During a press conference on Monday about the war in Iran, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth compared the sequence of military operations which rescued a U.S. Air Force pilot to the events of Holy Week. “Shot down on a Friday: Good Friday. Hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday. And rescued on Sunday. Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn. All home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good.”

Hegseth’s use of our sacred days to represent military activity shouldn’t surprise. Last month, from the Pentagon press room, the Secretary urged Americans to pray for the American troops waging war on Iran. “Every day,” he urged, “on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Given how regularly this presidential administration co-opts Christianity for its own agenda, it is getting harder to be offended at what are objectively offensive desecrations of the Faith. The administration regularly appropriates Scripture and Christian imagery for its social media campaigns, including the Secretary reciting the Lord’s Prayer over footage of tanks, military aircraft, and troops training for battle. “God is good,” said President Trump during Monday’s press conference, claiming divine support for his war in Iran. At the most recent monthly Pentagon worship service, organized at Hegseth’s direction, the Secretary read a prayer which included the following blood-thirsty petitions:

• “Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.”

• “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”

• “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

• “Let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.”

The prayer concluded, “in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings and amen.”

To pray in the name of Jesus for the violent destruction and damnation of those the nation has chosen to attack is horrifying. Across the Middle East, since the war against Iran began, tens of thousands of people have been killed, including many civilians. Including hundreds of children. While these are certainly not the people we are meant to imagine during Hegseth’s imprecatory petition, they are, in fact, those we have decided are worthy of suffering and death.

We are not the first people to recruit the Savior who commanded enemy-love for our enemy-destroying cause; there is a long, sad history of Christians killing those we are called to love. What this history and our current Christian nationalist politicians share is a pathetically diminished vision of the Jesus whose name they so regularly invoke.

When Hegseth prays to “King Jesus” as he did at a White House dinner earlier this year, we can assume he’s imagining the crowned rider of Revelation 19 who judges in righteousness and wages war. This is the sort of muscular, masculine deity with whom our nation’s leaders seem obsessed. “On His robe and on His thigh He has a name written: “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” (19:16)

But what crusaders, colonialists, and Christian nationalists have always overlooked is the fact that even the apocalyptic Jesus never raises a sword-clenched hand against his enemies. While Hegseth and his ilk cannot imagine any other kind of power, the Jesus of Revelation needs only the authority of his Word and his blood-dipped robe to accomplish God’s justice upon the earth. And the blood which stains his robe, it is apparently necessary to say, is his own– the Lamb who was slain. While our political leaders clamor loudly for the annihilation of our enemies, Jesus quietly laid down his life that they – that we – might live.

The problem with a vision of a violent Jesus who justifies our warmongering is not that it makes our Savior too powerful; it makes him weak, embarrassingly weak.

When, in response to the president’s obscenity-filled Easter threat to destroy Iran’s infrastructure (“…you’ll be living in Hell…”), notable Christian leaders can merely say that Trump “sometimes chooses words to express himself that I do not agree with, but I support stopping evil to save lives,” they have succumbed to this weak vision. A god who is bound to humanity’s logic of retributive violence is unable to rescue us; such a god can only add to our captivity.

In this Easter season, we ought to remind ourselves often, with joy, that the crucified and resurrected Jesus is not weak. The weapons which enchant this world’s would-be kings are utterly useless for the kind of victory won by the God who wrenches life from death. By the power of his word and the authority of his blood, Jesus defeats the beast of empire and the demonic dragon propping it up.

So, let this country’s anxious leaders live and die by the sword; we have been granted a different kind of power. Compared to the empire’s spectacular and menacing authority, this power will often look like weakness, suffering, and even death. But unlike the weapons of this world, the way of the Lamb always leads to life.

(Photo credit: Steve Sharp.)

Race Against Gun Violence

Regular readers of this newsletter know that this is the time of year when I ask for a donation toward my participation in the Race Against Gun Violence. The funds I raise go directly to our church’s nonprofit organization, New Community Outreach, and our work with young people at the intersection of trauma and hope. Every donation helps. Thanks!

Reading

Demanding privacy from surveillance capitalists or lobbying for an end to commercial surveillance on the internet is like asking Henry Ford to make each Model T by hand or asking a giraffe to shorten its neck. Such demands are existential threats. They violate the basic mechanisms and laws of motion that produce this market leviathan’s concentrations of knowledge, power, and wealth.

-Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Racial Reconciliation Workshop

Next weekend I’ll be at Encounter Church in Mercer Island, WA leading a two-day workshop about racial reconciliation. If you’re in the area, come join us!

The View From Here

One of our high school students took photos during our Easter service last week and this is one of my favorites. I hope you had a wonderful Resurrection Sunday!