blowback

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
03.16.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 50: 4-9a; Philippians 2: 5-11

There are all kinds of joys that come from having children. Kids remind you of your own childhood, of the joys of discovering life anew, of the deep swirling wonder of imagination and the way the world itself seems to shimmer with possibility. It’s a delight.

But there are, shall we say, tradeoffs. I’ve been deeply into movies as an art form since I was in high school...films that use the medium not just to entertain, but to say something worth saying. I like films with deep and subtle social commentary, movies that force you to think about philosophy or politics or history. And, no, “Meet the Spartans” does not count as historical commentary.

When you’ve got two young boys, though, your opportunities for moviegoing are a little different. I enjoy jokes about bodily functions as much as the next guy, but for some reason movies that view burping and flatulence as their whole reason for being aren’t life-changing experiences. Every now and then, on those evenings when the haze of parental fatigue briefly lifts enough for my wife and I actually go out, we do see movies.

One that Rache and I managed to catch over the winter break was one called Charlie Wilson’s War. This was a film about a Texas congressman...played by Tom Hanks...who had a notoriously undistinguished career. He was best known for having a very well stocked bar in his office, and for the fact that his entire office staff was, as they say, hot with two “T”s. But then things changed. Rep. Wilson had hung around long enough to get onto congressional committees that controlled covert operations and military funding, right around the time that the Soviet Union was invading Afghanistan. The Soviet Army had more or less rolled over the Afghans, and the small groups of local mujahideen fighters that remained were getting crushed by Soviet armor, air power, and heavily armored helicopter gunships.

So Congressman Wilson, after requests from the CIA, began to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars secret government funding to the Afghan tribesmen...along with new, man-portable surface-to-air missiles. The newly strengthened Afghans began to make inroads against Soviet power, and eventually forced them to withdraw, one of the many crises that eventually caused Soviet Communism to collapse. It was classic Cold War stuff..and it’s a great film, both accurate historically and well acted. Towards the end of the movie, though, the primary CIA operative working with Congressman Wilson (brilliantly played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) gives him a warning. If you only arm the Afghans, and don’t give them the education and resources they need to develop an open democracy, then there’s the real threat of blowback.

What is “blowback?” It’s a covert ops term, used within the American intelligence community to describe the unanticipated consequences of both covert actions and the use of military power. Like, for instance, when the United States and Great Britain overthrew the democratically elected but socialist government of Iran in the 1950s and replaced it with a monarch who was friendly to our oil interests. Unfortunately, that made Iranians more receptive to the message of radical Islam, which overthrew the Shah, and is now..surprise surprise...the greatest threat we face in the Middle East. That’s blowback. Or, for instance, when the Afghan mujahideen, abandoned by America once they’d served their purpose, become the fundamentalist, jihadist Taliban, and the Taliban become the primary base of support for Osama Bin Laden. That’s blowback. Whenever you use human power to accomplish what you want, you’re risking blowback. You can try to think your way around it, and to anticipate every possibility, but there’s always that one thing you didn’t expect.

Today is Palm/Passion Sunday, the day that we remember the “triumphal” procession of Christ into Jerusalem. We have our little bits of Palm Fronds. We put ‘em up in the air, and wave ‘em like we just don’t care. We have our celebration. Jesus is entering the city with celebrations and with power, just like a great king or a revered leader. With the celebrating throngs around him, it might seem to anyone watching like Jesus was using a classic power play, riding the passions of an enthusiastic mob to shore up his own power. Go Jesus! Yay Jesus! Throw the corrupt leadership out! Many of his disciples and those who shouted Hosanna by the Jerusalem Road surely thought that. This is it! This is when it all changes!

But Jesus saw further, saw through God’s eyes that this kind of power never stands. There is always, always, always blowback. Whenever you use human power to destroy or subvert, it might seem to work...at first. Throughout history, empire after empire has risen to power, crushing those around them with an iron fist, and playing other nations against one another. But all of those empires lie in ruins, as the false foundation of their power became the storm-driven sands that consumed them. Christ Jesus knew as he walked that road that it was taking him not to priestly power in the temple, or to the king’s throne in Jerusalem. Those who saw him as a threat to their power would react. There would be blowback, and it would take the form of a cross.

Christ also knew that the source of his power was not what people thought. He was not a king like other kings. What sort of king was he? We heard it affirmed today from both a prophet and an apostle. In the reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah that Pastor Mike shared with us today, we heard Isaiah tell us about the Suffering Servant. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed a vision of God’s true servant...of God’s messiah...that was nothing like the image of a mighty warrior. It was one who endured hardship, who faced opponents firmly but without malice, relying on God and God’s grace to see them through.

In the reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippians, we hear Paul’s proclamation of how Jesus viewed power. Again, the imagery is not of one who uses power to their own advantage. Christ is the servant, the one who empties himself of himself and turns over all control and direction to God.

It’s an entirely different approach than the one that relies on worldly power. It’s not power, but love. It’s not power, but a servant’s heart, one that values the spread of the Good News of God’s redemptive love more than life itself.

Think about your own lives, about the way that you live and work and play with those around you. When any of us try to use our power or personal authority to get what we want, when we place our our personal interests above those of other children of God, what tends to be the outcome? Sometimes it works...or seems to work. Sometimes we get what we want, defeating our “enemies” and rising to victory. There are very few cubicle farms in this world that don’t contain the whispers of office politics, as people strive and connive against one another to be the one to get that slightly larger cubicle. In the back rooms of automobile dealerships, salesmen struggle to be the guy up top of that weekly sales whiteboard...and if that means talking smack about another salesman in front of the manager, for some, that’s fine and dandy. By whatever means necessary, as Malcolm X used to say.

That’s the way of the flesh, the way of the world, and it contains within it the seeds of it’s own destruction. Acting in your own self-interest and not being guided by the love that Christ proclaimed will cause unanticipated and deeply destructive consequences. But if you don’t look out for number one, what’s going to happen? People are going to step all over you! You can’t do that!

But that is what Christ Jesus did. He gave himself up. He allowed himself to suffer. He allowed himself to die.

Strangely enough, there was blowback from that choice, which we would not anticipate, but which God knew would be the outcome of His covert operation.

We call it “salvation.”