"How Can Anyone Be Born after Having Grown Old?" (John 3:1-17)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 27, 2018, Trinity Sunday)

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A Deep Spiritual Problem:

Living in the Present

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?”

Nicodemus asks this question while Jesus is talking about the kingdom of God.  Jesus had said that seeing the kingdom of God and entering it was like the experience of birth.  He said to see and enter the kingdom you had to be “born from above,” “born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus interprets these words rather literally and tries to work out the mechanics of a grown person entering the womb for the second time.  Even as I can’t help but laugh a little bit at Nicodemus’ naïveté, I also can’t help but feel that his question unwittingly points to a deep spiritual problem, which is this: How can anyone let go of their past and their growth, enough that they might live in the present? 

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?”

Why Give Up His Life?

Growing up, visiting my grandparents was a treat.  It meant the adventure of an eight-hour car ride through the mountains to Kentucky, then a dinner full of good home-cooking; after that a game or two; and then finally, sleeping in a basement full of ancient treasures.  We usually visited twice a year: summer break and Christmas.  They are some of my fondest memories.

When I was eight years old, my grandmother had a stroke that paralyzed part of her body.  Not too long after that, she moved into a nursing home.  And so did my grandpa.  I couldn’t understand it at the time.  My grandpa could still get around.  Why give up his life?  Why sell the house—where we had had such great dinners and played games together, where there were all sorts of treasures—why sell the house when he could still live there?

But my grandpa sold the house and went into the nursing home.  When my grandma passed away, he lived eleven more years there before his death.  We would still visit every summer and every Christmas.  I remember crowding into his little room.  He would always have collected a stash of candy from the gifts he had received, and he would give these to my brother and me.  He would also bequeath old possessions to us that he would never need again: books, ties, desk supplies.  Every Christmas, we celebrated at the end of the hallway with a piece of pie and ice cream, and my grandpa would invite the nurses whom he’d befriended to join us.  In the months between visits, he would write notes to us, cards, then emails, and then finally a friend of his would type the emails for him.

Living by a Different Spirit

When my grandpa first moved into the nursing home, I could not understand why.  But I think now I do.  Now I can see that he was living by a different Spirit than that which possesses much of our world.  He was being born anew.

From my observation, there are two ways of growing old.  (I realize that here I’m preaching of things some of you know much better than I.  I’m preaching more from impudence than experience—so please feel free to set me straight afterward!)

On the one hand, I have observed folks who grow old with bitterness and resentment.  Having spent a lifetime accomplishing great achievements and accumulating possessions and developing a fine reputation, they now face the loss of all these things.  Their bodies weaken and so does their command and control, they must downsize and leave behind prized possessions, and they fade ever further from the public eye and its favor.  They resist the change.  They grasp after the past even as it leaves them.  Perhaps they never entered the kingdom of which Jesus spoke because they have been too busy trying to build their own kingdom—and now it is crumbling fast.

On the other hand, I have observed folks like my grandpa who grow old with freedom and grace.  I have observed the same sort of thing here.  (Pat comes immediately to mind.)  They receive life not as a matter of their own control but as a gift and a responsibility.  My grandpa did not cling onto his home or his things or his reputation.  He let these go, not only because they were leaving him anyway, but also so that he could receive new gifts: the gift of a few more years with his wife, the gift of befriending others at the nursing home, and the gift of blessing his family and the people around him.  Rather than cling and claw to the past, my grandpa grew old with a different kind of Spirit—with trust and humility and gratitude for the many new possibilities before him.  In a way, he really was reborn: he became like a child for whom everything is new, everything a gift.

A Faith That Is Not In Control

In the church, the words “born again” are shorthand for making a personal decision to follow Christ.  They suggest that the life of faith is a matter of our control.  But according to Jesus in today’s passage, faith is about what is beyond our control.  “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (3:8). 

Who among us can tell the wind where to blow?  Being born from above, being born of the Spirit is just like the real experience of birth.  A newborn child is not in control in the least.  Being born of the Spirit has to do with how we live when we are not in control.  Entering the kingdom of God has to do with how we live when circumstances change and we are at a loss. 

Being born of the Spirit means being a little bit like a kite, allowing the Spirit to move us and work through us wherever we are.  For my Grandpa, being born of the Spirit meant that even as he lost his home and his things and his reputation, he trusted that the life of God would fill his sails and give him life.  So he received his new life as a gift and blessed others in simple ways, with table fellowship and generosity and notes of love.  And so he saw and entered, I believe, the kingdom of God.  A kingdom that is neither a pie in the sky nor the sweet by and by, but that is always already near us, even among us here, now, if we would believe the words and witness of Jesus (cf. Luke 17:21).

To Empty Ourselves and Open Our Sails

“How can anyone be born after having grown old?”

It’s a question worth asking wherever we are in life.  Because whether we’re 15, or 45, or 95, the temptation is to build and measure our life by the past and by our growth: by what we have achieved and gained and how others have seen us. 

To be born anew would mean to lose all of that, to leave behind the personal kingdoms we’ve worked so hard to create.  And yet that’s just the point for Jesus, isn’t it?  To see and enter the kingdom of God is to deny ourselves, to empty ourselves and open our sails to the Spirit wherever we are.  When we relinquish control of our lives and open ourselves up to the present reality and the Spirit that blows there, the holy wind of God will sweep us unpredictably into the life of a kingdom far greater than our own, the kingdom of God.

Prayer

Christ who comes to us,

Self-emptied

And full of the Spirit—

Inspire us with your example

And the examples

Of your followers,

That we too might be born anew

Of the Spirit,

Not through our own control

But through acceptance

Of your love and life,

Which dwell in all things.  Amen.

Groaning and Sighing (Romans 8:22-27)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 20, 2018, Pentecost)

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Changing Plans

A little over 20 years ago, my family went to Glorieta, New Mexico for a summer missions conference.  You could think of Glorieta as a southwest version of Craig Springs.  We had gone there several times before for the same conference, and my brother and I had become familiar with the territory.  My parents could turn us loose, and we would wander across the various landmarks: the lake, the putt-putt course, the great sanctuary, the Chuck Wagon where meals were served.

This time, my brother and I decided to take a trail up a nearby mountain.  We hiked up to the vista, which was wonderful, drank plenty of water, and then started our trek back down.

Hiking in New Mexico is different than hiking in Virginia.  Here there are plenty of trees, making the trail unmistakable.  But in New Mexico, the trees are scattered.  After guessing between several apparent forks in the path, it became clear that we were lost.

We groaned and we sighed.  And then we made some calculated plans.  First we decided to follow what looked like a dried out creek bed.  A creek, we figured, would lead us to a river, which would lead us to civilization.  But the creek bed disappeared.  We groaned and sighed some more, and then we refined our plan.  We would bushwhack down the mountain in the direction from which we had come—or from which we thought we had come.  When we neared the bottom and saw no landmarks or even hints of civilization, we groaned and sighed some more.  But then we heard them: voices!  Changing our plan once again, we followed the sound for several hundred yards and stumbled finally into a graveyard.  Not quite civilization, but close enough for us!  The cemetery was just off the conference center. 

After much groaning and sighing and changing of plans, we had made it.

Beyond What We Can See or Say

Today is Pentecost, the day on which we celebrate the Spirit of God that fell upon the first followers of Christ that day in Jerusalem and that falls upon us still, if we would believe it.  Pentecost captures our imagination because of the spectacle: the speaking and understanding of different languages, the whirlwind above the faithful, and the flames that danced on their heads. But the real miracle is deeper than all this dazzle.  In ancient Palestine, people thought the Spirit only came to the prophets, and most people thought the Spirit had even stopped visiting them.  The real miracle, then, was the Spirit of God taking up residence in everyday folks like you and me. 

In today’s scripture, Paul talks about this miracle of the Spirit living in folks like you and me.  His description is perhaps a little surprising.  When I think about the Spirit coming upon someone, I think of someone suddenly acquiring superhuman strength and ability.  But Paul doesn’t talk about strength or intelligence.  He talks about the Spirit as an experience where we can’t exactly see or say where we’re going.  He talks about groaning and sighing.

Holy Groans and Sighs: Pulling Us Past Our Plans

The way that Paul talks about the Spirit, I cannot help but think of my brother and I, groaning and sighing on the side of that mountain in New Mexico.  More than once, we made a plan.  And more than once, things did not go as planned.  The creek did not lead us to water.  The bushwhacking did not lead us to familiar territory.  So what kept us going when those plans failed?

What kept us going, I think, was something like the Spirit.  Our sighs and our groans were expressions of our inability and our helplessness, which is to say, an expression of prayer.  The Spirit lives in us, I think, when we sigh and groan and open ourselves to what we can’t see and can’t say.  The Spirit is not in our plans, which are things that we can see and say, but in what lies beyond our plans and keeps pulling us forward when our plans inevitably fail.  The Spirit is not us, but God pulling us.  Holy sighs and groans pulling us.

Stronger Than Any Problem, Any Plan

Of course, those groans and sighs of my brother and me in New Mexico are minimal compared to other sighs and groans that we hear in our world.  The Spirit has moved in much more significant ways.

When I think about the history of the church in this nation, I am continually reminded of one story in particular.

According to many historians, the Civil Rights movement did not begin with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nor did it begin with the spectacle of sit-ins and strikes.  It began in potlucks and women’s prayer circles and Bible studies and worship services longer than you’d like to imagine.  It began in the church.  It began in the groans and sighs that had sounded first in slavery and then in the racial terrorism of the Jim Crow era and finally in the era of legalized discrimination, known as segregation.

Groans and sighs are stronger than any problem.  And they are stronger than any plan.  The Civil Rights movement shifted strategies more than once.  What powered the movement through each change were groans and sighs.  Even when major legislative victories were won, Martin Luther King could be heard groaning and sighing, for as he put it, “Laws only declare rights; they do not deliver them.”[1]  Even today, we can still hear groans and sighs.  They are, I believe, the voice of the Spirit, pulling us toward communion.

From This Call, Plans Will Rise and Plans Will Fall

What about here at Gayton Road?  Have we heard the groans and sighs of the Spirit? 

Nearly a couple of years ago, a visioning team of folks from our church began meeting.  I didn’t hear many audible sighs or groans.  But as individuals shared their memories and their hopes, their joys and their frustrations, there did emerge a common sense of call.  You can see it in the image here, designed by our youth.  We feel called to share the life of faith around tables, in small groups, and with the needful.  Perhaps those who were here this past Wednesday night heard an echo of this call.  Gathered around the table, a small group of us learned about the needs of the homeless.  And I think we felt a pull, a tug, a call.

I believe that this call our visioning team heard, and the echo we heard this past Wednesday, comes from the Spirit.  And the like the groans and sighs of the Spirit, which are an experience where we can’t see or say exactly where we’re going, this call is beyond our best calculations and plans.  Which is to say, from this call plans will rise and plans will fall.  What keeps pulling us forward is the Spirit and its call.

Today at our board meeting—to which everyone is invited—there will be shared proposed revisions to our constitution and church structure.  Which is to say, there will be shared a new plan.  I’m excited about the new plan because I believe it lines up well with our sense of call.  But even more than that, I’m excited about the Spirit in which it was drawn up and in which it will be shared, the Spirit that lies beyond this plan and every plan and will keep pulling us forward when our plans inevitably fail.  I’m more excited about the Spirit of sighs and groans that pull us steadfastly toward what matters most.  The Spirit is sometimes a struggle.  But as Paul reminds us, this is a struggle not of death throes but of birth pangs and new life.  May it be so today.

Prayer

Spirit of God,

Be present

In our sighs and groans,

In what we can’t quite see or say;

Bless our struggle

And make it one

With the struggle of God;

Pull us irresistibly

Past each obsolete plan

Into your unspeakable, unimaginable

Kingdom. 

Amen.

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[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon, 2010), ebook loc. 2355.

Living the Life (1 John 5:9-13)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 13, 2018)

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Whom Would You Say Is Living the Life?

You’ve heard the expression, I’m sure: Living the life. 

Whom would you say is living the life? 

Maybe you’d say it’s someone who’s wealthy, who lives with every comfort and convenience imaginable, who owns several homes and can fly to any one of them on a whim.

Or maybe you’d say it’s someone who’s famous, someone who rubs shoulders with the powerful and the prominent, who oversees charities and big events, whose every photo looks perfect, someone who is always achieving his or her goals.

Or perhaps you’d say it’s someone who is wandering the world, backpacking across Europe, mountaineering in the Andes or the Himalayas, learning new languages and discovering new cuisines and making friends on every continent.

Living the life.  Some say it’s riches and comfort.  Others say it’s fame and achievement.  And still others say it’s experience and awareness.  Thousands of years ago, King Solomon left nothing to chance and tried all three.  If you look in the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, he explains that he amassed great wealth and sought out every pleasure; he achieved greatness and surpassed everyone in his prestige; and he experienced all there is to experience.[1]  He was trying to living the life.  You and me, we are not as fortunate as Solomon.  But my guess is that like him we too have tried—do try—to live the life in at least one of these three ways.

The Life of the Age to Come

At first glance, our scripture today has nothing to do with living the life.  All we read about in our English translation is “eternal life.”  The idea of “eternal life” is a cornerstone of contemporary Christianity.  And I think it is a tragic one.  Because by talking about “eternal life,” our faith often forfeits the present.  To us, “eternal life” means the life that begins when we die.  But it has nothing to say about the life we’re living right now.

In fact, however, those words that are translated “eternal life” have everything to do with the life we’re living right now.  In the Greek, the words are zoe aionios, which means more literally the “life of the age to come.”  It refers less to duration (eternity) or to a later time (in the by-and-by) and more to a quality of life.  Zoe aionios, the “life of the age to come,” is talking about living life in the age of God’s rule, which is to say, the age when love and forgiveness and trust and peace reign.  Jesus, you may remember, called this the kingdom of God, where the poor are blessed and the mourning are comforted and the stranger is welcomed and the hungry is fed and the lonely is embraced.  And he said it’s coming soon.  He even said it’s already among us. 

So eternal life is not later, it’s now.  It’s not there, it’s here.  Eternal life is about a quality of life that Jesus invites us into immediately.  It’s not about life after death but a kind of life now that, if you would believe it, is even stronger than death.

The Homeless and Persecuted Judean—Living the Life!

Our scripture today follows up its declaration of eternal life with this explanation: “This life is in the Son.  Whoever has the Son has the life” (1 John 5:12).  Your Bible may just say “Whoever has the Son has life,” but in the Greek it includes the word “the”: the life.  And that gets me to thinking: for us faithful, maybe “eternal life” is just another way to say “living the life.”  And living the life is just another way of saying living like Jesus Christ. 

Today’s writer is adamant that the testimony of God is in Jesus Christ.  In other words, if you want to know who God is, look at Jesus.  If you want to know what living the life looks like, look at Jesus.

But that’s foolishness, isn’t it?  For thousands of years—since the time of King Solomon—living the life has meant money and comfort, or fame and achievement, or tasting and experiencing all that life has to offer.  And let’s be honest, Jesus would not be a poster boy for any of these things.  A homeless Judean wandering the countryside, raising eyebrows, receiving threats until the day he is crucified?  Who would look a person like that and think, “Yes, now that’s the life!”?

Mothers, Teachers, and More—Living the Life!

Of course, the same question could be asked of folks in our world today who do not have it easy but whose dedication nevertheless testifies that they are living the life, folks like mothers and teachers and other nurturing figures in our world.  A mother who changes her baby’s diaper when he poops, wakes up in the middle of the night to be with him when he cries, feeds him food that he’ll spit back out over God and everybody—who would look at a person like that and think, “Yes, now that’s the life!”  A teacher who learns the vernacular of her students so she can relate to them, who channels wild juvenile energy everyday into constructive projects, who shows care and bears with and forgives even the most disobedient student in her classroom—who would look at a person like that and think, “Yes, now that’s the life!”

It would be even crazier, wouldn’t it, to call that kind of life “eternal life”?  And yet that kind of life bears resemblance to what our scripture calls the life.  It looks like the kind of life that Jesus lived, a life of feeding the hungry, tending the sick, showing love to the left out.

Many Christians use Jesus as a substitute.  “He did all that stuff, including the cross, so that I don’t have to.”  But our scripture today proclaims otherwise.  In Jesus, we have God’s testimony to what living the life really looks like.  Jesus shows us the life of the age to come, eternal life, the kingdom of God—call it whatever you want, but know that this is the life.  And we catch glimpses of the life and even experience it ourselves, as mothers, as teachers, as peacemakers, as bread-sharers.

Indeed, that seems to be what the writer is trying to communicate today.  Our scripture concludes with this exhortation: “I write these things to you…so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).  So that you may know that you already have eternal life, the life of the age to come, the kingdom of God.  It starts now, here.  You are already living the life—as mothers, as teachers, as open-housers, as table-sharers, as teddy-bear-carers, as whatever follows in the way of Christ.  The life is not in wealth and comfort, recognition and achievement, experience and self-indulgence.  As King Solomon would come to say, these things are “vanity” and “chasing after the wind.”  The life is in Jesus Christ, in living like he did—in living for others. 

And this is the life that, if you would believe it, is even stronger than death.

Prayer

Loving Christ,

Who lived the life

And lives it still—

We desire to join you

In the life of the age to come.

Open our eyes to see

How we are already there;

Not in power, pride, or possessions,

But in living for others.

Cheer us on and gladden our hearts,

That we might live the life

More deeply,

And share your joy.  Amen.

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[1] Biblical scholars concur that Ecclesiastes was likely not written by Solomon.  The common attribution results from Ecclesiastes 1:1, where the writer identifies himself as “the son of David.”

Conquering the World (1 John 5:1-6

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 6, 2018)

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An Outreached Hand

My brother Curt and I grew up playing soccer, but never on the same team.  We were too far apart in age.  But not anymore.  Ever since Curt returned home to Richmond a little over a year ago, we’ve been playing together in an adult league down at the Sports Center of Richmond. 

The soccer field is a curious place.  The moment that my brother and I step onto it, we are transformed. We lose our inhibitions—suddenly shouting, sliding into challenges, disputing the referee’s whistle.  Some of the teams that we’ve played might even have trouble believing that my brother and I are pastors!

Talking about this with some concern after one of our games, my brother and I acknowledged that maybe there might be some moments on the soccer pitch when we were not exactly following Christ.  We resolved then to do so, to play with more compassion for our opponents and the referee.  The results have been fascinating.  In one instance, after I had made a robust tackle, my opponent fell down cursing and angry.  I didn’t think that I had fouled him, but even so I gave him a sympathetic grimace and reached out my hand to help him up.  Immediately his curse became a word of goodwill, “Thanks, it’s nothing bad.”  In another instance, we rushed to get ice for an injured opponent, and the other team’s grievance dissolved in our shared concern.  The same kind of thing happened over and over again, so much so that I have drawn this general conclusion.  On the soccer field, an outreached hand cuts through resentment and anger like a warm knife through butter.

Of Victory and Conquest

In today’s scripture, there is some mighty talk.  The writer boasts of victory, and he repeatedly makes claims about conquering the world.  “Whatever is born of God,” he asserts, “conquers the world.  And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith” (1 John 5:4). 

In a world like ours, these words “victory” and “conquer” paint pretty clearly the picture of a conquest.  It’s easy to hear these words and to imagine Christianity as a competitive force overtaking one territory after another, a host of Christian soldiers marching ever onward, planting a cross in each conquered land like a victor’s flag.  A thousand years ago, this vision of conquest led to the crusades.  Just a few hundred years ago, it justified the invasion and subjugation of the native peoples of the land we now call home.  More recently, it has fed the imagination of some folks who envision a great battle between Christianity in the West and Islam in the East. 

But is this the kind of victory our scripture is thinking about?  Is this what our writer has in mind when he talks about conquering the world?  And what is this “world” that needs conquering anyway?  Is the problem other people who are evil or wrong or difficult, or is the problem something else?  Paul has something to say about this, I think, when he claims in Eph 6:12 that our struggle is not against other people—not against “flesh and flood”—but against the unseen powers and principalities that destroy life.  Perhaps these are like the powers and principalities I have seen on the soccer field: things like the need to win or achieve or control, things like resentment and vengefulness.  Aren’t these the same powers and principalities that rule much of our lives, much of our world?

Trusting “the One Who Came by Water and Blood”

How, then, can a world like ours be conquered?  Where does victory come from?

According to the writer of our scripture, victory comes from believing—and I think a more literal and better translation here is “trusting”—“the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ” (1 John 5:5-6).  In the gospel of John, water and blood are what flow out from Jesus’ pierced side at his crucifixion.  So I cannot help but think that by talking about water and blood together the writer of this letter is trying to make a point.  The cross is where victory is won.  It may look there like Christ is conquered, but in fact he is conquering the world.  Because there on the cross in his broken body, we see the outreached hand of God cutting through the compulsion to win and control and achieve, dissolving the vengefulness of our lives, the hostility of our world.  The victory that will conquer the world is held high on the cross.  That victory is love, which is what took Jesus to the cross.  That victory is forgiveness, which Jesus proclaimed on the cross with his dying breaths.  And that victory is peace, which he declared to people three days later with painful memories still etched into his hands and feet.

While most of the letter of 1 John talks about love, our passage today focuses on belief—or as I suggested earlier, the more literal and appropriate translation would be “trust.”  Underneath today’s scripture is a basic question: what do you trust?  Our world overwhelmingly trusts the force of arms, at best the ballot, at worst the bullet, whatever it takes to win.[1]  Our world trusts the force of arms because it fights against other people and sees victory as getting your way.  But “the one who came by water and blood” reminds us that we’re not fighting against flesh and blood.  We’re fighting against the compulsive need to win and control and achieve.  We’re fighting against resentment and vengefulness.  And this is a victory that will only come by the way of the cross: the way of love, forgiveness, and peace.

What is the Real Victory?

This last Tuesday night, my soccer team had one game left and an opportunity to win the league.  But we lost.  It was a bitter disappointment.  This time around, however, there was very little bitterness toward the other team or the referee.  Players from both teams left the field together, talking to one another, remembering various highlights from the game. 

As I left the field, I pondered.  What is the real victory?  Is it scoring goals and winning games?  Is it getting our way with the referee’s whistle and beating the other team?  Or is it extending the hand of fellowship and peace?  Is it binding the hurts of others?  One victory makes me feel good.  The other conquers the world. 

I know a soccer game is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.  But as Jesus once said, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10).  It can be in the trivial moments that our faith is forged.  So what about you?  What is your “soccer field”?  Is there a place where you might be confusing one victory with another, trusting in the force of arms rather than in “the one who came by water and blood”?  Is there a place where you might be mistaking the triumph of your own will and way with the victory that conquers the world?  Perhaps it is at the ballot box.  Perhaps it is on the road.  Perhaps it is at the workplace.  Perhaps it is with the neighbors who speak or dress differently.  Perhaps it is in our national conversations about race and gender and guns.

It is not other people that we fight against—“flesh and blood”—but a world of unseen powers and principalities, like the overwhelming urge to control and to win, like resentment and vengefulness.  It was into such a world that Christ Jesus came.  And it is on the cross, where we see God’s hand reaching out to us, cutting through the hostility of our world and dissolving the compulsive need for control—it is on the cross that we see the victory that conquers the world.

Prayer

Crucified Christ,

Sometimes we trust

In the empty victories

Of our will and our way;

Reach out your hand anew to us

From your cross,

Cutting through our ways

Of resentment and willfulness

And the need to win,

And inspire our trust

In your victory

That conquers the world. 

Amen.

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[1] The language here is inspired by Dorothy Day, “The Use of Force,” in The Catholic Worker, November 1936, 4.  There, Day explains that the crucifixion opened the eyes of Jesus’ followers to see that “not by force of arms, by the bullet or the ballot, would they conquer.  They knew and were ready to suffer defeat—to show that great love which enabled them to lay down their lives for their friends.”