Glimmers of Hope:
Prophetic Voices and Political Violence

           I recently watched a PBS interview with the Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez — "the most famous living Cuban not named Castro." Her blog, Generación Y, is censored in Cuba, but it's still smuggled out by friends via email. It has been translated into 17 languages, read by millions, and earned Sanchez numerous international awards. Whatever progress Cuba has made, Sanchez is adamant: "I can categorically say that nothing has advanced in terms of citizen rights or civil rights."

Yoani Sanchez.

           Sanchez calls to mind other contemporary prophets who've confronted political violence — the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe who recently died, Myanmar's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, and the hundreds of Russian journalists like Anna Politkovskaya who've been murdered.

           Like them, Sanchez has paid a price for her bravery: "being watched, being stopped by state security, knowing that anywhere I go, there could be someone informing, filming and photographing what I do, and losing many friends, friends who are afraid to come close to my house or to me, also the arbitrary detentions, the arrests, the insults, the threats, the not being able to leave my country for five years."

           In this week's Old Testament readings, brave prophets confront the petty whims and murderous acts of powerful kings. Remarkably, the conclusions of both stories confound our expectations about political power. It's enough to give us a glimmer of hope for our own day.

Chinua Achebe.

           The story of Elijah immerses us in the Realpolitik of Israel's ancient kings. The sacred narrative of salvation history in 1–2 Kings makes for strangely secular reading. Elijah is a welcome surprise. He was a lonely prophet, alternately manic and reclusive, who faced down the craven King Ahab and his domineering wife Jezebel.

           1–2 Kings summarize the reigns of forty kings and one queen. It begins with the death of King David and ends 400 years later with Israel's exile to Babylon. Only two kings receive unqualified approval by the narrator. With dreary regularity we read about coups, assassinations, civil wars, marital alliances to consolidate power, and idolatry. Over thirty times the narrator laments how the kings "did evil in the eyes of the Lord." Instead of celebrating political power, this sacred history of secular politics is uniformly pessimistic.

           How should we read these ancient texts about a territorial god who slaughters his pagan enemies? Can we draw parallels to our own pathologies of political power today? Is it possible to connect the politics of man with the politics of God, whether in ancient Israel or in modern America, Zimbabwe, or Afghanistan?

Aung San Suu Kyi.

           In The Kings and Their Gods, the Jesuit priest and peace activist Daniel Berrigan interprets 1–2 Kings as self-serving imperial records that portray Israel's kings as they saw themselves and wanted others to see them — God favors my regime and punishes my enemies. No war crime is too despicable as a means to the delusional ends of these kings.

           There is one political end in 1–2 Kings, says Berrigan: "outside the empire there is no salvation." There are many pathological means to this one end: unrestrained imperial ego, political retaliation with absolute impunity, military might, revisionist history, manipulation of memory and time, grandiose building projects, economic exploitation, virulent nationalism, and, sanctioning it all with divine approval, legitimation by religious sycophants.

           A few dissenting voices object to imperial power, but they are silenced as unpatriotic and seditious. Elijah is just such an exception. He arrives on the scene in 1 Kings 17 "as though, after an endless night, the longing of the saints summoned a dawn light."

Ai Weiwei.

           King Ahab despised Elijah as "The Troubler of Israel," and for good reason. Elijah had construed Israel's drought as divine punishment for Ahab's idolatry. After Elijah publicly humiliated Ahab on Mount Carmel, Jezebel boasted that she would assassinate him, just as she had slaughtered many other prophets. That was no idle threat.

           Elijah fled for his life and confessed, "Lord, I've had enough." But with a "gentle whisper" that spoke louder than a violent earthquake, a powerful wind, and a raging fire, God assured Elijah that he was not alone in his prophetic stand against political corruption: "I reserve seven thousand in Israel — all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."

           In this week's lectionary, Jezebel frames helpless Naboth with false testimony. She then convicts him as an enemy of the state, stones him to death, and annexes his vineyard. "Get up and take possession," she tells King Ahab. He did just that, but soon after, "the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite." Remarkably, after hearing God's judgment, Ahab "humbled himself before the Lord."

           Like Ahab, King David took what he wanted. He murdered Uriah and took his wife Bathsheba. So "the Lord sent Nathan to David." Nathan rebuked the king with a parable and its famous conclusion: "Thou art the man!" And once again like Ahab, David accepted the rebuke: "I have sinned against the Lord."

Anna Politkovskaya.

           When we connect these ancient texts and our contemporary context, 1–2 Kings are like mirrors in which we see our own reflection today. "Do our leaders differ, in any large degree, from the rulers of old?" asks Berrigan? "They are hardly different at all." And when we silence or ignore the prophetic critique of contemporary politics today, we live under divine judgment just as much as Ahab, Jezebel and David did under the judgments of Elijah and Nathan.

           On the final page of his book, Berrigan challenges us: "One must urge (to his own soul first) a firm rebutting midrash; bring Christ to bear. Read the gospel closely, obediently. Welcome no enticements, no other claim on conscience. Mourn the preachers and priests whose silence and collusion signal plain revolt against the gospel. Enter the maelstrom, the wilderness; flee the claim that would possess your soul. Earn the blessing; pay up. Blessed — and lonely and powerless and intent on the Master — and, if must be, despised, scorned, locked up — blessed are the makers of peace."

           For further reflection:

           For the PBS interview with Sanchez, see http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june13/cuba_04-10.html

           For another remarkable story of God's salvation in human politics, see the book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip Hallie. It tells how the small Huguenot village of Le Chambon saved 5,000 Jews during Hitler's genocide.