Sermon – Preaching in Holes: Church at War
Exodus 32:15-28; Ephesians 6:10-20
8/30/2026
We all have things that we would rather not think about, things that we tend to keep out of mind’s reach. For many people, at least one of those things might be the reality of getting older. How much of our cultural industry is directly connected to making someone look younger, act younger, or feel younger? As someone who is in their mid-years (yes, I am planning to get to 108), it feels like these years of change and transition are especially relevant. Not only is my health the kind of issue it wasn’t 10 or 20 years ago, but my family situation is also different. We have children coming into adulthood with the possibility of their own families. My parents and others’ are in greater and different needs, and I am thinking about the future in different ways. BUT if all of that is too much, I could also just ignore it and pretend that I’m half my age. That is a response we see tragically from time to time. After all, it is probably more fun until I throw my back out freeclimbing on the side of a mountain and… no more Pete.
As a church, one of our more difficult topics, one we are more likely to ignore is today’s, and I actually feel the need to apologize for even bringing it up. The Bible is a far more violent book than anyone wants to admit. We don’t admit it because we don’t want to think about it. It is fine and even glorious to behold a broken, gory Jesus on a cross. That was a brutality that is hard to accept, but it is dear to us because it shows us what a fierce, relentless, divine love will do. Our Catholic and Orthodox cousins tend to focus more on that violence because of this. God’s command for Saul to massacre the entire town of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15 (including women and children and even the animals) is a whole other thing. I cannot imagine any one of us would not have hard reservations about that one ourselves. And it was not just there. I will spare you the violence of the Judges, Joshua, David, and the kings. Frankly, it is throughout.
What helps is the obvious: that was a long time ago. Those were brutal and violent times when nations did terrible things directly to each other. You could not have written an accurate account of the Bible’s story without more violence than makes us comfortable. That is the way the world was, and the context does matter. It does not excuse anything, but it does matter. When Moses called for people to carry out divine justice after the people were worshipping an idol at the very foot of God’s holy mountain, it was the tribe of Levi that answered, Moses’ own tribe. Moses’ kinsmen carried out a difficult act that set them apart to later become the ones who worked in the holy places of God. This tribe, the tribe of Levi, would be given charge of the Tabernacle and the Temple because of their response. They took care of God’s holy things. Their heritage was that service, and it is fair to think that those who died that day might have been a sacrifice in some way. The violence is not easier, but sometimes there is more of a reason, even if it is not an easy one.
This is wrestle-worthy. As people of this book and the story of God’s salvation, we have a place in this book, also. There has never been a point in history when all of these questions have been resolved or when there were no more struggles with biblical violence. Even today, we have the capacity to wipe out entire peoples from far away with the push of a button, but that does not make any of this easier or more civilized. There is severe violence out there in a world marked by what should be greater regard for life. That is the tension we hold. To ignore this fundamental struggle is dishonest and does a disservice to the faithful who must live with their own expressions of violence in a world that was made out of love.
One idea is to embrace the violence under the guise of righteous judgment. God must excuse that kind of behavior, no matter what Jesus said or taught. From the earliest days of the church as a political power, there was a need to rationalize or justify armies working with the church or those who came to faith and yet fought in the army. This is a very slippery slope that eventually leads to the Crusades or other holy wars. This kind of thinking can also lead to assassinating those who seem to be working contrary to God’s Law or to cults seeking to resist the world through violence. That is part of America’s history. It is sad to think that someone might take any other life in the name of Christ. The same Son of God told us that to live by the sword is to die by the sword and that we must turn the other cheek and even to love our enemies. There is no room or excuse for violence in the name of the Prince of Peace who will never ask us to enact violence against another. We do not fight for Jesus, even if we are fighting to defend one another. This is distinct from followers of Jesus who are called to service in times of violence as in war or law enforcement. That is a different but related sermon.
After putting aside the embrace of violence, another way to make sense of these biblical stories is that these troubling, difficult stories are an honest part of the larger story of God that moves from brokenness to restoration, from lawlessness to the kind of covenant that endures. As human beings, we were destined to fail abjectly in any kind of right living. There would be moments of goodness, even greatness, but living up to God’s standard was never a possibility for us left to ourselves. Even God’s help was not enough to change the world or our lives. Jesus brought a new way to live from within, a new way to relate to others as one of us. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ puts the pieces together and shows us God’s intent. There is no greater love than giving one’s life for friends. We have a big circle of friends in Christ. There is no cheap, easy love here.
Something did change with the life of our Lord, however. Even the images of violence were modified and mollified in the New Testament. It was still a difficult, dangerous, and violent world after Jesus’ death. Saul renamed Paul is an example of that himself as he hunted down followers of Jesus years and years after Jesus was gone, but the ideas of fighting on behalf of the Spirit of God was shifted more from flesh and bone to the battle of the spirit. The world still understood military ideas (as Ephesians shows), but we are not meant to actually go to war with anyone as followers of Jesus. Again, to be clear, Jesus does not have an army. He does not need one, at least any conventional army. Too many have died at the hands of those claiming the faith and call for that violence. Too many have been hurt by those promoting the gospel of love. While we cannot change the world here and now and make wars end and turn swords into plowshares, we can recommit to the grace and peace and love and hope that brought us here this day. We hunger for a resolution of the violence of the world and for healing for the brokenness that we all carry. We desperately need everything about Jesus in our lives and in this world, and one part of that is less violence running amuck.
The value of life, all life, is the mover behind this message. Any damage to life must be considered prayerfully and carefully. It must be met with humility and forgiveness. Any violence is something we must hold in our struggle to be faithful people in a broken world. We cannot honor our Lord with the harm of our sisters and brothers. We cannot honor our Lord by destroying anyone, enemies included.
My own struggle in this compels me to wrestle with what I would do in defense of someone else. Would I take a life to defend a life; would I give my life to defend a life? These are difficult questions in a difficult world. And Jesus does not call us to the simple and easy life. We are inherently people of resistance to the way that the world operates. Fundamentally, we are to act differently in everything. Our values are love-based and are grounded in forgiveness, compassion, reconciliation, and shared joy. Our path is to become more and more the kingdom that Christ has established. It is literally one of our jobs in Christ Jesus to replace the wrongness that defines too much of the world and our lives with the rightness of recognizing one another as a child of God and worth our love. When the world can step back from senseless war and destruction and violence, we have the opportunity to be a better people. Easy is not the word here. It is easy to resort to violence. Our path is not easy but it is right. To God be the glory. Amen.