…. Christians, with
utter irony, worship [worshipped] Jesus the Scapegoat on Sundays, and on the
other sixed days of the week make [made] scapegoats of… almost anybody who is
[was] not like themselves… The central
teaching of Jesus on love of enemies, forgiveness and care for those at the
bottom was supposed to make scapegoating virtually impossible and
unthinkable…. Jesus… refuses the very
starting point of historic religion. He
refuses to divide the world into pure and impure, much to the chagrin of
everyone – then and now. Jesus is
shockingly not upset with sinners. This
is a shock so total that most Christians, to this day, refuse to see it. He is only upset with people who do not think
they are sinners.
Richard
Rohr, the wisdom pattern pp168-169
Interesting the classroom where God says,
“forget all that you think you about Me”
That way some real knowledge might dawn
Hafiz
________________________________________________
we say it without blushing
“We create God in our own image”
Perhaps we do not blush because we do not really believe
it is true
Believe it!
When I look at the life of Jesus
And then look at his teachings
I am stunned, at how badly we have gotten it all wrong
We with our Books of Order and our Confessions
We with our culturally accumulated life commandments
We with our deeply held beliefs
We with our static concepts of right and wrong
Here we stand, in a polarized world
Hugging that divisiveness to ourselves
rather than the robes of Christ
here we stand
looking at the “other”
with disdain
that right wing other
that liberal other
that gun toting camo clad other
that Black Lives Matter other
that filthy rich other
that poor as a church mouse other
here we stand, making the other the enemy
the cause of all the miseries of creature
the scapegoats
if those people would just see how awful Trump is
if those people would just see how wonderful Trump is
if those awful leftists would stop rioting
if those awful right wing Neanderthals would quit acting
like vigilantes
if they would be just like me
all would be well
When taught he asked his followers to do one thing
Forget everything you thought you knew about God
And listen to me
God is love
God loves all
God is forgiveness
God is reconciliation
God is
there is no need of scapegoats in the kingdom of God
you do not need to create people God hates
in order to know that God loves you
you do not need to create people who are bad
in order to feel good
you do not need to create people who are dirty sinners
in order to feel clean and holy
what you need to do is remember
God is love
God loves all
God is forgiveness
God is reconciliation
God is
and then accept God’s love
be transformed by God’s love
be healed by God’s love
live God’s love
and share God’s love with all, all
for there are no goats out there*
only sheep
*Yes I am aware of Matthew 25, but we do not get to
define who is a goat
When we do we
make the scapegoats, and we subvert the Gospel
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