Overcome fear with trust

After a month of watching the horrors of the war in Ukraine on cable news, I noticed recent stories are more than the recounts of deaths and devastation.  The news commentators are now describing the various ways people are responding to the violence.  There are interviews with refugees trying to find a meal and a bed, ambulance drivers who flew in from other countries to transport people and medical supplies, Ukrainians who have never picked up a gun joining the military, nurses and doctors serving in bomb shelters, and international aid agencies responding to the needs of millions.

This has led me to ask: What can we as Christians do about violence?  We’ve seen incidences of violence in Scripture from Genesis on.  In a reading from Jeremiah [Jeremiah 11:18-20], we hear the prophet describe the plot to kill him and “cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more.” And in John’s Gospel, we hear the people’s ambivalence about Jesus; some believe in Him, and some want to arrest Him [John 7:40-53].

The Gospel’s a little unusual in that Jesus doesn’t appear in it directly; instead, John concentrates on the reaction of those whom Jesus speaks to and calls.  What’s interesting to me is the impression He makes on each set of players, and their responses.

It’s the guards who are key here: “No man has ever spoken like that before.”  The guards have met Jesus personally and have actually listened to what He was saying to them rather than relying on their orders or their preconceptions, and they have come to at least the beginning of belief.  They’ve listened; they’ve grown.

In these last weeks of Lent, as we walk with Jesus to Calvary, our meditation on His Passion becomes more intense.  And we can learn a lot from the way different people in the Passion narrative respond to violence.  Jesus is our way to peace; and He tells us we must be converted—we must first rid ourselves of the violence in our own hearts.  In a world where the attitude is often “might is right,” Jesus calls us to let go of our sense of entitlement, our resentments, and our desire for revenge.  When many relationships are often no more than contractual, we’re called to surrender to loving and being loved unconditionally.  When we’re overcome with fear, we’re called to trust.

That’s how we’ll come to the belief of the guards and even (hopefully) the enthusiasm of the disciples.