If you claim to follow, then follow

Up to now we have not been carrying history too well, because “there stood among us one we did not recognize”… He came in midtone skin, from the underclass, a male body with a female soul, from an often hated religion, and living on the very cusp between East and West.  No one owns him, no one ever will.

                               Richard Rohr

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It is an interesting thing about Jesus

how those who most proclaim his name from their lips

are those who least reveal his presence in their lives

 

it is such a temptation it seems

to clothe Jesus with the robes of our

political, social, cultural preferences

 

and call it good

 

than to let Jesus

troublemaker

rabble rouser

lover of the unsavory

 

wander naked through our midst

 

it is such a temptation to create our version

of Jesus our of the clothe of our values

our “deeply held” beliefs, which are

more likely deeply held biases

 

and worship our creation

rather than

follow Jesus who is also the Christ

 

and do what he teaches

 

So here we all are

Valiantly fighting to install Jesus

On the bench of the Supreme Court

in the Congress

in the White House

 

seeking to have Jesus “sit” in those high places

 

no knowing it appears

we are merely propping up ‘gold calves”

or are they money green?

And worshipping power and wealth

 

and our prejudice

 

instead of a Jesus who was not about that

that kind of power

or any kind of wealth

 

and who only excluded the excluders

not the poor

the sinners

the brown and black

the ill

the addicted

the desperate

 

just the ones in their tailored suits

with their party affiliation on their lapels

who think they own him

 

Jesus never asked us to worship him

He asked us to follow him

Many times

 

And we instead have grabbed his name

Since we cannot grab him,

And tried to drag it along other paths

As if somehow that sanctifies that path

 

It doesn’t

Hate spouted in God’s name is still hate

Retribution served in God’s name is still retribution

Violence proffered in God’s name is still merely violence

Greed invoking Jesus’ name is still greed

and none of it is “Jesus”

who calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves

to see the Sacred in everyone

to stand in solidarity with all others

 

and who never ever can be claimed by

one party or another

only followed, more or less, however poorly

 

the GOP cannot claim Jesus

as the one they follow leads down a path 180 degrees from the path of Jesus

but neither can the Democrats

 

no one can claim Jesus

we can only love Jesus

be loved by Jesus

be transformed by Jesus

 

and the follow

wherever Jesus leads

 

and he will always lead toward love

and equity

and equality

and generosity

and compassion

and forgiveness

and kindness

 

I don’t care how much a candidate

Or party

Or church

Invokes the name of Jesus

 

If that candidate, that party

That church

Is not about those things

 

Jesus does not know them

no matter how much they claim to own him

 

its is that simple

and that complex