It has been a difficult task, this Holy Week, holding together all the realities of the present moment.  In the background is the all-pervading reality of COVID-19 which continues to sweep its way through the homes and institutions of this country and around the world.   Then there are the victims of this pandemic, both those who suffer and those who die as its victims   These deaths often take place in sterile, lonely settings, with loved ones out of reach and human touch.   Somewhere, amid all this pain, we are also remembering Jesus in his suffering.  Although Jesus drew a certain level of comfort when members of his family gathered at the foot of the cross, for most of the time he faced his pain utterly alone.  Can we bring his story into our story?  Can we see something in the Passion story that gives hope and possible new understanding of the pandemic in the light of the Passion of Jesus?

This current blog may turn out to be a somewhat tortuous reflection as the two strands, the Passion of Jesus and the pandemic, whirl together in my mind.  To start this reflection, I should mention two news items which caught my attention over the past week with reference to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In the first report there is an account of a Christian University in the States, called Liberty University, calling back students to campus in the middle of the lock-down period.  The precise details of this story are subject to different versions.  Two reporters who were involved in researching this story have been issued with private arrest warrants by a much enraged Jerry Falwell, the University President.   The original story in the New York Times also suggested that there was an outbreak of the virus on the campus.  This is again disputed.  What is clear is that Falwell is a devoted supporter of Donald Trump.  Thus his public pronouncements on the pandemic have eerily echoed the message that was coming from the White House.  By recalling the students back to campus, Falwell seems to have been making a gesture of open support for Trump’s tendency, until recently, to downplay the effect of the virus as much as possible.

The second narrative in the news media involves certain orthodox Jewish communities of New York (and Israel) and the way that their isolation has made such groups hot spots for the virus.  Many ultra-orthodox Jewish communities give a high priority to preserving their separateness from the rest of the world.  Notions of purity and cleanness are very important to them.  Their self-definition will be found in the degree of success they achieve in creating a pure way of living by following the holy Torah as the pure will of God.  Part of the problem has been that the communities like this simply pay no attention to public announcements over lock downs or social distancing.  The newspapers they don’t read represent the outside world, from which they are trying to escape.  Every piece of information that reaches these groups has been filtered through their trusted rabbis and teachers. 

When we look for parallels between the ultra- Orthodox Jews and the staff and students at Liberty University, we can find a common theme in that both, in different ways, practise the idea of separation and purity.   The way that Christian fundamentalists are constantly opposing modernity and its fruits; liberalism, secularism and sexual plurality, is not so different from the closed Jewish groups who are determined to preserve their Torah purity in the face of secular America.  Many of us would want to argue with the relentless pursuits of purity as being the wrong answer to a very complex issue.  But when we go into the present dilemma faced by both Liberty University and the ultraorthodox Jewish communities in facing COVID-19, we find that it is not purity theology itself that is the problem.  What has created the dangerous situation that both groups (and those like them) find themselves in, are the structures of power and control that have been built up over tens, even hundreds of years.   

The word control describes in outline how any group successfully puts limits on the way its members are allowed to behave.  Any conservative group, whether political or religious, is in danger of being absorbed by the other groups around them.  Because of this threat to their identity, controls and strong prohibitions have to put in place to prevent this happening.  In my own mind I make a clear distinction between the mechanics of control, which are broadly similar across the groups, and the individual ideologies which are being protected.  Cults, religious groups of all kinds and extremist political parties will use very similar techniques to keep members on board.  Such control methods involve the use of power, soft or hard, to preserve the orthodoxy set out by the leadership.  ‘Soft’ power is a shorthand for the techniques of bribery and gentle mental persuasion, while ‘hard’ power may involve threats and even violence.  Leaders, religious or political, learn over time to maintain their power and control through a combination of techniques, both hard and soft.  The ideology that is preserved through this use of power is what is most visible to the outside.  What is really important, to my belief, is the subtle levers of power by which it is done.

A central theme of this blog is that of power and its abuse.  People are sometimes abused by the exercise of power.  In our two examples, I am not attacking the ideology of purity that is found in each of the groups, even though I strongly disagree with it.   What does need to be challenged are the way that religious leaders who, in the name of an ideology, even conclude that they are entitled to place other people in danger.   A shorthand way of describing what is going on at present is to say that some people are being bullied to death.  To bully is probably best defined as the exercise of power where a perpetrator stands to gain something and the victim nothing.  The perpetrator may achieve a momentary sense of importance.  Any need to feel such importance may well be linked to some deprivation in childhood.  Whatever the reason for bullies emerging in religious or political groups, they are sadly extremely common, even if the consequences are rarely fatal.  Power and control is offered to leaders as part of the ‘reward’ for the new responsibility and some use it to indulge a craving for importance as well as nurturing delusions of grandiosity and significance. That is dangerous.

It is against this background of leaders sometimes misusing power that we finally return to Jesus and his Passion.  While we often fail to spot toxic uses of power with our religious structures, we really have excuse for not understanding what Jesus thought about power.     It is not just he said about it – and there is quite a lot – but what he did about power.  The Passion story is a narrative from beginning to end which reveals how Jesus confronted power and bullies of all kinds.  His words to Pilate about power are significant.  ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been granted to you from above.’  Jesus accepts the power structures of Rome because they exist, not because they exemplified any virtue.  Pilate was a creature of the system.  If Pilate had been a free man, rather than one totally defined by his place within the tyrannical hierarchy of Rome, he might have been able to see a deeper power in Jesus, the power of God’s love.  The power of coercion and control was being pitted against this power of divine love.  At one level the bullying coercive power wins.  But the message of Jesus’ story is that there is in his powerlessness a greater unconquerable power.  The Easter message invites all of us to identify, not with the bullying powers that so often seem to win, but with this other power, the one that bursts out of the tomb on Easter Day. 

Jesus lived and died without ever using coercion with any individual.  His power, most clearly seen on the Cross, was one of example, invitation and encouragement.  In responding to that kind of call to discipleship, we should be not only the Easter People but also those who practise his powerlessness, the refusal to compromise with anything that seeks to dominate and control.