Welcome

Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Tuesday, September 15, 2020

follow we must

The Kingdom movement was Jesus’ program of empowerment for a peasantry becoming steadily more hard-pressed…

 

Jesus lived, against the systematic injustice and structural evil of that situation, an alternative open to all who would accept it; a life of open healing and shared eating, of radical itinerancy, programmatic homelessness, and fundamental egalitarianism, of human contact without discrimination and of divine contact without hierarch.  He also died for that alternative.

                               John Dominic Crossan

______________________________________________

 

Jesus was a teacher, to be sure

his teachings were rich and deep

pointing those who would hear, toward a whole new way of doing life

 

but Jesus was more than a teacher

 

he was an agitator

 

his teachings, if actually followed, would have disrupted

both the religious and political hierarchies of his time

 

but teachings are just teachings

and have little power unless lived

 

and he lived his teachings

he healed the sick

he sat at the table, and broke bread with anyone who showed up

Romans, tax collectors, women!!! Oh my God!

 

he touched lepers

 

he lived his teachings

and he lived them in an every escalating way

moving from provincial gatherings

to a near riot in the streets of Jerusalem

to an actual act of civil disobedience

in the temple itself

 

he challenged the status quo

he attacked the structural evil of his time

structural racism (against Samaritans and others)

structural corruption (the money changers)

structural poverty

structural exclusion

 

Martin Bell catches this aspect of Jesus well

 

“There he is.  In the temple again

Causing trouble

Speaking very differently from other preachers

Speaking with authority about sorrow, anxiety, sickness and death

Penetrating the dark corners of human existence

Shattering illusions

Make no mistake about it

This is a dangerous man”

 

the Kingdom movement was Jesus’ program of empowerment

for the poor

the sick

the oppressed

the rejected

the excluded

 

and yet

look at what is being said, being done

in “Jesus name”

today

 

We see people who claim God stand

and not only defend greed, but live it

defend hate, but push it

we see people who claim God not only ignore the pain of the world

but contribute to it

 

We see people hate, coerce, oppress, reject, exclude

impoverish, and destroy

in the name of God

 

we see a church that does not assail the deadly “structures” of this time

but sustains them

 

 

yes, there is a price to pay

for being part of the Jesus movement

always has been

always will be

 

being a follower is not safe

being part of the movement is costly

uncomfortable

 

and yet

follow we must

 

I keep thinking about where Jesus would be today

He would not be a guest speaker at the RNC

or the DNC

 

he would be in the streets

proclaiming that Black Lives Matter

he would be fighting for universal health care

he would be breaking bread in a homeless shelter

 

he would be speaking out against all of those things

that are not “of the Kingdom”

 

he would put his life on the line

for equity and justice

 

am I willing to follow?

am I willing to put the number of “likes” for my blog at risk

willing to risk being “unfriended”

willing to have people stop attending my church

willing to be excluded in my community (which is very, very red)

willing to see my investments implode

 

for the sake of equity and justice?

am I willing to be part of God’s movement in this world?

Jesus was willing to put his life on the line to change the structural evil of the world

am I?


No comments:

Post a Comment