God chooses the weak
Zep 2:3; 3:12-13; Ps 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10; 1 Cor 1:26-31; Mt 5:1-12a
One of my father’s brothers, Uncle Bob, was a quiet, gentle man who always showed great kindness to me and my siblings. He died when I was young, and it was only years after his death that I learned he had been a tank commander in General Patton’s Third Army as it rolled through France and Germany after D-Day, reclaiming territory from Hitler’s Third Reich.
He almost never discussed it, but he had been involved in horrific battles and he was haunted by the knowledge that he had killed scores of people. He neither doubted that the fighting was necessary nor that he was engaged in a true struggle against evil. But, like many of his generation who were involved in the war, he didn’t brag about it or try to glorify the violence.
I wonder what he would have thought of a video recently released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that was apparently inspired by this Sunday’s readings. It begins with a montage reminiscent of the opening of the film “Apocalypse Now,” replete with incoming helicopters and various scenes of special forces members in nighttime combat operations overseas.
Next, the footage shifts to United States government agents, wearing similar headgear as the soldiers and shouldering firearms, but sporting the more recognizable face masks and uniform markings that we have grown accustomed to. They, too, are engaged in nighttime operations, but on American streets.
Like the special forces, they break down doors and snake through dark passageways, guns drawn. The video closes with the Secretary of Homeland Security smiling and offering fist bumps to the agents.
Superimposed over the video are Jesus’ words, taken from today’s Gospel: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.”
What is depicted looks more like a “Call of Duty” video game than the painful reality of violent conflict. To suggest that such a stylized glorification of armed combat or law enforcement operations represents an illustration of the peacemaking efforts that Jesus extols in the Sermon on the Mount is a recasting of Scripture worthy of the Orwellian social engineering from the novel “1984”: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
Catholic social teaching does not deny that force is sometimes necessary to constrain the immoral use of force by others, or that just laws ought to be enforced. But the peacemaking that Jesus calls for does not glorify violence, nor does it gloat over the humiliation of one’s enemies, nor does it draw pleasure from the exercise of vengeance.
These are all sentiments that we have seen recently expressed, at one time or another, from all sides of the political spectrum on our neighborhood streets. We are all capable of sliding into such dark behavior, but it is never right and we ought never claim that the words of Jesus endorse or celebrate it.
The power of the Sermon on the Mount lies precisely in the fact that it is so challenging to each and every one of us. Truly acting out of poverty of spirit, or meekness, or mercy, or a thirst for righteousness, or a desire to make peace — all of these exhortations from Jesus actually look like something in the way we behave.
What it should not look like is making an arrest by slamming bodies to the pavement, putting people in choke holds, or employing detention cells that are little better than animal cages, when much less extreme and inhuman measures would be adequate to do the job. Nor does it look like throwing rocks, destroying property or screaming racial slurs while engaging in legitimate acts of non-violent protest or civil disobedience.
Jesus is an equal opportunity offender: to truly live the sermon is always going to require extraordinary humility and honest reflection, both of oneself and of the other. There will always be a call to a radical conversion of heart.
Paul had a profound grasp of this truth, as we hear today in his letter to the Corinthians: “God chooses the weak of the world to shame the strong.” Glorifying behavior that warps the letter and spirit of the Sermon on the Mount should be a source of deep shame, not gleeful pleasure.