Jesus strikes back: a sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter

The comeback. Easter is the ultimate comeback story. However, unlike many movies, the Easter story isn’t simply a tale of injustice followed by revenge. That’s too simple – and doesn’t lead to sustainable peace and justice. This simplistic storyline – which we observe daily in the news – simply perpetuates an endless cycle of violence (think of Gaza, Ukraine, Kashmir, etc.). So, how to “comeback” and establish a situation where justice will flourish? Well, that’s the story that the New Testament is telling, though – I suggest – we aren’t used to reading it in quite that way. We tend to focus on one of two poles of this complex story – either we fixate on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew’s Gospel), when he said to love our enemies; or, we latch on to the apocalyptic scenes in the book of Revelation, where we are presented with, among many other images, Jesus the cosmic warrior who destroys his enemies with “the swor...