Reading : 1 Samuel 15 : 1-11

A few remarks...

Well, I don't know how it was for you to acclaim the word of the Lord today? “This is the word of the Lord – Thanks be to God”. Choosing this text was a little provocative from me, but there is a good reason why.

We can get used to the Bible and we know it's about hard times for Hebrews and people living in their area (with wars, genocides). The problem is when we proclaim that « This is the word of the Lord ». We are Christians, we know Jesus and we love him, we believe his message of freedom and peace for every nation. How could this God be his father? Of course, we can say “Yes that's really what God means, people who don't believe should die” ! but If we don't, how can we explain these texts?

This violence is not just a problem for us, Christians and citizens of the 21th century. The Church's fathers were confronted with this problem many times in fact and different solutions were given. It also gave birth to different heresies. For example, Marcion who lived in the 2nd century just decided to stop reading Old Testament, stop proclaiming this God was Jesus's father.

But at the same time the Church insisted to consider Hebrew scriptures and it seemed really important for them to keep these texts in the Scriptures, they could have decided to get rid of them but decided to keep them. So there were different ways to explain : if today we mainly insist on “context”, they used to talk at that time of “allegory”, a symbolic way to read the texts. For example, Fathers were very chocked by the fact that patriarchs had different wives, so they used to say these different women incarnated different virtues ! Well, it's a beautiful way to read the text and we can learn about their commentaries but obviously that wasn't in the mind of the author, and it isn't in the mind of the reader when he first reads Abraham's or Jacob's stories!

This is the reason why I won't try today to do that kind of explanation : context, symbolism. We know it isn't what the text is really about. That's why I think we should start on “how do we react to these texts”. The word “catechize” comes from a Greek term meaning “resound”. How does this text resound in me ? Personally, the text we have just read revolts me, it fills me with anger. Doesn't it revolt you? Well, good news! We are alive, weren't sleeping : We heard it! So we can imagine that this text has something to tell us!

Problems and Plan

Obviously, the Bible shows us a story full of violence, but as Xavier told me, he who loves action movies : “if there is no violence, there is no story - because nothing happens !”. The Bible is the story of people through a long crisis: slavery, Exodus, conquest, exile and restoration but moreover, it is mostly the overview of people on their story, it is a reflection about what happened to them, how and why, in link with their relationship to God : Are they saved? Are they punished? Are they forgiven? How should they act to please this mysterious God they don't dare to name?

The way Hebrews read their story is an example for us and it is the first thing we can learn from the Bible: do we try to understand our life in link with our relationship to God, do we try to understand what God wants to tell us through our life and its events or are we looking for a ready-made explanation on who is God? Do we try to find in the Scriptures only a reassuring lesson about who is God? Perhaps, we should understand things this way : “This is the word of the Lord”: Listen, God is trying to speak to you through this. “Thanks be to God” : Thanks God for speaking to us. It is not an “Amen, everything's OK”. We have to welcome the word of the Lord, even if difficult. We have to listen, no matter how we react. In the Bible, characters reflect upon God's word. Samuel was troubled, so was Moses, so was Mary. We are troubled and we don't have to feel guilty about it. We have also to welcome ourselves and our own reactions in front of the Scriptures. Something happens in the story, something happens inside us, the story teaches something and today we see that it teaches something about violence: violence in our relation to God and to our neighbour. We can't get rid of violence, we have to go through and that's exactly what the Bible does. So I think we can consider the problem following this plan, as the “story of violence” in the Bible:

• Birth of violence
• Way through violence
• End of violence

We are now going to concentrate on the birth of violence with the story of Cain and Abel.

Reading : Genesis 4 : 1 – 12

1 – Birth of violence

This text shows us that human beings act with violence but we don't like to be told we are violent. That's a first reason it is hard for us to cope with some texts in the Bible : “I would never act that way !” so we say because we know it's evil. In fact, we deny our violence, because it shows our sin : “Am I my brother's keeper ?” It is something we can still observe today : As a society, our comfort and wealth hide a lot of injustices and violence but “Are we the poor people's keepers?”, As a human being, our unconscious works with denials : we forget the evil we did, we find excuses. We justify our violence saying it's nothing, saying it is present in nature “C'est la loi de la jungle”, it is in our DNA, in animals. When we act violently, we make our neighbour responsible for our violence. It seems that all the little children have read the book of Genesis because they react as Adam did : she started first! We deny our responsibility.

The problem is that violence lays and grows where it is denied. We can see it very clearly today in cases of psychological harassment : apparently everything's ok, nobody notices anything but violence lays behind. “Sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you...”. Often, we aren't careful enough because violence is present in very little things. Lack of patience, then anger, then resentment, then hate, then...a murder? If we recognize violence at its birth we can talk about it, understand it and then master it. If we keep everything inside, its horror will suddenly bursts out and appears as something crazy, coming from nowhere and uncontrollable. “I would have never thought I could have done that”...We have to realize that people who commit violent acts aren't basically different from you and I. If we say they are, there is no chance we could one day “master the violence”, it will remain “something crazy”, end of the story.

Violence isn't the problem of murderers, it is the problem of mankind. The very beginning of the Bible talks about the birth of mankind, and with the birth of mankind we attend the birth of violence. In this text, this text reminds us of the origins of Cain and Abel, they are the first generation after disobedience to God. What we learnt from Adam and Eve's story is that they were made powerful by God : human beings had first authority on Creation and secondly they had freedom to choose. We have to remember that rebellion is rooted in a gift : power and freedom. Violence is using our own power and freedom against God and our brothers. And that's why it's a sin. The root of violence is rebellion against God. Cain is first angry against God but as his anger can't hurt God, he attacks his brother.

Our rebellion changes our way of looking at the world, at our neighbour, at God. Adam and Eve realize they are naked, they hide from each other and start to fear God. Our own guilt makes us think God is going to punish us, that's why Cain fears God and lies to him. But we can discover that most of the time, our way of seeing God is a projection of our state of mind. That's what we are going to see : how God really reacts to our violence and accusations.

2 – The way through violence

Reading : Genesis 4 : 10-16

Did it ever happen to you, especially when you were a child, that you felt so guilty about something that you kept on interpreting everything around you as a proof that everybody knew what you had done? Human being has this capacity to see in the world a projection of his own state of mind. So we don't have to be surprised that such a feeling of guilt is often reported on God : God loves sacrifices, he makes preferences, he wants the death of the disobedient one! This feeling increases because God never seems to justify himself : for example, there is no explanation about his rejection of Cain's sacrifice. But in the Bible we can also observe that God doesn't leave us with our violence. What is wonderful to me in this text is that God wants to defend the victim and at the same time he protects the evildoer:

• Of course, God takes the side of the weak. That's why we can speak of his”revenge” and we can understand “justice” as Hebrews did. God is on the side of his people, so if he defends them, he has to condemn the others! That's the problem with “Israel enemies” (and the Amalekites we talked about came to represent the archetypal enemy).
• But in Old Testament, God protects violent people as he did with Cain: God gives bounds to our violence by his law. We can compare his law to “gates”, it isn't an aim in itself but it protects us from our own violence. It is the famous “An eye for an eye” that we usually don't understand, because we think it is said from the victim's point of view but it is said to the evildoer : “if you take the eye of one of your brother, you have to pay for the price of this eye”. On the other way round, we want severe punishment for violent people : Isn't it violence also? Then what can we do to escape this vicious circle?

You see, God leads us outside the vicious circle we created with violence : “you started first” “you will be violently punished” . God breaks this way of seeing problems : he doesn't justify himself to accuse us in return (as we do with our neighbour) and he refuses the systematic use of violence against evildoers.

In his commands, God doesn't tell us what to do, but what we shouldn't do. He opens a road for us. As he did with Cain, he wants to accompany us, in spite of our violence. But do we have the humility Cain showed? Cain revolts himself but then accepts his sin and its consequences to be able to accept forgiveness and guidance. Most of the time, it is difficult for us to stop a conflict or a difficult situation because we never admit our part of responsibilities, then we can't walk, we are stuck on the road. Are we convinced that God loves us in spite of our violence and welcome us as we are? Over obedience to his law, this is this kind of sacrifice that God is expecting from us : obedience, and that's what Jesus showed us, showing in the same time the heart of the law.

3 – The end of violence

Reading : Hebrews 10 : 1 – 7

If violence is rooted in rebellion, the remedy to rebellion is obedience and Jesus showed the perfect obedience. But what is obedience ? This word may hurt us today. We understand it as obedience we are expecting from a little child. But Jesus teaches us true obedience, which isn't an obedience to a rule, but to the heart of the Law. What we can understand reading 1 Samuel 15, the text we first heard, is that the way Hebrews wanted to please God in being pure, apart from the other nations, apart from sinners. Which explained that they thought they had to destroy everything and everyone impure. In a way, they tried then to make their salvation by themselves. It is the same with sacrifices and obedience to rules, as the Pharisees did in order to be pure: We have to remember that God's laws aren't an aim in themselves, they are bounds to our violence. They can't make us pure and free from sin. Jesus told us what was the heart of the law : love for God and for your neighbour. Jesus wasn't afraid of sinners, he wasn't afraid of being impure and he didn't try to reach holiness with social or religious ways, like rules or sacrifices, because he knew that wasn't the kind of sacrifice God was expecting from men. As the Epistle reminds us, God gave us a body, flesh and life for sacrifice, and that's what he's expecting from us. Following the example of Christ, we have to make the offer of ourselves, to renounce violence, rebellion and open our heart so that he may fill us with holiness. This shows us that Jesus's message isn't “soft” as we often believe it is: it reveals human violence and human sin, it expects conversion from men, it goes against our first nature. New Testament isn't a nice book we could oppose to the violent Old Testament. Jesus's words are often quite provocative. If Jesus's message isn't disturbing for us, it means that our relationship to God isn't very alive !

The cross figures this perfect sacrifice, but once again it is often difficult for us to understand: God didn't want Jesus to suffer and to die to satisfy his anger and to obtain a kind a reparation, that's a terrible thing to believe, but Jesus accepted the consequences of his love for everyone and of his desire to save everyone. An then, moreover, we can say that with Jesus on the cross, God shows that he renounces to use of any violence against men, he is with mankind, victims and evildoers. That's how he truly is. That's why he endures violence, because he also loves evildoers he knows we all are. He doesn't take revenge of his enemies, but he also takes the victim's place: he is the most innocent and endures the highest violence. He is with mankind on both sides.

Conclusion

We can't read the Bible as if violence was accidental and try to minimize it, pretending New Testament very different from Old Testament. Violence is an important part of the Bible, because it is an important part of human life. The Bible doesn't tell nice stories, it is the story of salvation, salvation from evil, sin and death. So, we can say violence is the stuff the Bible is made of, but faced with this violence, God's love is shown. This love pours out in front of violence in different texts, and we see God leading his people to a better understanding of who he is. That's why Christians say Scriptures find their accomplishment only in Jesus- Christ.

In fact, we say that the cross is the key to understand violence and to understand the Bible. In this text (Hb 10) it is said about Jesus “ Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll”. It means that scriptures speak about Jesus. We can understand that all the scriptures talk about Jesus. If Old Testament is the historical key to New Testament, New Testament is our spiritual key to Old Testament. For example, we can refer here to our text of Cain and Abel : Jesus is like Abel who offered the perfect sacrifice, and Cain is mankind killing his own brother. (Cain means “jealous” in hebrew).

I don't have ready made solutions to difficult texts in Old Testament but very often they find sense referring to Jesus, not to his “words” but to his life as the word, to the cross. As another example, I would like to hear the conclusion of 1 Samuel 15, this text we found so difficult to hear at the beginning of our talk. It speaks about the obedience Saul didn't show. That's the lesson of the story : God prefers obedience which saves to sacrifices which are useless. We can hear this text, thinking about what we said about Jesus, his obedience, then we understand why God rejects Saul. Only Jesus can be king because he renounced to all kind of rebellion, all kind of violence

Reading : 1 Samuel 15 : 17 - 23

Meditation

Well, I hope not having been too theoretical ! But I think some of the texts in the Bible are really difficult to cope with, and I wanted to help us to go through them. The idea and the aim is that, with the help of our texts, then we can go “through ourselves”. That's why I just wanted to suggest you a few themes of meditation about what we've just seen, taking a little time of silence and looking inside us. Thanks.

• Don't I deny the world as is it and people as they are?
• Do I condemn sinners, thinking I have nothing to do with them?
• Am I aware of my own violence?
• Am I aware of my rebellion against God, as a Christian I am?
• Do I try to change, putting everything into God's hands?
• Do I devote my life to love, as Jesus did?