1 Peter 4:5
“It is a hell of a thing, killin’ a man. You take away everything he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”
That was Bill Munny, played by Clint Eastwood, in the movie “Unforgiven.”
I love a Western. When I was young, we played cowboys and Indians. I always played the hero. The
sidekick or villain was relegated to a younger brother or sister, who was not able to, either win the
casting debate, or prevail in a production meeting melee to claim the protagonist role. Besides, I had
the costume!
I still prefer to think of myself as a hero; nobody really wants to play the bad guy. In the stories I tell, I
am always the hero, in a plot where someone has wronged me. Sometimes the plot involves the
crowd’s recognition of my heroicism. Sometimes the story shows how I was justified in my
righteousness. I suspect you are also usually the hero in the stories you tell to yourself and to others.
In Westerns, it’s easy to identify the heroes and the villains. In the story, our hero has been wronged—
he’s protecting his women and children, avenging his friend, or laying claim to his land. The good guy
wears white, has a white horse, he is confident, strong, righteous, handsome. The bad guy has black
hair, a black horse, a snarl, a scar, an unearned arrogance. In Westerns, we are comforted to know that,
by the end of the scene, the good guy will be holding the gun, and the bad guy will be looking down a
steely barrel.
John Wayne, in the Shootist, said, “I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand
on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” Now that’s an
American hero talking……
Holy Week would be a lousy Western; the hero is on the wrong side of the gun! Let’s for a moment,
imagine Holy Week as a Western being played out by John Wayne:
The Duke from Stagecoach, walking from Galilee to Bethany: “Well, there are some things a man just
can’t run away from.”
It’s easy to think of John Wayne playing the role of Jesus, but, knowing the outcome of Holy Week, Jesus
(the stranger in town, come to raise a rabble, riding a colt for goodness sake!) would be in the role of
the villain.
Imagine Caiaphus at home at the end of a tough day at the office, telling his family, “I told that Galilean,
‘Well, son, since you haven’t learned to respect your elders, it’s time you learned to respect your
betters.’ and then I punched him.”
Imagine Pilate played the Big Jake: “Now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all—your
fault, my fault, nobody’s fault—I’m gonna blow your head off. It’s as simple as that.”
Imagine McClintock as Herod: “I haven’t lost my temper in 40 years; but, Pilgrim, you caused a lot of
trouble the morning; might have got somebody killed; and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But
I won’t. I won’t. The hell I won’t!”
Holy Week makes a lousy Western!
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Carla and I recently watched the movie, “Hanna Arendt.” Good docudrama; I recommend it to you. Dr.
Arendt was a Jewish philosopher who grew up in Germany, was detained in a French concentration
camp, and eventually emigrated to the United States. She was hired by the New York Times to go to
Jerusalem in 1961 to observe and document the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann. While traveling
from New York to Israel, she prepared herself to watch the trial of an evil monster, a lunatic, and
extremist—a VILLAIN.
However, she arrived to find a passionless bureaucrat, who claimed he killed no one, but simply
performed his duty to his country through carrying out the government’s policies of moving Jews,
homosexuals, individuals with disabilities, foreigners, and other “enemies of the state” to the
concentration camps. He never reflected on the broader meaning of his actions; he simply did his job.
Eichmann was not an extremist, crazy, evil—he was an ordinary guy. In other words, he could have
been any of us. He was a lousy villain! He didn’t even wear an eye patch or a scar on his face, just black
glasses.
Dr. Arendt came to the horrible realization that the starting point of a great deal of evil arises—not from
extraordinary bad guys—but from the DECISION, by ORDINARY PEOPLE, that other groups of people—
that is the VILLAINS—are not like us by virtue of their religion, sexual orientation, culture, language,
heritage, beliefs, disabilities. Because they are not like us, they do not enjoy the same rights and
privileges as the HEROES (us). They are less deserving of compassion, protection, liberty.
Fifty years after they hung Mr. Eichmann for his war crimes, I have been trying to wrap my mind around
a response to our country’s descent into extremist thinking. I observe that it is getting harder to be cast
in the role of HERO in our political rhetoric. And once a person is cast in the role, it is becoming nearly
impossible to maintain the role. We are assigning blame right and left; VILLAINS abound.
In this rhetoric:
Villains don’t deserve health care.
Villains don’t deserve cupcakes and wedding celebrations.
Villains don’t deserve to be listened to.
Villains don’t deserve to eat regularly.
Villains are lazy; they are enemies to the economy; they need to be forced into productivity or expelled;
if only these lazy people would work harder, they too could have all that we have…so the logic goes.
Jesus claimed his role as Messiah, but, try as his Apostles might, he never claimed the role of HERO. He
also refused to accept the role of villain—or victim. As much as the writers of the Gospels attempted to
assign blame, I doubt he would view Pilate or Herod or Caiaphus or the crowd as VILLAINS.
Easter is not a Western with heroes and villains. Jesus was not avenging his people, protecting his
family, reclaiming the land stolen by the Romans. He understood that the Kingdom of God is neither
given, nor taken away, by your fellow humans.
In this Easter season, are you willing to give up your hero role and claim the Kingdom of God?
Are you willing to lay down your divisions and accept both “the quick and the dead”, the heroes and the
villains, as Children of God?
Are you strong enough in your faith to understand that “villains” cannot truly take any of God’s blessings
away?
Peace be with you.
Steve Jordan
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