A meditation on Acts 9.1-20 and Revelation 5.11-14.

How often do we breathe out murder?

Violence is our second language—often our first. We respond with dominance, anger, might, and all the tools of violence that have infiltrated our psyche since birth.

Someone’s disagreeing with you? Shout louder.

Someone standing in your way? Push past them.

Someone attacking your nation? Go to war.

Someone breaking into your home? Shoot them.

The list goes on, but we think of violence as the answer to life’s problems. Heros commit violent acts in movies just like the terrorists. Sometimes worse. Violence is glorified, and what we glory in we become.

We are a people of violence.

“I would kill for a candy bar.”

“I just want to punch him in the face.”

“I dominated on the basketball court.”

Our language itself is imbued with violent tendencies. Violence lives in our lungs, and we enact it towards those we deem enemies.

We demonize a group of people (or even a single person) and then devise ways to commit violence—large or small—against them. All so we can be triumphant. All so we can win. All so we can prove we are right by victors’ spoils.

The outrage machine of social media and the current authoritarian political climate here in the United States are in a disgusting cycle of planting seeds of violence and feeding aggression. The algorithms put things in front of our faces that are designed to get a reaction from us. One of the easiest reactions to elicit is outrage and anger. And, of course, we want to react to the extreme things that are happening in this political climate. That outrage feeds social media and our in group so that we are fed with even more reactive content, and they cycle goes on.

Anger, outrage, and indignation feed our violent reactions because we don’t know what else to do, and the less in control we feel, the more we want to lash out and cause something to happen. Violence begets violence.

And Jesus can break the cycle.

The apostle Paul was well versed in the breath of violence. He has set out to arrest—and publicly humiliate at the very least—Jews that had converted to The Way of Jesus. He had stood by as an approving witness to the murder of Stephan. Paul was set on harming the Jewish converts to Christianity. And he was literally stopped in his tracks by a vision of Christ, risen and glorified.

That single vision, that mystic experience, broke Paul free from the violence he had in his heart. Paul went on to preach not a nationalistic Christianity set on violence towards women, POC, queer people, and any religious practice other than its own. Paul instead preached and practiced a religion of reconciliation to God and to all other people.

The hinge on which the change rests is an unbroken vision of Christ, the crucified one.

The Gospels tell us that before Jesus flew away, he showed up to his disciples full of his wounds. He had risen indeed, yet the wounds—not scars—remained. Jesus has been forever marked as the crucified one. He carries the proof in his flesh, and never again will anyone who truly sees Jesus be able to deny that this is the suffering God, the God who sits in solidarity, the God who entered fully into the pain and oppression of humanity, receiving our violence in his body, and in taking it all became one with the suffering ones.

This suffering one, this crucified God, this slaughtered lamb is the vision Paul received that forever changed his breath from violence to reconciliation.

Paul was converted.

There wasn’t an intellectual agreement of penal substitutionary atonement. And Paul didn’t say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive my sins and come into my heart.” No, that’s not the conversion Paul began to experience that day.

The beginning of Paul’s conversion was a reorientation in his relationship to Jesus and to the powers of this world. It wasn’t about moral failure being washed away. This was the beginning of a constant conversion, a slow turning away from violence, aggression, power, and systemic oppression and a turning towards being a child of God, towards being a peacemaker.

Conversion isn’t a momentary change of mind. Conversion is a faithful action of practiced mercy, enemy-love, and solidarity so that over time we are changed completely away from violent, oppressive action and thoughts, becoming like Jesus who didn’t consider anyone his enemy, but instead laid down his life in solidarity unto death for all.

Conversion is the ongoing transformation to become what we behold: Jesus, full of wounds, peace, and glorious love. Conversion is the process of beautification in us whereby we become more and more people who share in the divine nature. As we are beautified, as we continue to faithfully convert, we grow stronger and stronger in our refusal to dehumanize and demonize other people. We practice gentleness and mercy as our antithetical witness against violence. We resist the systems of power, dominance, and oppression, and in doing so, our resistance becomes radiant.

All of creation is involved in this cosmic resistance, this beautification, this slow conversion. Creation worships God, and God is the slaughtered lamb. In the book of Revelation, we hear many songs of praise and worship sung, and who are they sung to?

“Worth is the lamb.”

It is to the ever-wounded Jesus, the suffering God, the crucified one. Jesus—sitting in solidarity with all our pain, suffering, and oppression—is the only one worthy of cosmic praise because conversion to Jesus is resistance against the powers of dominance who wield violence and fear. As we worship a God, we are turning towards more and more; we are engaging in resistance because to be formed by the body of Christ is to be unformed from the worlds politic.

And we are formed by what we behold, because we worship what we fix our eyes on.

It is the Lamb—not the lion—that stands in the middle of the cosmic song. In singing this song, it is all of creation reorients itself—experiences conversion—towards the beautiful Christ who was slaughtered in solidarity with the suffering and poor. The cosmos turns away from the false systems of this world, away from empire and violence, and towards the peaceful lamb who is life.

This is worship as reorientation and resistance.

This is worship as beautification.

This is worship as faithful conversion.

We are invited to worship. We are invited to see the lamb that was slain and to turn towards him as our center. It is an invitation to non-violence, an invitation to life. It is an invitation to conversion.

As we reorient ourselves toward the Lamb, we begin unlearning the breath of violence, unlearning the control of violence, unlearning the fear of violence. Catching a vision of the Lamb will lead to our reformation, our beautification, our faithful returning again and again to worship Jesus.

This is the heart of the good news. Jesus is in solidarity with us, so we can be in solidarity with God. All of creation is orienting itself towards the crucified one. And we are being transformed through the faithful consistency of conversion.

The wounds remain.

The song is rising.

And we are being made beautiful.