No victims at the table

It’s hard not to feel like a victim these days. As our injured economy limps on, the one percent tells us we are victims of mismanagement by a bloated and corrupt administration while the 99 percent shout from the rooftops that we are victims of the greed and hubris of the one percent.

Unjust immigration laws victimize immigrants while citizens feel like victims of the difficult social and economic aspects of immigration. With the churches in America shrinking while the church in the developing world grows, pastors like me can often feel like victims of postmodern pluralistic culture. This past winter, farmers in my congregation suffered the worst rash of scrap metal theft they could remember. And the November elections coming up open a whole new fertile field for planting fresh seeds of the victim narrative.

The paradox of victimhood is that it always applies to everyone. The victim narrative creates a never-ending cycle of victimization: the victim struggles against and overcomes the oppressor only to become the next oppressor while the original oppressor, conquered, becomes the new victim. And on and on it goes, this dangerous and toxic victim narrative. The more terrorists we kill, the more terrorist-like we become. Meanwhile, victims of bullying and we-know-not-what create even more victims in schools, in movie theaters, and in the town square.

Thank God there is a way out.

The other day I was reflecting on Jesus, as I sometimes do. And it occurred to me that, if you’re going to put on the identity of “victim,” then dangling, mangled, from ancient Roman torture device while you slowly die – the result of a morbid miscarriage of justice – might be an appropriate time to wear that identity. Jesus did nothing but proclaim and enact new life. By definition he was sinless and perfect. For this he was sentenced to death as a common criminal. Now that’s a victim.

But what surprises me, every time I read about the passion and crucifixion of Jesus is that he refuses to be a victim, rejects the victim narrative outright. In Matthew 26, surrounded and outnumbered in the garden of betrayal, Jesus claims to have 12 legions of angels at his disposal – an earth-shaking power that he voluntarily relinquishes. Hanging on the cross in Luke 23 he prays for his executioners, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Precisely in that moment when the victim narrative would be most appropriate, Jesus supplants it with a different M.O.: voluntary, self-sacrificial love.

Where does this overwhelming sprit of generosity come from? On the night before his crucifixion, mere hours before the humiliation, torture, and rigged trial, just moments before his betrayal and arrest, Jesus sat down to dinner with his disciples. And taking ordinary bread, he broke it and gave thanks.

I haven’t worked out all the details. But I imagine Jesus’ attitude of gratitude is somehow foundational to his act of transcending the victim narrative. Remembering that meal, whether we call it Communion, The Lord’s Table, or the Eucharist, has become one of the most important things most Christians do. “Eucharist,” by the way, is just Greek for “thanks.” It seems to me that the Lord’s Table undermines victimhood by undermining fear and anxiety. It acknowledges God’s everlasting abundant provision for our most basic needs and reorients us from “there is not enough” to “thanks.” There are no victims at the Lord’s Table, because there’s always enough to go around.

So I have to wonder, if “we” practiced the discipline of gratitude – of Eucharist – and if “we” got really good at it, could we also follow Jesus in rejecting the victim narrative? Could we live lives of abundant love and glad generosity? I imagine that, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit in us, we might. As a matter of fact, I see this happening often among the congregation I serve.

I imagine it will be really tough for the farmers in my congregation – members of an historic peace church – to imagine a Christ-like way to respond to the violation and theft of their personal property. But I imagine they’ll think of something. I imagine it will be really tough in these troubled times to lay down the identity of victim and to pick up and put on glad and generous hearts. But that is the abundant life that God invites us all to start living this very moment, by the grace of Jesus and the power of the Spirit.

Sure, Jesus died. We all die. Initially. But after that he lived. And that has made all the difference.