Repairing The Breach

So, what follows? Well—we have a way out of the broken logic of power relationships held up by violence and punishment. A logic that causes continual breaches in our relationships with each other and our understanding of our relationship with God. Philippians tells us Christ ‘did not consider equality with God something to be grasped’. He wasn’t grasping for power or exercising his power. Humans love to exercise power over other people. Political power. Colonial power. Gendered power. In the last year we have heard heartbreaking stories of the abuse of power in our own communities, from parliament house, to aboriginal deaths in custody, to the weekly death toll of women killed by their intimate partners—perpetrators grasping for power, exercising power, perpetuating power. We are given a revelation about God’s refusal of that kind of violent power. ‘He who vindicates me is near—who will accuse me? The Lord God helped me—who will declare me guilty?’ In other words, God has forgiven us, and He isn’t interested in accusing us because that kind of accusation is the first half of an equation that ends in the circle stoning the woman caught in adultery. And we know how Jesus responded to that woman, in just the same way that he responded every time he could have condoned violence but instead showed unconditional love and mercy, right up to the moment the nails were being driven into his body. He showed us, very clearly—horrifically, even—how he feels about our human violence. ‘Lay it all on me,’ he said, ‘Do your worst. Rather than exercising my right to turn the tables and punish you, I will take it all, I will receive it all, one direction—you to me. No violence back from me to you. And I will take all this as a physical beating of a human body, and then raise that body back to life, and let you see my resurrected body which you could not destroy, to show you that I am God; I am Love; this Love has overcome all the hate and evil and brokenness that humanity could ever perpetuate.’ That is what He triumphed over. Our violence. Our hatred. All triumphed over by his Love. Embrace 33 - Carol Aust 99