“No more of this!”
When the mob came to arrest and kill Jesus, his closest followers saw what was coming. “Should we strike with the sword?” they asked.
Before Jesus answered, one of them struck out at the mob and cut off someone’s ear.
But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched the ear of the man in the lynch mob and healed this person so the man could continue lynching Jesus without pain.
- Luke 22:49-51
NO.
MORE.
OF.
THIS.
Such a simple, short sentence. Four words that would be easy to miss. And yet all of the good news of Jesus is hidden in those words.
No more of this damn violence.
No more angry mobs demanding everyone else get it together.
No more comments sections hurling venom and hate
No more being “right” instead of being good.
No more inflicting more pain on the weak.
No more swords of violence in the night.
No more bombs dropping on little children and hospitals and then calling them ‘collateral damage’.
No more of 10,000 more injustices that hurt and wound and maim and kill and destroy and stab and shoot and insult and bully and lie.
No more pretending that the violence of others is more dangerous and evil than the violence in me.
No. More. Of. This.
No more hungry people in an age of wealth.
No more people without medicine.
No more blaming everyone else for the things I am not powerless to affect.
No more of this hate and willful ignorance and dehumanizing and dismissing and talking past each other and wishing for a world without “them.”
No more division and greed and racism.
No more control and manipulation.
No more fear.
NO. MORE. OF. THIS.
ALL of THIS is finished and now is the time to LOVE.
