t.  But we like to think we do. 

This is the process called scapegoating.  We externalize, heap responsibility for all our problems on some thing or person outside ourselves, and then think we get rid of the problem by getting rid of the thing or person.

I am sure you have seen this in your life in various versions.  Perhaps you have been someone else’s scapegoat.  Perhaps you know someone who blames every bad thing that happens to them on other people or on circumstances.  It is so much easier for you and me to see this when someone else does it.  But if we are honest, each one of us has passed the blame unfairly.  Not one of us gets to cast the first stone. 

There is no cultural trait that makes one ethnicity more prone to scapegoating than another, no matter how good it might feel believe that. Contempt and superiority, (which underlie the tendency to blame others) are equal opportunity attitudes, be you Muslim or Jew, Christian or Buddhist, Republican or Democrat, American or Canadian or something else. In fact, believing that some group out there is more prone to scapegoating than we are is … scapegoating.  Don’t kid yourself.  Don’t blame yourself either.  Just realize it.  Stop.  And start finding a more helpful solution.

There is an antidote to the human tendency to shift blame and responsibility onto some other group.   We see it reflected in certain martial arts in the way some practitioners can engage an attacker and redirect the energy of their attack. They have disciplined themselves to such a degree that they can engage, redirect, or disarm, violent energy, and do so in such a way that harm is prevented and transformed into something benign.  Jesus did this with his words again and again when His opponents tried to trap Him.  We also can learn to do something similar given time, intention, and practice.

We see the ultimate example of this sort of unexpected, non-violent response when Jesus allowed His betrayal and torture, and suffered such an agonizing death. Jesus at any second could have overthrown the guards and forced His own plan on us.  But instead He allowed all of our abuse to fall on Him, because it was the best way to accomplish what was necessary. He was as docile as a lamb.  He did not blame, or recriminate, or punish us in response. Instead He engaged with all of the venom and violence and hideous darkness that humankind could throw at him, and in doing so neutralized it. He even used it to transform Himself into a more powerful reflection of His Love.

This heroic and lonely act is the great and resonant underlying message in the Easter story.  We find this theme in many of the world’s favorite stories, because it is OUR story.  It the story of how good stands against evil.  It is the account of the best aspects of humankind in relationship with the very worst. You can find blamelessness and kindness up against malicious intent in nearly every story if you just look.  It is in Harry Potter, in the Lord of the Rings, in Star Wars, in To Kill a Mockingbird, in the Chronicles of Narnia, and so many more. And it is living memory, not just metaphor in World War Two, and in every genocide and social injustice in every corner of the world.  And it is on every playground in every school.

We have all been crucified more than once in this life.  We have all experienced injustice and cruelty, betrayal and abandonment.  It is harder to admit sometimes that we have all also been the crucifiers—the betrayers, the gossips, the back-stabbers, and the blamers.  But this is in all of us too.  Every face within the Easter story is within each of us. 

But we don’t have to be afraid.  Though this life can crucify us, we are created to be transformed by each crucifixion.  In the same way we revisit the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection every Easter, we revisit it every time we live some aspect of it.  We suffer betrayal, excruciating loss, and profound transformation; and (God forgive us!) sometimes we realize that we have betrayed a friend and done the crucifying ourselves.  Each lived encounter with a dynamic in the story teaches us another layer of humility, another layer of compassion and self-awareness, and gives us another shot at transformation.  May you find hope in this fact this year, realizing that all of the faces in the story are in you, are loved and forgiven, and are called to greater things.

Remember that you cannot blame someone and love them at the same time.  When blame is pushed aside, love and compassion rush in.  May we continue this year to push back against fear and blame, so that with God’s help we make a bigger space for love to rush in and transform all our suffering into joy.

Amen.

The Readings

True Christianity 130:3 Paraphrased and condensed

The Lord’s betrayal by Judas signifies his betrayal by the Church at that day, meaning the religious leaders and teachers who had control of the Word. Their punching the Lord repeatedly, spitting in his face, whipping him, and beating his head with a cane symbolized how they treated the truths that pointed to a life of love in the Word. Their putting a crown of thorns on him symbolized all the ways they had abused and corrupted those truths. Their tearing up his clothes and casting lots for his undergarment meant that they had torn apart all the outer truths of the Word, but they did not split apart its inner meaning, which was symbolized by the Lord's undergarment. Their crucifying him meant that they had violated and ruined the entire Word. Their offering him vinegar to drink symbolized that everything that church leadership offered him had been completely corrupted; therefore he did not drink it. Their piercing his side symbolized that they utterly annihilated everything true and everything good in the Word.

Heavenly Secrets 9127 Condensed “Shedding blood” in the Word symbolizes doing violence to … Love itself.  Anyone who does violence to God’s Word does violence to the Love within, since the truth in the Word is wedded so closely to Love that the one does not exist without the other. Therefore if violence is done to the one it is also done also to the other.

[2] A person who has no awareness of the internal meaning of the Word can only think that ‘blood’ in the Word means blood, and that ‘shedding blood’ simply means killing someone. But the internal meaning of the Bible does not teach about the life of a person’s physical body, but about a person’s spiritual life.

Genesis 37: 12-24

Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring me word.” So he sent him from the Valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. And a man found him wandering in the fields. And the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” “I am seeking my brothers,” he said. “Tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” And the man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

They saw him from afar, and before he came near to them they conspired against him to kill him. They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits.  Then we will say that a fierce animal has devoured him, and we will see what will become of his dreams.” But when Reuben heard it, he rescued him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” And Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore. And they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

Luke 22:1-6

It was almost time for the Jewish Festival of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover.  The leading priests and teachers of the law wanted to kill Jesus. But they were trying to find a quiet way to do it, because they were afraid of what the people would do.

One of Jesus’ twelve apostles was named Judas Iscariot. Satan entered him, and he went and talked with the leading priests and some of the soldiers who guarded the Temple. He talked to them about a way to hand Jesus over to them.  The priests were very happy about this. They promised to give Judas money for doing this.  He agreed. Then he waited for the best time to hand him over to them. He wanted to do it when no one was around to see it.