In Matthew 10 Jesus is preparing his disciples to go out into the villages and towns of Palestine to declare the coming of the commonwealth of God and to invite people to follow his Way, and he is giving them a last bit of advice before they go. “I am sending you out,” he says, “like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (v. 16). He predicts that they will face rejection and persecution, and he urges them to trust the Holy Spirit to enable their testimony under duress. Just as he will make the good confession before the powers of the temple state and the Roman administration before dying at their hands, Jesus encourages his disciples to make themselves vulnerable, with nothing but the truth and the grace of God to protect them.

But what kind of protection is that? To the world’s way of looking at things, it is no protection at all. The metaphor Jesus uses is apt: sheep have no means to protect or defend themselves against a pack of ravening wolves. This is not a mission for the faint of heart, nor is it one most of us would sign up for.

But it is our mission, too. I believe strongly that God is calling us to a ministry of vulnerability. When we are threatened, we tend to reach for a weapon to defend ourselves. That’s certainly the way most Americans, including millions who self-identify as Christians, respond to threats. Our national love affair with guns, combined with our susceptibility to the myth of redemptive violence, means that most of us accept the necessity of resorting to violent means of defending ourselves and our families. Many of us don’t give it a second thought. We have baptized violence and, in Bruce Cockburn’s memorable phrase, “[made] the gun into a sacrament.”

We, however, are called to something higher and better. We are called to the counterintuitive ministry of vulnerability. Too many Christians are happy to go out into the world like wolves in the midst of sheep. Too many of us are prepared to mow down our enemies, either metaphorically or literally. But that is the opposite of what Jesus says in Matthew 10. He places his Way in opposition to the way of the world known as the Domination System and the theology of that system known as the myth of redemptive violence. He calls the power-over of the System heresy and declares our attachment to the Myth idolatry. He calls us instead to embrace a different kind of power, power-with, which works on the basis of cooperation rather than competition, empowerment rather than domination, vulnerability rather than violence.

This week we have seen stark evidence of the Domination System at work. From court rulings that revoke women’s right to bodily autonomy and strike down long-standing measures to rein in gun violence to testimony that the former president intentionally unleashed armed assailants on the Capitol and nodded his approval of chants calling for the execution of his own vice president, our sheepfold has been attacked from all sides by wolves masquerading as sheep. The church I serve in Ohio saw the rainbow flag displayed in the yard burned and encountered threats from one of these wool-clad wolves to expose us as the “ABOMINATION” he just knows we are.

The question we face in light of these circumstances is how to respond. The temptation is to fight fire with fire, hate with hate, violence with violence. But as Jesus would be quick to tell us, fighting fire with fire only burns the world down faster. One of his more articulate disciples reminds us that hate can never drive out hate; only love can do that.

Our calling, then, is to face these threats, this bad news, these hungry wolves, with love. With the wisdom of serpents but the gentleness of doves. With vulnerability. That’s how Jesus conquered the powers of his day, after all: by striding sheepishly into the wolf pack and absorbing all the violence and hate they could dish out without responding in kind. By doing so, he broke the power of the Domination System.

Tragically, we continue to revive that System, re-awaken those Powers, and give them permission to enslave us all over again every time we take on the attributes of the wolves instead of the sheep. It is high time we embraced the Way of Jesus, which is the way of the cross. It stands in stark contrast to the way of the fist, the way of the gun, the way of the coup. It functions on vulnerability and power-with. It doesn’t make any sense to us most of the time, but it is our high calling and our one true hope.