What to Do When the Empire Strikes Back

In developing my lesson for our small group on the last two beatitudes (Blessed are the peacemakers… & Blessed are those who are persecuted…) I started playing the word association game with empire and kingdom to lead toward a discussion of how to exist as peacemakers who are active in a world of persecuting empires.

EMPIRE…………………………………………………………………..KINGDOM

War……………………………………………………………………………..Peace
Brute force……………………………………………………..Purposeful Service
Live by the sword………………………………..Beat swords into plowshares
Power through greatness………………….Power through the least of these
Appeasement………………………………………………………..Reconciliation
Greed……………………………………………………………………………Tithing
Might makes right……………………………………………….Love makes right
Peacekeepers………………………………………………………..Peacemakers

The role of the kingdom as peacemakers is to be diplomats of Christ’s coming kingdom of peace, love, and truth to the citizens of the world who all too often assume and accept the world’s distorted view of peace.  The Empire solves problems in ways that are contrary and evil mutations of the Christian’s calling to be a real peacemaker.  Case in point, the United States Armed Forces concept of "peacemaker" is to not make peace but instead  keep peace through appeasement or war, hence the military naming a nuclear missile program the Peacemaker/Peacekeeper program.  This name was an important statement of the way the world lives and dies by the sword—it will use the sword to keep the peace, but if necessary they will make peace by launching a nuclear arsenal capable of blowing up the world hundreds of times over.

Persecution comes to the point where we have to decide what happens when the empire, the powers and principalities of this world, strikes back at us.  This all hinges on turning the other cheek, which is not a submissive act but a subversive act, an act that does not fight or flee but instead perpetually resists.

Ron Sider’s Christian Peacemaker Teams have called this the Third Way of Christ, to not fight or flee as the world does but to stand with Christ and

• Seize the moral initiative

• Find a creative alternative to violence

• Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person

• Meet force with ridicule or humor

• Break the cycle of humiliation

• Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position

• Expose the injustice of the system

• Take control of the power dynamic

• Shame the oppressor into repentance

• Stand your ground

• Make the Powers make decisions for which they are not prepared

• Recognize your own power

• Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate

• Force the oppressor to see you in a new light

• Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective

• Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws

• Die to fear of the old order and its rules
(adapted from CPT and Walter Wink)

This takes a radical reorientation to how the Christian approaches persecution, particularly when the empire seems so out there and we aren’t really persecuted by the powers and principalities of this world agressively but indirectly.