Second Week of Lent 2026
War: Hell or Hello, Jesus?
Saturday morning we woke up to the horrifying news that the U.S. had begun air strikes against Iran. And now word comes that our government’s administration and military leadership believe the violence and bloodshed we are perpetrating in Iran are in accordance with God’s “divine plan” to hasten Armageddon and the end-times that will usher in the second coming of Christ.
The nonprofit organization Military Religious Freedom Foundation (whose President and founder is a U.S. Air Force veteran who served in the Reagan White House) reports that since Saturday it has been flooded with 110 complaints from U.S. troops at 30 different bases around the world of every branch of the service that their commanders are saying our attack on Iran is part of “biblical prophecy,” that President Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” The complaints specifically mention that these commanders cited passages from Revelation in the New Testament when they told their officers to communicate this message to their troops.
This behavior is illegal and a violation of service members’ oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. For the record, it is also despicable, blasphemous, toxic theology that is antithetical to the message, life and witness of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is also a misreading of the bible. Revelation plays a central role in White Christian Nationalism because they can twist it into an interpretation that allows them to justify their behavior and sanctify their violence in service of gaining power and control, ushering in not “the second coming of Christ,” but a society shaped by their racist, misogynistic, xenophobic values. But the book of Revelation was not written to predict the future. It was not written about the United States of America. It was resistance literature, coded protest literature written to Christians being oppressed by the Roman empire in the first century of the Common Era, urging them to resist the evil of empire.
United Methodist pastor and author John Pavlovitz sums it up well, “To the violent Evangelical zealots and brimstone-breathing fundamentalists who have permeated the Trump regime and our nation’s military, war isn’t hell, it’s ‘Hello, Jesus!’ …It’s going to take the rest of us…to make sure [they] don’t get to sacrifice the planet and humanity on the altar of their violent Evangelical fever dream.”
We began this and every Lenten season with a focus on mortality and death—ashes to ashes, dust to dust, remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Make no mistake: that message is fundamentally different from what is being said by the “Christian” Nationalist military commanders who glorify violence and death and call it God’s divine plan.
The authentic, faithful message of Lent is beautifully reflected in a simple hymn by Sarina Partridge, “Sing our way back to hope.” Yes, the red sun (or this week, the red moon!) rises on a world on fire. But it also rises on a holy choir singing through the dark times, through the ash and smoke, weaving the grief into the song and singing our way back to hope.
This week, as part of your Lenten spiritual practice, raise your voice as part of that holy choir. Here is a recording of that hymn to get you started:
