Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting

An unfortunate side-show to the bar scene is the bar fight. Some people go out just looking for a fight. I guess it's all a part of the rush for them. Or when their inhibitions go down, we see their true colors, their anger and pain bubbling up to the surface. Whatever the cause, alcohol often goes hand in hand with violence, whether it's fighting or even drunk driving. Since I have been making the case that Jesus is a party person who would be out at the bars, what would He do if a fight broke out?

Jesus is involved in one fight in the Gospels. A crowd of city and religious officials and soldiers comes to arrest him while he's praying in the garden with his friends. Jesus is betrayed and placed under unjust arrest. One of his buddies gets pissed so he chops off the high priests' ear. He's just sticking up for his good friend who has been wronged. What does Jesus do though? He does not thank his friend, or start fighting. Nor does he take the opportunity to run away.

Imagine being in a bar with your buddies and having the head of the Hells' Angels come up with his whole gang and grab your best friend. You punch him in the face and he's recoiling and bleeding so you start to run but your friend is back there wiping the blood off of his face. That's not a fight that you would win.

Jesus was a bad fighter. He also strongly discouraged other people from being good fighters. He famously proclaimed "blessed are the peacemakers" and advised that "those who live by the sword will die by the sword." This means that in a bar fight situation, not only would Jesus not fight, but he would be actively rooting against you. Usually, aggressive physical altercations have a ring of people chanting "fight, fight, fight!" Jesus' message to the world was precisely the opposite. He didn't just condemn fighting, he advocated healing. The opposite of violence is not peace, it is healing. But you can't heal without peace.

So, Jesus would not be helpful in a bar fight. Or in any fight for that matter. But this does not mean that Jesus is weak. On the contrary, Jesus is enormously powerful. God spoke to the apostle Paul saying "my power is made perfect in weakness." The tremendous, awe-inspiring power of God reaches its full expression in human weakness. This is why Jesus' sorry, naked butt hanging dead on the cross is so important. At that moment of weakness, God's power was on full display. What looked like a defeat was actually a victory over death and it was the liberation, by one man, of every human being who would ever live. The power to defeat death? Those are some seriously big guns.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians that "God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." Jesus would not win a bar fight. But that's how I want it. I know that God will certainly win any victory that matters. Apparently the way to do this is through weakness. The way to beat, even to shame, the strongest is through weakness. God is so weird.

Imagine this though: Jesus is minding his own business, having a few drinks. A biker dude comes up and picks a fight with him. Jesus doesn't fight back and the tough biker guy breaks a bottle and kills him. Then Jesus comes back from the dead, goes back to the bar, and buys a beer for the guy who just killed him. Now what tough guy?

Western Black and Tan

A black and tan is a mixture of two beers, one with a "high gravity" like a stout or a porter (dark) and one with a low gravity, like lager or pale ale. Since I am in Arizona right now, I made a black and tan from western beers.

Combine one half pale ale with one half porter. Using the light beer first allows you to see them combine. I used Four Peaks pale ale and Black Butte porter.

photo by Anna