Resurrection is Divine - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Resurrection is Divine NonviolenceSlide2

If Jesus warned about

the power of scandal,

he himself did not succumb to it. He did not invoke retaliatory counter violence.

1 Peter 2:23-24. “When

they heaped abuse on Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats, but entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly

. He Himself bore our sins (violence) in his body on the tress , so that we might die to sin (violence) and live to righteousness. ‘By his stripes you are healed…’ ”  (There’s no trick to this, with God or the devil, its straight non-retaliation. )

Jesus explicitly refuses twelve legions of angels while telling Peter to put up his sword (Matt.26:53).Slide3

…Sidebar on “The Cup”: anthropological context.

In a parallel saying John 18:11 Jesus says he must drink the

“

cup the Father has given me.”

In some Christian interpretation this cup is God’s personal anger against sin, and so generative violence is reinstalled at a theological level.

See Habakkuk 2:8—”Because you have looted many nations, all the remainder of the peoples will loot you—because of human bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the town and all its inhabitants…. 15. Woe to you who make your neighbors drink, who mix in your venom even to make them drunk…. 16.

You

will be filled with disgrace rather than honor. Now you yourself drink and expose your own nakedness. The cup in the LORD'S right hand will come around to you…”

God

uses historical violence to chastise historical

violence. It is a human cup which Jesus drinks…Slide4

So the entire being of G-d is mapped by the cross and resurrection.

It is Jesus’ gesture of

nonretaliation

which is raised up and made eternal. Content of resurrection is theological affirmation of nonviolence (which is itself forgiveness).

A

shift in overall anthropological sense, not a legal waiver.

Thus

Jesus revealing nonviolence as the true self of the Father overcomes the psychosis in God’s personality and makes sense of the resurrection. (Thus the Father gives the cup to Jesus in order that all dregs of violence may be removed from divine identity.) Slide5

What results is anthropological revolution…in principle

A

s noted it is contradicted in practice (psychotic God of Middle Ages). This is because the structuring power of violence is normative for humanity (Girard).

All the same in biblical principle

resurrection is the opening of nonviolent divinity in the midst

of

history. Resurrection

breaks

the violent narrative of history.

What we are doing is accenting this meaning for today.Slide6

BOTH A POWER AND A SIGN…

“To

break the power of mimetic unanimity, we must postulate a power superior to violent contagion. If we have learned one thing in this study, it is that none exists on the Earth.”

I See

Satan Fall

,

189

.

“The Resurrection is not only a miracle, an enigma, a transgression of natural laws; it is a spectacular sign of the entrance into the world of a power superior to violent contagion.” Ibid. 189

.

Girard acknowledges the semiotic quality of the Resurrection. It has to be understood in its quality as a sign.

A

sign whose content is nonviolence. Slide7

Some doubted...why?

Because

the resurrection is not evidential

, like

a

laboratory experiment

.

Or an amazing party

trick. W

ithin

present

order

of meaning

it is doubtful, even meaningless.

Matt.

28:17, “Some doubted”; also

Luke 24:11, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” (NIV)Slide8

SIGN OF NONVIOLENCE

It

is transformational. You have to buy into divine nonviolence, via the cross, to get it. The transformation happens on

the level

of

signs, of new meaning. The content of the sign of resurrection is divine nonviolence. Slide9

ROAD TO EMMAUS, Luke 24

Disciples on road to Emmaus:

textbook example of resurrection interpretation. The Risen Jesus is physically present in the story and yet cannot be recognized. Jesus refers to the cross and

its

meaning, that the Messiah had to suffer, not retaliate, in order to reveal

the resurrection

.

The

account of the Messiah’s suffering

opens the

eyes

of the disciples to

the Risen

One: it enables

them to see

the possibility of resurrection

as nonviolent vindication

. At the same time the presence of the Risen One is itself nonviolent power, assisting in understanding the cross.

They couldn’t see Jesus standing before them until they let go of violence. The

sign

of the broken bread, the letting go, completed the circle. Slide10

Jesus is rehearsing a circle of two signs that interpret each other, cross and resurrection:

the Messiah’s suffering is

nonviolence, so that in turn becomes

the pattern

by which to “see”

God’s

action in resurrection

. Which, in turn, shows us the meaning of the

crosss

.Slide11

An example

of a

semiotic loop in a physical sense. An image recognition program (also called neural network) is tasked to recognize patterns

and

repeat them. So machine

then “knows

” what it’s

seeing.Slide12

We recognize the cross “in” the resurrection and

at once

resurrection lifts up the cross.

In Paul’s conversion Jesus speaks the famous words, “Saul, why are you persecuting me?” This is not evidential, as in “Now you can have no doubt I am risen.”

Jesus identifies as the victim of violence which is so important to Girard—the revelation of the victim. But simultaneously it is an act of

divine nonviolence

: Jesus does not say “How dare you persecute me,” but rather “Why

?”

Paul’s experience is of divine nonviolence.Slide13

It is

the revelatory

nonviolence of the encounter which convinces

Paul

the Crucified is the Messiah, where before that was impossible.

Paul falls from his horse of war, and the

scales fall from his eyes. Slide14

The Same Circle with a Different Sensibility. “Mary stood weeping…”

“ ‘They have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him

…’ When she said this she turned around and saw Jesus…. Supposing him to be the gardener she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20: 14-15)

An expectation of the dead victim—the victory of violence.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “

Rabbouni

!’” (16)

This completes a semiotic circle (two turns).

T

he sign of Jesus’ love/nonviolence becomes a sign of the resurrection. Slide15

The two signs

together—of cross and resurrection--

complete a circle and make new transcendent sense

.

It is an event that we must leap into, because there is

no continuous path to

go from the old

violent form of meaning to the new nonviolent form.Slide16

Resurrection is vital to a life free of scandal

The

cross would be a triumph of Roman imperial violence if it were not for a different power and sign

which discloses

violence and redefines human existence—i.e. Resurrection.

In the Resurrection there is no model/obstacle and so no scandal. It is an invitation to an entirely new relationship with reality. In effect, a new ontology, or way of being.

Any confrontation with violence for a Christian means remaining in the semiotic circle of cross and resurrection: the cross and resurrection make God and all reality nonviolent.

We

are in the between times, the

“time

that remains

,”

and so we both pray to be

protected

from

scandal— “lead us not into temptation/deliver us from evil”—as

well as living in the new space of divine nonviolence

.

It is essential to introduce this note in any concrete discussion of police and the violence in which our society is enmeshed. Slide17

Personal Transformation

To adopt this new anthropological sense is the great challenge of our time.

In the past everything depended on the cross and the resurrection was some kind of afterthought.

If Jesus had just given a witness of nonviolence and not been raised up then his gesture would have been futile. If Jesus had not died on the cross and was then raised up there would have been no changed meaning. Carrying these two things around with us creates a new humanity.

Every

Christian carries within herself the semiotic circle of cross and resurrection. The nonviolent death of Jesus lifted up in resurrection becomes a transformed way of being human

.

“We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” (2 Cor. 4:10)Slide18

Finally an End Time Meaning

John’s gospel has its own form of this circle. “ ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” (John 12:32-3)

This is an immanent eschatology, a transformation belonging to the human scene as such.

It begins with changed meaning, a new anthropology arising from the dual signs of cross and resurrection. Slide19

Signs change life from the outside in… which remains

the outside…