”and God does not punish the farmer but only marks him forever as the future of a lost past. There is no counterviolence from God-not even the appropriate divine vengeance when, as God says, “your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”’
(John Dominic Crossan, God & Empire: Jesus against Rome then and now)
‘He looked this way and that, seeing no one, [Moses] stepped in and killed the Egyptian’
(Exodus 2.12)
‘He saw no one, and was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm brought him victory and his righteousness upheld him.’ (Isaiah 59.16)
These passages all have a common thread and for years the have been working me over, finding there way into a number of teachings and provoking the question, “What does it look like to step in?” The Egyptian can represent the imperial monster that in the course of history shows itself through military, economic and ideological power and Moses, the servant of God, is the someone who is to step in and rescue-offering a different way that makes room for God’s deliverance. This action that is at the core of the message of Jesus invites us to participate. This participation is not simply an over turning of the kingdoms of this world through a message of true peace compared to the pax romana of any time, but an enactment and participation in and of God’s intended world governed by his ideology, economics and power.
So what does it look like to step in? How does Jesus step in to the world in chaos? He steps in as the word the incarnation of something true and as a relational God willing to suffer social and physical death while allowing the deliverance of God to overturn the system. The action starts with stepping up to the cross of isolation and precieved abandonment only to find life on the other side, life after death here and now and forever.
