Changing the systems

You are to offer the stranger food and clothing, to guarantee the stranger justice, to treat the stranger like one of your own citizens, to welcome the stranger as Christ in disguise. This is God’s express will in both testaments of the Bible.

                                                              Barbara Brown Taylor

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What would it look like to be a “Christian” nation?

Or rather, since there really cannot be any such thing,

What would it look like to be part of the Kingdom of Heaven (God)?

It would not look like spending more money on

the machinery of death (the military) than the next six countries, combined

It would not look like a wall

It would not look like ICE

It would not look like hate rhetoric

Or the exclusion of tired and abused people seeking refuge

It would not look like legislated morality

that is functionally abusive and coercive

It would not look like “Medicare for none”

Or tax cuts for the rich

It would not look like shaming the poor

or deciding that some do not have enough value

to be fed, and clothed and housed

The Sacred One is pretty clear

Through which ever voice the Sacred voice comes

Participating in the Sacred way is about love

Acceptance

Generosity

Kindness

Compassion

Forgiveness

Welcome

The words are endless

And endlessly ignored

“however you define the problematic present-day-stranger,

 the religious stranger, the cultural stranger, the transgendered stranger,

 the homeless stranger, the scripture’s wildly impractical solutions is to love

 the stranger as the self”  (BBT)

we make a fundamental mistake if we think Jesus came to earth

primarily to rescue us as individuals.

to provide us with a way out of our own dysfunction, and pave the way

to heaven

Jesus did not come to sell fire insurance,

Jesus came to usher in the Kingdom!

Jesus came to call us as individuals, to a new way of doing life, yes

But he came to challenge the Kingdom of the World

With its greed

And its love of power

And replace that Kingdom with the Kingdom of God

That is what Palm Sunday was all about

Jesus came to change all those systems that

Pervasively, profoundly, persistently minimize and oppress

All those systems that crush the poor

And the “different”

And replace them with systems that nurture,

And feed

And clothe

And house

And heal

Everyone

In the kingdom of God no one is without value

In the kingdom of God no one is left behind

In the kingdom of God there is no winning

There is no losing

There are just people, working together

So that everyone has enough

Enough justice

Enough water

Enough food

Enough housing

Enough clothing

Enough safety

Enough welcome

Enough forgiveness

Enough love

Especially enough love

What does it look like to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven?

A Kingdom we are to participate in

And make real

Here and now

(On earth as it is in heaven!  We pray for this every time we say the Lord’s prayer)

It looks like welcoming the stranger

It looks like helping the poor

It looks like seeing those we would

Reject, discard, judge, fear

As Jesus in disguise

And acting accordingly

Come, Lord Jesus

Come in that person struggling with addiction

Come in that mother and child fleeing violence in Central America

Come in that libertard who wants Medicare for all

Come in that person with the MAGA hat

Come in that child

Come in that person bent with age

Come however you will

Come

Come

That we might welcome you

And love you as our self