Once upon a time
In a country not that far away
A prophet came
Perhaps more than a prophet
Perhaps a God carrier
Perhaps Emmanuel, God with us
He came to a people
Who saw themselves as “God’s people”
Separate from others
From those unclean
It’s God and us against the world
And he promoted a new way
Yes, a way of change
A way in which one is washed clean
In the waters of repentance
He asked people to rethink everything
Including their hostility to the other
Their sense of separateness
He asked them to shift the way they treated those
Who were “not them” but were “other”
Not with hostility or resistance
But with kindness, generosity, empathy, and love (Luke 3)
This One helped people become new creations
And created a new way
A way of welcome, inclusion, and healing
And a tattered lot of misfits followed Him
And then
Those following him became “the church”
Which sadly,
instead of transforming the world, conformed with the
world
and reclaimed the old formula
We are God’s people
God is hostile toward all who are not “us”
It is God and us against the world
And so our faith became marked by hostility
By confrontation
And exclusion
And hostility became hate
Hate led to many forms of violence
Spiritual
Emotional
Spiritual
This is not new
This is not the way of Jesus
This is exactly what Jesus has asked us to leave behind
The old way of separateness
And privilege
The old way of “us” and “them
Jesus calls us to solidarity
And reconciliation
To welcome and kindness
To generosity
We cannot baptize hate and bias
We cannot embrace control and coercion
Retribution and punishment
We must move instead from an oppositional identity (Brian
McLaren)
To a benevolent, compassionate identity
Where we see ourselves not as different but as the
same
Not as above but as equal
Not as separate, but as with
Not as against, but as “for”
This is not weakness
This is not compromise
This is difficult
So difficult that so very few have done it!
I want to have a compassionate identity
I don’t want to be the kind of follower
who is hostile
who sees others as enemies
who feels a need to dominate and control
I don’t want to embrace hate and violence
The way of lies and manipulation
And pretend it is the way of Jesus
I don’t want, in insecurity and fear
to hide behind hate
and pretend it is righteousness
I just want to follow
the way of fierce love
I want to follow Jesus
