Girard brings up an interesting question about the violence that takes place both with the Passion but also with the beheading of John the Baptist. In both places, there is growing hostility - a polarization that is essential to the deaths that take place.
What is the force behind the hostile polarization? Is it God? Do the Gospels intend to portray a violence ordained and manipulated by God for the purpose of having an innocent victim sacrificed?
Girard notes that the Gospels are really alluding to a specific phenomenon, an identifiable type of violence, with it own characteristic features (hostility that predates the event, growing hostility, and then action to end the hostility - for now).
The violence and the hostility is "from the foundation of the world, the blood of Abel the just." That is it is a situation - a violence - that is meant to include all of humanity.
Girard turns to the story of Peter (denying Peter) out in the courtyard. Peter wants to be religiously correct. When we want to be friends with a group of people we must show that we have the same friends and the same enemies. Peter mimics the crowd. This is typical of humanity. At the same time, Peter is not just any member of the crowd - he is the one with the greatest spiritual investment in Jesus (yet, he still joins the crowd). Girard says the purpose of the scene is no to humiliate Peter. It is to reveal the immense power, the evil power of mimetic contagion.
This way of hiding within the crowd - being caught up in the movement - losing the ability to reveal the alternative power of Jesus - is catchy. It is like the spread of a disease. The next thing that happens is the murder. The killing of an innocent one. The growth of fear to the point of blame and persecution and 'righteous murder' within a system that is not righteous at all. Another tie in to Peter is when he tries to turn Jesus aside from Jerusalem. The way of a winner is to not go to Jerusalem. The way to fit into the system is not to go to Jerusalem. The way to play a role in the hostility from the foundation of the world is to not go to Jerusalem and expose its violence. Instead, shut up and keep low and go along with the ways things are done. This is not the way of God's will. God with Us reveals the way of unrelenting love and non-violence that is not the disease of the world. Instead Jesus will tell Peter to follow him - follow him and see the way that is contrary to the world. Peter will, like all of us from the 'foundation of the world' slip and fall into the mimetic pattern.
Connection: I cannot believe that I so easily fall into the ways of the violence and evil of the world. This is one of the reasons I have been liking my reading and work with the Enneagram. It continuously shines a light on the patterns of our brokenness that keep the world as it is. We must know that part of us that is as old as all things and we must be willing to face them and go/act another way. I find that is not an easy road to go. Others are needed to help in the journey. Girard will say that this help is the Holy Spirit - the Paraclete. With that power, there is a hope that a positive contagion (non-violence) will be revealed among us.
As you walk with us, O God, shine your light of peace and reconciliation upon us so that the we may face and recognize and resist the power of violence that so easily plays with our lives. Amen.
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