JASON PORTERFIELD. Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2022. Pg. 205. $17.99 (U.S)
Jason Porterfield’s Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week takes a day-by-day dive into the most contentious week of Jesus’s life and the ways that peace prevailed over the violent power of human institutions. Rather than simply overlooking passages that have been adopted by those who claim justification for violence—Christ driving the money changers out of the temple with a whip, his saying about carrying swords, and Simon Peter’s assault of a high priest’s servant—this book wrestles with these events directly. Porterfield rejects some of the assumptions of the larger Church and offers compelling challenges that are rooted in a careful inspection of the text, historical context, and a lens that focuses on the lament of Jesus as he is hailed a savior.
The crux of Porterfield’s writing delves into an almost universally overlooked passage at the start of Holy Week. Jesus, sitting upon a donkey and riding into Jerusalem, begins to shed tears and calls out, “If only you knew on this of all days the things that make for peace” (20). Porterfield argues that this is the key for understanding Jesus’s actions of peace throughout Holy Week and the ways he contends with the human assumption of power through violence. If you have wrestled with the idea that peace is idealistic or struggled with how pacifism can bring real change in a violent world, this book is for you.
There is no shortage of books and devotional pamphlets that walk the reader through Holy Week. However, Porterfield takes an approach that sets this book dramatically apart from others. The focus on understanding the ethic of peace that Jesus exemplifies is the topic of chief importance. This work is therefore not just a devotional reflection to read during Holy Week; it is also a challenging look at how we are called as models of Christ’s peace that should be read throughout the year. The mission of Fight Like Jesus is to wrestle with what makes for peace and how we might be ambassadors for that peace in our world.
In the spirit of that goal, Porterfield compels readers to pay attention, and is persuasive in his interpretation of events in this most important week of Jesus’s life and ministry. One of the significant aspects of this book is that Porterfield does not simply pick the low-hanging fruit in talking about the peace of Jesus. Rather, the focus is on digging deep into the areas of Holy Week that some pacifists or peace advocates would rather gloss over. Lastly, Porterfield takes ample opportunity to insert his own lived experience, both as someone who has failed to bring peace and as someone who has been able to make a difference in his community by following the theory displayed in the book.
As an undergraduate student at Eastern Mennonite University, I spent the majority of my time studying Scripture for my major focused in youth ministry. However, peacebuilding was a field that often piqued my interest and drove me to get a minor in that discipline. I am far from an expert in the field of peacebuilding, but it is a deep passion of mine and one that is integral in my faith as an Anabaptist pacifist. As a youth summer camp director, most of my peacebuilding efforts are focused on small-scale conflicts between summer staff, or among campers who are under my care for just a week at a time. Reading Porterfield’s personal account of struggling to know what makes for peace is as refreshing as it is relatable.
Porterfield’s reflects very personally on how initially many of his gestures of making peace were faulty. He was trying to make change on his own in a space much larger than himself. Later in life, Porterfield is much more successful in his peacebuilding attempts when he works as part of a community that is focused on neighbors, rather than changing a city all at once. Porterfield writes about how Jesus transformed his disciples as he built a peaceful community rather than solving the world’s conflicts on a macro scale all at once. Porterfield writes excellently on this crucial point: peacebuilding is not focused first on immediately solving world conflicts, but begins by changing individuals. If any person could have solved the conflict between the occupying Romans and the subjugated Jews, of course it would have been Jesus. Instead, however, Jesus spent his time showing his disciples how to make lasting peace.
A particularly memorable section of Porterfield’s writing is on the new commandment Jesus gives his disciples during the last supper. “Like a parent about to embark on a trip, Jesus gathers his disciples around him, tells them he’s going away, then summarizes how he expects them to behave while he’s gone. ‘Love one another,’ he instructs them. ‘As I have loved you, so you must love one another’ (John 13:34)” (120). Porterfield talks about how the standard of love is raised from loving how we want to be loved to loving the way Jesus loves us. In order to assist readers to picture Jesus’s way, Porterfield provides a number of diagrams that provide a visual for what it means to be part of a community that is intrinsically rooted in love and inviting others in.
The majority of the writing in Fight Like Jesus is focused on Jesus throughout Holy Week, but Porterfield takes a few small but notable moments to discuss what this peace ethic has produced in his own life. It is only at the very end of this book that Porterfield draws on examples of other legendary peacebuilders: Francis of Assisi, Corrie ten Boom, and Bishop Kiril. There is incredible value in sharing these stories, but they should have been emphasized throughout the book. Porterfield could have given these examples more space as he did on his own past, to better illustrate the communal nature of peacebuilding. Much of Fight Like Jesus is arguing the importance of community peacebuilding but this brief overview of these three peacebuilders does not reflect on this communal theme.
Porterfield’s dissection of Holy Week is not the traditional look at the confrontation in Jerusalem but rather a deep dive into what it means to advocate for peace. Porterfield walks through Holy Week, unpacking the impossible scenarios in which Jesus found himself each day that week and demonstrating how Jesus promoted peace even when the crowds were anticipating and cheering for a violent overthrow of the Romans. Throughout, Porterfield maintains an almost conversational analysis, not simply recounting the passages in the gospels that pertain to each day, but reflecting on the ways he has attempted to carry out different aspects of Jesus’s peacebuilding. If you wish to wrestle the things that make for peace and dive into Holy Week in a new way, Fight like Jesus is well worth a read.