The gun shall set you free?

“I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt. 5: 44) “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” (Matt. 26: 52)

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (Rom .12: 18)

“How many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned?

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind.”  (Bob Dylan)

Remembrance Day is a special day. Pondering lives lost in causes that sought to subdue oppression, tyranny and injustice is sobering. In our consumerist context in which the word “sacrifice” no longer has much meaning, hearing about those who gave the most anyone can give – one’s life – is profound. Yes indeed, Remembrance Day is a special day.

But Remembrance Day is also an ambiguous day. Its origins do not lie in the Christian story but in our nation’s and our civilization’s stories, and yet at Redeemer we have always stopped for a time of worship on Remembrance Day. Because it falls on Wednesday this year, this week’s entire chapel will be a Remembrance Day chapel, but as we planned the liturgy, our team felt the tension between nation and the kingdom of God. (You’ll have discern at chapel if we honoured that tension appropriately.)

Look at the two teachings of Jesus quoted above. Some Christian traditions (Mennonite and Quaker especially) have interpreted these to mean that we are called to be pacifists; in this view, fighting in war is never justified. Many other Christians subscribe to some version of “just war theory,” taking their cue from Paul’s words in Romans – “IF it is possible…live at peace” – and conclude that at those times when it is not possible to live at peace, we must go to war.

I’m thankful that we Christians struggle with the place of war in following Jesus. Yes, we know that we are against injustice, oppression, cruelty, and the abuse of human life in any form. But we do not agree on what form that “being against” such things must look like.

Yes, we agree that all human beings should be free – but who defines what human freedom should look like? Is it a Western freedom to live in any way that we want as long as we don’t harm anyone else, or is it a Biblical “the truth shall set you free” kind of freedom in which Christ frees us to become the new creation that we are through his blood? On the one hand, the freedom we have received from the gun is Western freedom, not Jesus freedom; on the other hand, Western freedom does give us room to live out our Jesus-freedom in many ways.

For one hour in chapel this week we’ll do three things: (1) give thanks for millions who lost their lives in the past and continue to do so today, (2) long for that day when war shall be no more, and (3) wrestle together in the Holy Spirit to discern wise and godly ways of being the light and salt of Jesus in a very broken and violent world.