Killing Malchus

Dear Eugene,

Words help us to make sense of things and also a nonsense of things.  Rearrange a letter and words become sword.

To say I regret things I have done is to first grieve over words I have spoken, to myself before to anyone else.  Lies I told Alex.  Half truths.  Less than half.

There are so many angles to look at one thing, we say, so what's the point of being fair?  You get nothing done.  People get confused.  Doubt paralyzes ambition.  People need the shallow water to secure a safe footing.  You need to make a living to keep living.  Everyone ultimately speaks for oneself; so why not be frank about my prejudices and use them to my advantage?  Didn't Jesus ask his disciples to sell their cloak to buy a sword?

I am looking at two sermon collections from Rowan Williams: "A Ray of Darkness" and "Open to Judgement."  What crazy titles to give to your own sermonizing.  What preacher would admit he is speaking from a dark place and his words really rather questionable?  This guy must be telling the truth.

And there is great freedom in his truth telling: every turn of phrase peels off the callus of certainty, an invitation to doubt our undoubtedness, for no other purpose but to let Jesus the Word speak.  It is not about Williams the speaker being perversely modest or needlessly obscure or perpetually evasive, but that the eternal First Speaker has not finished speaking and that's how life goes on.  And to not listen and respond to the ever speaking, continually creative Word is to make no sense of life.

"Revelation is essentially to do with what is generative in our experience -- events or transactions in our language that break existing frames of reference and initiate new possibilities of life," Williams writes.

Generative.

How often do we speak this way?  We use language to fortify existing frame of reference favorable to our cause and kill off even the slightest inconvenience.  We invite the same homicidal language of others to find its home in us.  Once the currency of death circulates like blood flow we don't even feel it.  Violence simply...happens.

Peter chopped an ear off.  I wonder if he was aiming for something else, some place else, some purpose else.  He carried a sword, why?  A blue-collar man, fisherman by trade, reasonable.  But he hasn't been fishing for a good number of days by then.  Old habits die hard.  Blessed are the peacemakers, he heard, But the sword is only for self defense, just in case, he said.  He's been speaking the same violent words to himself all these years, awareness of them has long been dead, killed off.  So when fear strikes the killing words would swoosh out of nowhere fast and furious and barely uttered before the sword drops and with it the ear and life water.

Peter wasn't paying good attention to the Word and now he kills off someone else's hearing too.  Jesus touched the man's ear and healed him.  John gave the victim a name too.  Humanity restored.  "Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword."

Then Jesus said to the chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders, who had come for him, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs?  Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour—when darkness reigns."

Then all the disciples deserted him and fled, murmuring in their heart, This makes no sense...

The Light comes.  Darkness flees.  We have a choice.  We can choose to create life, new possibilities with Jesus, or we could flee into dead ends and join in the killing.

If we speak, we speak from a dark place, and are open to judgement.

Yours, Alex