Recrafted To Cultivate Life

For over 10 years now, Shane Claiborne and a host of other folks in Philadelphia at an organization called RAWTools have been taking donated guns from the community and turning them into garden tools. It is an effort at embodied peacemaking and trying to get guns out of the community. Claiborne, who is a widely known figure in progressive Christian circles, says that, “even metal that has been crafted to kill can be recrafted to cultivate life.” He and others started this program because they saw our political leaders as being unable to pass meaningful gun legislation and said to themselves, “there must be something we can do.”

Claiborne and his co-conspirators were also intimately familiar with the words from today’s reading from Isaiah 2 where the vision of a future world is offered, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again.” 

Just sit with those words for a minute. What do you feel as you read them?

Can we even imagine a world without war, preparing for war or funding for war? And if we can, what does it look like? How do we embody it?

Like so many things, it often starts small. Like Claiborne, we, too, might look around our lives and communities and seek to develop a step that moves us in that direction. We must keep planting the seeds of nonviolence. We must keep seeking and exploring other ways to address conflict.

We see one of those seeds in today’s gospel passage from Matthew 8. A Roman centurion has approached Jesus saying that he has a servant who is sick and in need of healing.

A Roman centurion. Let’s not forget that this is a high-ranking member of the army that is occupying Jesus’ land. This is a person who gives orders to his soldiers to do harm to Jesus’ kin-folk. This is a person who provides the muscle to enforce unjust decrees or roughs up poor people who don’t pay their taxes.

And what does Jesus do? He offers to go to the guy’s house!

In our daily readings, we encountered this same passage a few months back but from the gospel of Luke. In it I wondered, “Why didn’t Jesus confront the centurion about his being part of an oppressive system and call out the harm that he was doing? Why didn’t Jesus challenge him about the inhumanity of having slaves/servants?” (Please see Note #2 below for more context on this!)

All I know from the gospel passage is that Jesus makes a move towards the centurion’s humanity. By responding to his need, he acknowledges him as a person first. And, in my view, what Jesus did was a concrete act of peacemaking in a situation where he could exercise some influence.

I was talking to a friend recently who is Black and lives in a more rural area. He knows that he stands out racially and often says he feels the stares from some of the white residents who live in the housing complex where he stays. Lately he’s had some encounters with a younger white resident/neighbor that left him feeling that this young man holds some racist beliefs and my friend says that he “wanted to give that white boy an earful…” 

My friend noticed, however, that outside of the young white man’s apartment was a doormat related to an NFL team. So he decided to ask about it the next time he saw him. As they were each in the parking lot, my friend said, “Hey, are you an Eagles fan?” The young man lit up a bit and said, “I am.” My friend then engaged him about a recent game where the Eagles pulled off a surprise win, and the young man REALLY got into the conversation. Since this conversation, my friend said that the young man says,“Hi,” more often now and acts a bit more positive.

I relate this story because it reminds me of Jesus’ move in the gospel to “turn towards” the humanity of the person versus turning away. Clearly this may not be possible or desired in EVERY situation, but when we are able to do it new possibilities for transforming relationships can emerge.

Turning towards the humanity of another – especially when we have been harmed or feel harmed/disrespected – requires a lot of inner work. As I have often heard said, “Peacemaking is not for the faint of heart.”

What I also love about the gospel reading is that after Jesus agrees to go to the centurion’s house, the centurion actually calls Jesus off. In my reading of the situation, the centurion becomes conscious of what Jesus is willing to do for him, and this moves the centurion towards a humility that he may not have had before the encounter. My guess is that he is surprised by Jesus’ generosity and concern and that this deeply impacted him (not just on this day but moving forward in his life).

As you may be aware, we are in the season of Advent which means, “the coming.” It is the seaon when we collectively recognize that we live in a fallen world and eagerly await the time when God returns to set things right in the world.

This waiting, however, is not meant to be passive. While we wait for the fullness of God to arrive, we do what we can wherever we can to live into God’s kin-dom in the here and now.

And in this season of Advent, we are invited by the prophetic tradition to dream of a world without war and violence. Specifically, we are invited to embody this dream in our concrete, everyday encounters and in the spaces where we have influence and control. May we continue to commit ourselves to the challenging inner and outer work of peacemaking and nonviolence in this world.

Note #1: If you’re interested, Shane Claiborne and others are part of a group called Red-Letter Christians. They have a special 24 day Advent reflection series called “Reflections for Bethlehem” which centers the voices of Palestinian Christians and their allies. If you’d like to sign up to receive the reflections, go to https://redletterchristians.org/newsletter-sign-up/ and sign up for their newsletter.

Note #2: Many thanks to Peter Veitch, who passed along a reference to interpretations of the gospel reading which indicate that this passage may, in fact, be about Jesus’ healing of the Roman centurion’s male lover/partner. Apparently the Greek word used in the passage can have multiple meanings – including a junior partner in a sexual relationship between two men (and not just a “slave or servant”). This might make more sense as to why the centurion approaches Jesus! I also learned from Peter that there is a tradition in the church that this centurion is the one who shows up at the foot of the cross and utters the famous words that this was “the son of God.” If you’re on Facebook and following Peter, he’ll be doing a reflection on all of this today or in the very near future!