the Third Way

Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil. His is a third alternative not even touched by these options. . . . Jesus’ Third Way bears at its very heart the love of enemies.

Love of enemies has, for our time, become the litmus test of authentic Christian faith. Commitment to justice, liberation, or the overthrow of oppression is not enough, for all too often the means used have brought in their wake new injustices and oppressions. Love of enemies is the recognition that the enemy, too, is a child of God. The enemy too believes [they are] in the right, and fears us because we represent a threat against [their] values, lifestyle, or affluence. When we demonize our enemies, calling them names and identifying them with absolute evil, we deny that they have that of God within them that makes transformation possible. Instead, we play God. We write them out of the Book of Life. We conclude that our enemy has drifted beyond the redemptive hand of God. . . .

                                                   Walter Wink via Richard Rohr

                                                   Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way

                                                   (Augsburg Fortress: 2003), 12, 13-14, 58-59, 60-61.

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“Forget black and white” someone once said, “and try on gray”

Buddha and others simple said, “try the middle way”

Some people think the middle way is the way of passivity

They believe that in this polarized world one must choose sides

Hate or Love

Inclusion or Exclusion

Selfishness or selflessness

But what if the middle way is

Purposeful, informed, spiritual response

What if my choice is not

Child of God, child of Evil

But “person who is a child of God but hasn’t figured it out yet”

Jesus was so far into the realm of the Sacred as to be Sacred

His humanity was so permeated by his Sacred nature that the distinction between

Sacred and Common became meaningless

It seems at times as if some are so permeated with evil

So far into the realm of hate and fear, violence and abuse

As to seem evil, personified

So far into that realm that they seem to be children of sin

Or Evil

Pick your word

But Jesus reminds us

That all people are Children of God

And that no person can drift beyond the redemptive hand of God

Can someone give me a “baaaaaa?!”

Remember the one lost sheep

The prodigal

The missing coin

Child of God!

Yes, that one!

This means I cannot respond to this one

No matter how difficult it might be

With hate

With wishes for destruction

(as tempting as that might be)

But it also does not mean that I simple sit back

And fail to respond

To brutality, injustice, inequity, racism, and worse.

It means I challenge what is there that is not Godly

But it means I cherish what is there that is

Even if I cannot see it.

This might means something as simple as praying

Not for the destruction of the other

But for the restoration of the other

Either path leads to an end to the evil

Either path

Be we have a ministry of reconciliation

Not a ministry of alienation and judgement

So we pray

For metanoia, change, a turn around

We pray that hate becomes love

Fear becomes faith

We respond, not by attacking and demeaning those who do not agree with us

But by asking questions, and seeking to understand

This is the third alternative

Which bears at its heart,

The love of Jesus

Not our love

For this is beyond us

But the love of God

As Wink and Rohr remind us

“It is our very inability to love our enemies that throws us into the arms of grace.” (Wink)

“Or as I, Richard, like to say, it’s when we come to the end of our own resources that we must draw upon the Infinite Life and Love within us to do what we alone cannot do.”