Friday, February 25, 2022                                          (yesterday’s lectionary)
Assertiveness in a time of war
Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away.
Margaret said, “When the stock market goes down, even way down, I don’t think about it much. And when it goes up, I don’t think about that, because we haven’t really earned that money. It just appeared. And disappeared.”
“But if I were a waitress (as she has been), and the money I’ve earned and saved and invested is suddenly smaller, suddenly gone, I’d be so angry! It would matter so much to me.”
Like getting your arms cut off, the arms that swept up plates and poured water for the patrons, and did whatever needed to be done?
If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Yesterday the stock market was way down, as it has been all week. But more importantly, people just like us are running ragged in the Ukraine. In the last few years they have run ragged in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and several other countries, seeking to escape the highly impersonal bullets and bombs that hit cities as well as armies. Anxious Ukrainians stood outside a closed bank in Slovyansk: “It’s panic, don’t you see?”
“We’ve lived eight years of unending war,” a woman who runs a blood bank in eastern Ukraine told the New York Times. “There’s nowhere to run. All Ukraine is exploding.”
Most of us have never experienced national fear like this. Our personal panics are not regularly reflected in the faces of those around us.
Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink will surely not lose his reward. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Jesus doesn’t mince words. When we are in a public panic both opportunities abound: to share cups of water, and to keep them for myself. As for our enemy, what then? Give them a cup? Throw it in their face?
The cartoon on the left sends Putin off to play alone (pro-Europeans) … the cartoon on the right embraces his strength (pro-Russians). On the main social networks in Russia and Ukraine, most notably VKontakte, caricatures and photomontages trying to discredit pro-Europeans and pro-Russians are everywhere. They often recycle well-known clichés about both sides.
 At the United Nations the Ukrainian ambassador told his Russian counterpart, “There is no purgatory for war criminals. They go straight to hell, ambassador.”
You have condemned; you have murdered the righteous one; he offers you no resistance.
Jesus offered no physical resistance, and in his steps the Kingdom of heaven continues to grow on earth. Jesus … Gandhi … Martin Luther King and countless unnamed men and women follow Jesus, but when the other guy’s weapons open fire, nonviolent resistance is in short supply. It doesn’t take long to make the other’s leader a two-dimensional demon.
We summon our own bombers, and if our reciprocal violence ends in redemption, we feel righteous. When aggression rises up, assertiveness doesn’t stand a chance.
But still, Jesus and the Bible tell us that assertiveness prevails, personally and in society as well. Just give it time.
How long, O Lord, how long?
Fear not when a man grows rich, when the wealth of his house becomes great, for when he dies he shall take none of it … he shall join the circle of those who shall never more see light.
Keep in mind that assertiveness is not passivity. I am assertive when I respect the rights of both myself and my adversary. With confidence and patience, I “insistently work toward goals, attacking problems rather than persons.”
Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if salt becomes insipid, with what will you restore its flavor? Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another.Â
(The information about assertiveness is found at the end of the linked post.)
(James 5, Psalm 49, 1 Thessalonians 2, Mark 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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