“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul urges us to think in a certain way: with the mind of Christ. We are to shape our lives by the saving story of Jesus, which Paul describes today using an early Christian hymn. It is an excellent summary of the story of Holy Week, of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The Holy Week story is a story of bloodshed: of a corrupt trial, of torture, of a cruel death. Yes, indeed: this week, as the recent movie title suggests, there will be blood.

But there are two storylines in Holy Week, one human and one divine. In and through the actions of human beings this week, God works to accomplish His will. On the human side, Holy Week tells one of the oldest stories known to the human race: the myth of redemptive violence.¹ Do not mistake “myth” for falsehood. A myth is a story with a message. The message of the myth of redemptive violence is: violence saves. Violence puts right what is wrong.

The structure of the story is simple: This is a very uncertain, chaotic world. There are evil forces out there. But they can be conquered through violent means. Might makes right. The gods favor those who conquer. There is almost always a hero figure, the go-to guy, the leader who commands unquestioning obedience as he defeats all the enemies.

This is an ancient story, found in the oldest myths of the world. But it is also very contemporary. It is a story told and lived out over and over again in our world today, including in our own culture. I was schooled in this story as a child. My daily catechism class was 5:00 p.m. in front of the TV: Sally Star and Popeye Theater. Popeye is a classic example of the myth of redemptive violence. There is the menacing enemy, Brutus, “the brute.” He threatens the lives of everyone, especially the damsel in distress, Olive Oyl. Popeye seems on the verge of defeat until he eats his magic spinach, which gives him the power to beat up Brutus and restore order. Every Popeye cartoon is the same story, told over and over. Nobody ever learns from their experience. Nobody ever changes their behavior. Saturday morning was another class in this story: Mighty Mouse. Remember the tagline? “Here I come, to save the day!”—as he beat up on all the bad guys.

The myth of salvation through violence is in almost all the classic western films: Shane, John Wayne movies, the Lone Ranger, Clint Eastwood’s films. And in so many other movies: Star Wars. Dirty Harry. Rambo. Bruce Willis in Die Hard. James Bond, who has—what? A license to kill. It’s the storyline in professional wrestling. Video games did not invent this story; they have just taken it to the next level. Now it is so easy and simple. Just push the buttons and wipe out your enemies.

We not only tell this story to ourselves and teach it our young. We live it. Is that pregnancy a mistake? Well, the answer is simple: “abort.” Are the elderly too bothersome, too inconvenient to care for? The solution is simple: kill them. Even give it a pretty name, euthanasia— “beautiful death.” Guilty of murder? We will set things right. Give ’em the death penalty.

Violence is our history. Europeans came, saw this land, and conquered. The only good Injun was a dead Injun. After the Civil War, how did the South keep the newly-freed blacks under control? The KKK. The noose.

Today we have more sophisticated ways to practice violence. There is legal violence, using the law and courts to punish your neighbor—often for the most trivial matters. There is economic violence, using the power of big bucks to take advantage of others and get your own way.

The myth that violence sets things right saturates our culture and ways of thinking. We just treat it as normal, the natural order of things. Of course, this story is not only lived in our culture. Check the news headlines everyday and you will see it played out all over the world.

This myth is one side of the Holy Week story. Jesus threatened the power structure of His day. So the answer was: get rid of him. As Tony Soprano would say, “Whack him.” “Better that one man die than the whole country perish,” says Caiaphas the high priest. The ends justify the means. Just a necessary evil to achieve a greater good.

The crowds that welcomed Jesus this day are thinking the same storyline. Today Jesus enters the holy city in triumph. The crowds welcome him as their Popeye, their Rambo who will lead a revolution against their enemy and restore order and freedom in their land. It’s payback time, and Jesus is going to do it. So they think. And when he doesn’t—well, they’ll set things right with the same methods. Whack him.

But all the while in this week, God is writing another story with a different ending. Instead of resorting to violence to set things right, in Jesus God suffers violence. Through the torture, through the bloody cross, through the taunts and insults of the crowd, through the cowardice of the disciples, God does not turn away from our human race. God maintains His connection with us. He loves. God does not use violence to set things right. Holy Week is the story of how God loved us and suffered violence to save us and open for us a better future, a better life.

What happens this week is the undoing of the age-old very human story of the myth of redemptive violence. God suffers violence instead of inflicting it. God shows that love is what ultimately sets things right. Love is the might that in the end makes right.

In this story Jesus is the anti-hero. He is not the all-powerful figure. He is not some superhuman Rambo man who slaughters all the bad guys. Instead, He is the suffering servant who carries our griefs and bears our sorrows, who receives our blows and retaliates, not with superior force, but with superior forgiveness. Instead of using his power and position of privilege to His advantage, He empties Himself to serve our advantage. He becomes low to lift us up.

The cross of Christ is the most revolutionary moral event of all time. It introduced a whole new way of thinking and living into the story of humankind. “Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit,” says the Lord of hosts (Zechariah 4.6). And the Lord’s Spirit is the Spirit of truth, grace, and love.

These are the two story lines of Holy Week: the age-old human story of the myth of redemptive violence, and God’s new story of redemptive love. The one story can only end in death. It closes the future; it ends possibilities. As Martin Luther King, one of the great alternative examples to the myth of redemptive violence, said, “Violence only begets more violence, resulting in a descending circle of hate into a night devoid of light.”

But God’s story has a different plot and a different end. It is the Word from the tomb: He is risen! It opens the future to life. It creates possibilities for life, instead of destroying them. It creates a cycle of life instead of a cycle of death.

Throughout history there have been those who have caught the vision of the Holy Week story. Throughout history there have been those who caught the vision of the crucified and risen Christ: that ultimately love, not violence, redeems and saves us.

Some learned the lesson too late. The great conqueror Napoleon said at the end of his life that all his conquests had amounted to naught. In the end, he said, it is the power of the Spirit, not the power of the sword, that matters.

Others catch the vision and it dominates their lives. They dedicate themselves to serving as Christ served. They live in the power of hope which is not stopped by the cynicism and harshness of this world. They do not see the world as it is, but as God says it will be. And so they spend  their lives trying to do God’s will on earth, as it already is done in heaven. We call such persons “saints.” Some are famous; most are not. All are people who were guided by the mind of Christ.

A recent book, Amish Grace, tells about how the Amish people responded to the school shootings two years ago with forgiveness instead of vengeance. They were examples of people who thought with the mind of Christ. They rejected the myth of redemptive violence for a better story: Christ the Redeemer.

And so once more we rehearse this story in the coming days so that God’s story, not our story, will shape our lives. We tell the story once more, so that we, too, will have the mind of Christ.

Yes, there will be blood this week. But it will not be the blood split by someone trying to get his way by the usual human means of violence. It will not be one more version of the endless repetition of the primal human story of the faith that we can set things right by means of violence. Instead, God writes a new ending to the script. Love sets things right. Love redeems. Love saves. Love’s name is Jesus. He, not sin and death, is Lord. Amen.

1. For further description of the myth of redemptive violence, see Engaging the Powers by Walter Wink (Fortress: Philadelphia, 1992), ch. 1.  I do not, however, draw the same conclusions as Wink has from his study of the persistence of this myth to our present time.

Dan Biles is the Pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania. He preached this sermon on Palm Sunday this year.