Showing posts with label reconciliation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reconciliation. Show all posts
Saturday, April 20, 2019
Resurrection Sunday: Let Him Easter in Us
For a week or so I’ve been drawn to the Gerard Manley Hopkins line, “Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness in us.” I’m reconsidering its meaning this year.
I first saw the line in a Catholic bookstore at an Iowa retreat center 20 years ago. Hopkins’ words were incorporated into the mission statement of a female religious order in the Midwest, and one of the Sisters of the order had painted the line in watercolor, beautifully depicting the phrase in a way that caught my eye. I’ve kept the framed work in a place where I can see it almost daily since that time.
All these years, I’ve been moved by the novelty of Hopkins’ use of “easter” as a verb, an action word. Again this Holy Week, I’ve played around with what “let him easter in us” might mean. At the moment, I only have hints and guesses. For now, I’m exploring.
A couple of days ago, I randomly connected Hopkins’ line with a familiar verse from Mary Oliver. Surely to “let him easter in us” has something to do with life and vibrancy.
The Mary Oliver question which came to mind in my pondering simply asks: “Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
The line comes squarely in the center of her lengthy, “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches,” a poem which invites us to a more vibrant, alive existence by getting out of our self-focus and into the lives of things around us: The long branches of young locust trees in early summer, or the sea, or the grass.
She writes:
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
And then:
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
It has occurred to me this week that “breathing just a little and calling it a life” is not the same as letting him easter in us.
Further, this week I am holding the tension of reconciliation as I ponder “let him easter in us.” Paul wrote in 2 Cor. 5 that this was Christ’s work in the world, reconciling the world. I assume this work continues in an even greater way post-Resurrection. Christ eastering in us and in the world surely has something to do with reconciliation, making right the divisions and factions that exist within us, among us, and in the world.
Reconciliation is making right, making peace. The dictionary definition says “to restore to friendship or harmony,” so it includes a work of restoration.
Many times I am like the political leaders who urge oneness and harmony among partisans, but who really mean, “There will only be oneness and harmony if you come to my position on this issue, if you see things my way, if you adopt my value system.” This is a sham of harmony and has nothing to do with reconciliation.
Authentic reconciliation stands in the center and holds all the sides, all the partisans, all the variances together. Again, Paul said that in Christ, there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no rich or poor, no slave or free, but all are one in Christ. So it sounds like, when I take one position or another – and believe me, I definitely have my firmly-held positions!! – I’m in no place to reconcile. If I am in one position or another, dug in, I’m no longer able to reconcile, to bring together. I may be entrenched, but not in a place of restoring friendship and harmony.
From that place, people in the “opposing camp” become “elites” or “snowflakes,” or they become “a basket of deplorables.” Reconciliation cannot happen there.
It seems to me that reconciliation somehow holds both (or all) the extremes together, in order to work toward healing and oneness. This is strenuous work, and requires that we get outside of ourselves, that we take on a new mind, that our lives are oriented as “the mind of Christ.”
It is a bogus oneness to say that we all need to come together as one nation or one denomination or one whatever, while advocating that everyone needs to agree with me . . . that only if others come to my position can there be oneness. This is a pseudo-oneness, a sham of reconciliation.
To reconcile is to make peace, to live into a wholeness which transcends one position or another position. To make peace – shalom – brings completeness . . . making peace and restoring friendship with God . . . making peace among the scattered parts of ourselves, befriending our own lives again . . . making peace with others, especially those with whom we disagree.
Are some causes unjust? Certainly!
Are other causes worth fighting for? Definitely!
But in every case, we are invited to follow Christ, whose work was reconciling the world to God . . . to be reconcilers, to make peace, to listen to the other, to treat the other with respect and friendship, to work toward shalom . . . the invitation stands for those who are post-Resurrection disciples.
Let him easter in us. At some level, at least in my thinking today, Christ eastering in us means we join him in his work of reconciling the world.
Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Stepping across the Divide
Luke 19:1-10
Jesus was going through Jericho, 2 where a man named Zacchaeus lived. He was in charge of collecting taxes and was very rich. 3-4 Jesus was heading his way, and Zacchaeus wanted to see what he was like. But Zacchaeus was a short man and could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree.
5 When Jesus got there, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down! I want to stay with you today.” 6 Zacchaeus hurried down and gladly welcomed Jesus.
7 Everyone who saw this started grumbling, “This man Zacchaeus is a sinner! And Jesus is going home to eat with him.”
8 Later that day Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “I will give half of my property to the poor. And I will now pay back four times as much to everyone I have ever cheated.”
9 Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today you and your family have been saved, because you are a true son of Abraham. 10 The Son of Man came to look for and to save people who are lost.”
In the previous post, I wrote about the expectations John the Baptizer had of Jesus . . . that Jesus would replicate John's motivational methodology of fear and shame, while further dividing and separating people (the good from the bad). Jesus, the Messiah John anticipated, rejected those means of calling people to deeper life in God. Instead, Jesus' methodology was grounded in his own identity in God. By living in mercy, compassion, love, and reconciliation, he continually sought to uncover the core identity of others as sons and daughters of God.
The Gospel reading for today strikes me as an example of how Jesus refused the divisions commonly enforced by others, and instead offered compassionate generosity to persons, no matter who they were.
Zacchaeus was a wealthy man, even if his wealth came at the expense of others.
Even though rich, he was categorized as a "sinner" by virtue of his occupation. He was also a "sinner" by virtue of his relationship with the Roman Empire. He was in the employ of a foreign government, yet he got wealthy from collecting taxes from "his own people" (do you see the insider-outsider language which separates?). As a tax-collector, he served the occupying government, but his livelihood came at the expense of his home tribe.
To the Romans he was a lackey. To his own people he was a traitor.
In terms of the religious culture of the day, Zacchaeus was a "sinner." The word denotes a social class of people who engaged in work deemed corrupt or disreputable by the religious hierarchy. The category of "sinner" was used by conventional religion to indicate who was in and who was out, thus dividing or separating in order to keep "good" people at a distance from corrupt or unholy people.
Zacchaeus belonged to this social class of people designated by cultural standards to be corrupt or unclean.
Today, this same kind of divide is made wider by religious entities, denominations, and church leaders . . . by governments, policies, and partisan politicians . . . by corporations and marketing campaigns. Some people are in and some are out. Some are justified in their "righteousness" and others are deemed "godless."
Jesus continually crosses this line, walking back and forth across the divide, meeting people from both sides where they are. His mercy and efforts at reconciliation anger those who want to maintain separation, those who are invested in the divisions, those whose worldview depends on competition and creating real or imagined "enemies." After all, making those who have a different worldview your enemy always provides a reason to get up in the morning, always gives energy for a fight, always gives you someone to oppose, always offers you someone at whom to aim your vitriol.
Jesus' anger is never directed at those "on the other side" of the divide, those who have been excluded. If anything, his harshest words are aimed at those who try to maintain the divide, those who keep people separated -- from others and from God -- by categorizing and demonizing.
Zacchaeus is not a "tax-collector" . . . that's only what he does for a living.
Zacchaeus is not a "sinner" . . . that's what religion has labeled him for his lifestyle and his associations.
Jesus sees Zacchaeus as a son of God who has been broken by life, who may have made some questionable choices, who may have done some harmful things, but who is not ultimately to be defined by anything other than his interior connection to God (a "son of Abraham").
So Jesus steps compassionately across the divide toward this alienated man to uncover his truest self, in an effort to help Zacchaeus find this sense of himself which he had lost.
Those who want to maintain the divide hurl accusation: "He's making friendly with a sinner!" But Jesus doesn't see Zacchaeus - or anyone -- as "sinner." He only sees children who have become lost and who need to find their way home. So he says to Zacchaeus, "Come down from the tree. I'm going home with you today!"
The way of Jesus has never been, "Love your neighbor and those like you . . . hate your enemy and those you don't like." (Matt. 5:43)
The way of Jesus has always been, "Love your enemies and those you oppose . . . and then pray for those who refuse your love." (Matt. 5:44)
In that way, Jesus stepped across the divide toward Zacchaeus. And in that same way he continues to step across the divide in our own day.
Jesus was going through Jericho, 2 where a man named Zacchaeus lived. He was in charge of collecting taxes and was very rich. 3-4 Jesus was heading his way, and Zacchaeus wanted to see what he was like. But Zacchaeus was a short man and could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree.
5 When Jesus got there, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, hurry down! I want to stay with you today.” 6 Zacchaeus hurried down and gladly welcomed Jesus.
7 Everyone who saw this started grumbling, “This man Zacchaeus is a sinner! And Jesus is going home to eat with him.”
8 Later that day Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “I will give half of my property to the poor. And I will now pay back four times as much to everyone I have ever cheated.”
9 Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “Today you and your family have been saved, because you are a true son of Abraham. 10 The Son of Man came to look for and to save people who are lost.”
In the previous post, I wrote about the expectations John the Baptizer had of Jesus . . . that Jesus would replicate John's motivational methodology of fear and shame, while further dividing and separating people (the good from the bad). Jesus, the Messiah John anticipated, rejected those means of calling people to deeper life in God. Instead, Jesus' methodology was grounded in his own identity in God. By living in mercy, compassion, love, and reconciliation, he continually sought to uncover the core identity of others as sons and daughters of God.
The Gospel reading for today strikes me as an example of how Jesus refused the divisions commonly enforced by others, and instead offered compassionate generosity to persons, no matter who they were.
Zacchaeus was a wealthy man, even if his wealth came at the expense of others.
Even though rich, he was categorized as a "sinner" by virtue of his occupation. He was also a "sinner" by virtue of his relationship with the Roman Empire. He was in the employ of a foreign government, yet he got wealthy from collecting taxes from "his own people" (do you see the insider-outsider language which separates?). As a tax-collector, he served the occupying government, but his livelihood came at the expense of his home tribe.
To the Romans he was a lackey. To his own people he was a traitor.
In terms of the religious culture of the day, Zacchaeus was a "sinner." The word denotes a social class of people who engaged in work deemed corrupt or disreputable by the religious hierarchy. The category of "sinner" was used by conventional religion to indicate who was in and who was out, thus dividing or separating in order to keep "good" people at a distance from corrupt or unholy people.
Zacchaeus belonged to this social class of people designated by cultural standards to be corrupt or unclean.
Today, this same kind of divide is made wider by religious entities, denominations, and church leaders . . . by governments, policies, and partisan politicians . . . by corporations and marketing campaigns. Some people are in and some are out. Some are justified in their "righteousness" and others are deemed "godless."
Jesus continually crosses this line, walking back and forth across the divide, meeting people from both sides where they are. His mercy and efforts at reconciliation anger those who want to maintain separation, those who are invested in the divisions, those whose worldview depends on competition and creating real or imagined "enemies." After all, making those who have a different worldview your enemy always provides a reason to get up in the morning, always gives energy for a fight, always gives you someone to oppose, always offers you someone at whom to aim your vitriol.
Jesus' anger is never directed at those "on the other side" of the divide, those who have been excluded. If anything, his harshest words are aimed at those who try to maintain the divide, those who keep people separated -- from others and from God -- by categorizing and demonizing.
Zacchaeus is not a "tax-collector" . . . that's only what he does for a living.
Zacchaeus is not a "sinner" . . . that's what religion has labeled him for his lifestyle and his associations.
Jesus sees Zacchaeus as a son of God who has been broken by life, who may have made some questionable choices, who may have done some harmful things, but who is not ultimately to be defined by anything other than his interior connection to God (a "son of Abraham").
So Jesus steps compassionately across the divide toward this alienated man to uncover his truest self, in an effort to help Zacchaeus find this sense of himself which he had lost.
Those who want to maintain the divide hurl accusation: "He's making friendly with a sinner!" But Jesus doesn't see Zacchaeus - or anyone -- as "sinner." He only sees children who have become lost and who need to find their way home. So he says to Zacchaeus, "Come down from the tree. I'm going home with you today!"
The way of Jesus has never been, "Love your neighbor and those like you . . . hate your enemy and those you don't like." (Matt. 5:43)
The way of Jesus has always been, "Love your enemies and those you oppose . . . and then pray for those who refuse your love." (Matt. 5:44)
In that way, Jesus stepped across the divide toward Zacchaeus. And in that same way he continues to step across the divide in our own day.
Monday, November 19, 2018
In a World of Separation and Shame, Bringing Mercy and Reconciliation
Luke 3:1-20
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
10 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19 But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added to them all by shutting up John in prison.
The Gospel of Luke records the entrance of John the Baptizer onto the scene as a forerunner to Jesus' public ministry (Luke 3:1-20). John's role is to prepare the people for "the One who is to come." John's aim is to bring moral change among his listeners, so that "paths would be straight, roads would be leveled, and rough ways be made smooth."
This road-work, so to speak, provides an entryway for the coming Messiah to enter the lives of the people (Lk. 3:3-6).
What are the paths, roads, and rough ways which needed to be given attention? They are within you and me, the ways we are crooked, too high or too low, and rough. We make ready the pathways within ourselves in order to make a way for the coming of the Messiah into our lives.
John knew that to receive something big, something that can change your life, you have to get ready. You have to make some space. You have to prepare yourself. For John, that space is created by moral change, by living a moral life.
John is right in some ways, you know. A growing, deepening spirituality does not drop upon us like pixie dust when we utter a few rehearsed words or respond to a religious salesperson's pitch. To give ourselves fully in living as God's people in the world, we have to make ourselves ready through practice and intention. We have to open ourselves to new ways of seeing and being in the world with God, self, others, and the world. We have to see ourselves honestly and ruthlessly name what we have seen of our interior.
But John's methodology for this preparation, for getting his listeners to moral living, is all guilt and fear. He calls the people who gathered around him, "a brood of vipers" (3:7) as if to shame the crowd into life-change. Then he warns of future punishments for those who don't get their acts together: "the ax is already laid at the root of the tree" (3:9).
He even says the Messiah will come to continue this work of division and separation (3:17), naming some good and worthy (the wheat), while others would be separated as bad and unworthy (the chaff).
Perhaps John leans too much into the Old Testament idea that to be holy means to be set apart from anything unclean or evil. Holiness separates you from that which is corrupt, the thinking went.
At any rate, John projects his own ascetic notions of morality onto the Messiah.
Moral living is a fine goal, but John seems to miss that persons almost never get to morality through shame and fear. Shame and fear act mostly as external motivators. They have no grounding center. They motivate through anxiety about some promised punishment . . . or through some imagined sense that I am a no-good human being. Both shame and fear may produce different behavior for a short-term, but almost never produce long-term, inner transformation. They simply do not have that power.
Jesus, the Messiah who was to come, refused to motivate by fear or shame. In fact, Jesus' path was just the opposite. He affirms in even the lowest of the low that they, too, are beloved sons and daughters of God. He encourages persons not to identify with their sinfulness, but to identify with the God-connection at the heart of who they are. Jesus continually invites persons to stop giving so much attention to the externals of religion, but to deal with the "inside of the cup."
Further, Jesus does not fulfill John's notion that the Messiah divides and separates. In fact, Jesus comes to do the opposite. He reconciles divisions, heals brokenness, mends separations, and brings back together that which has been torn apart. All of Jesus' life-work is about putting together people and relationships who have been broken apart.
The words that best describe Jesus are mercy . . . compassion . . . love . . . reconciling . . . liberating. He seems intent on bringing together, while rejecting separation and division both in the world and within the family of God's people.
John seems to have projected his own path onto Jesus. John made his understanding God's understanding, rather than making God's understanding his understanding.
It is a common mistake, a human mistake we all make, and sometimes find writ large in contemporary culture.
You don't have to look far to see how modern politics, religious life, and the entire social order are bent toward division and separation, pooling together the "alike" while shunning, ostracizing, and demonizing the "unlike." It happens in Christian denominations. It happens in political campaigns. It happens in government affairs at every level. We divide and separate, making enemies of those with other views, all while trying to rally support for our perspective.
This, my friends, is not the way of Jesus. And it is not the way those who truly want to follow Jesus.
Jesus does not endorse John's methodology of guilt and shame. He does not endorse life-change through fear of punishment or anxiety about the future. And he has no intention of separating or dividing, splitting nations, races, religious factions, and groups into the haves and the have-nots.
To broken humans who have been torn up by the world, Jesus brings mercy and compassion, helping all persons come back to a sense of who they are in God.
John got this fundamentally wrong about Jesus. Such basic, foundational spiritual work never happens by guilt and shame . . . nor by division and separation.
This work happens through love . . . mercy . . . compassion . . . reconciliation. And this is how Jesus still goes about his work in our world . . . denominational power plays, political rhetoric, and social divisions notwithstanding.
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
5
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
6
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”
7 John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
10 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11 In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13 He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14 Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
18 So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19 But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20 added to them all by shutting up John in prison.
The Gospel of Luke records the entrance of John the Baptizer onto the scene as a forerunner to Jesus' public ministry (Luke 3:1-20). John's role is to prepare the people for "the One who is to come." John's aim is to bring moral change among his listeners, so that "paths would be straight, roads would be leveled, and rough ways be made smooth."
This road-work, so to speak, provides an entryway for the coming Messiah to enter the lives of the people (Lk. 3:3-6).
What are the paths, roads, and rough ways which needed to be given attention? They are within you and me, the ways we are crooked, too high or too low, and rough. We make ready the pathways within ourselves in order to make a way for the coming of the Messiah into our lives.
John knew that to receive something big, something that can change your life, you have to get ready. You have to make some space. You have to prepare yourself. For John, that space is created by moral change, by living a moral life.
John is right in some ways, you know. A growing, deepening spirituality does not drop upon us like pixie dust when we utter a few rehearsed words or respond to a religious salesperson's pitch. To give ourselves fully in living as God's people in the world, we have to make ourselves ready through practice and intention. We have to open ourselves to new ways of seeing and being in the world with God, self, others, and the world. We have to see ourselves honestly and ruthlessly name what we have seen of our interior.
But John's methodology for this preparation, for getting his listeners to moral living, is all guilt and fear. He calls the people who gathered around him, "a brood of vipers" (3:7) as if to shame the crowd into life-change. Then he warns of future punishments for those who don't get their acts together: "the ax is already laid at the root of the tree" (3:9).
He even says the Messiah will come to continue this work of division and separation (3:17), naming some good and worthy (the wheat), while others would be separated as bad and unworthy (the chaff).
Perhaps John leans too much into the Old Testament idea that to be holy means to be set apart from anything unclean or evil. Holiness separates you from that which is corrupt, the thinking went.
At any rate, John projects his own ascetic notions of morality onto the Messiah.
Moral living is a fine goal, but John seems to miss that persons almost never get to morality through shame and fear. Shame and fear act mostly as external motivators. They have no grounding center. They motivate through anxiety about some promised punishment . . . or through some imagined sense that I am a no-good human being. Both shame and fear may produce different behavior for a short-term, but almost never produce long-term, inner transformation. They simply do not have that power.
Jesus, the Messiah who was to come, refused to motivate by fear or shame. In fact, Jesus' path was just the opposite. He affirms in even the lowest of the low that they, too, are beloved sons and daughters of God. He encourages persons not to identify with their sinfulness, but to identify with the God-connection at the heart of who they are. Jesus continually invites persons to stop giving so much attention to the externals of religion, but to deal with the "inside of the cup."
Further, Jesus does not fulfill John's notion that the Messiah divides and separates. In fact, Jesus comes to do the opposite. He reconciles divisions, heals brokenness, mends separations, and brings back together that which has been torn apart. All of Jesus' life-work is about putting together people and relationships who have been broken apart.
The words that best describe Jesus are mercy . . . compassion . . . love . . . reconciling . . . liberating. He seems intent on bringing together, while rejecting separation and division both in the world and within the family of God's people.
John seems to have projected his own path onto Jesus. John made his understanding God's understanding, rather than making God's understanding his understanding.
It is a common mistake, a human mistake we all make, and sometimes find writ large in contemporary culture.
You don't have to look far to see how modern politics, religious life, and the entire social order are bent toward division and separation, pooling together the "alike" while shunning, ostracizing, and demonizing the "unlike." It happens in Christian denominations. It happens in political campaigns. It happens in government affairs at every level. We divide and separate, making enemies of those with other views, all while trying to rally support for our perspective.
This, my friends, is not the way of Jesus. And it is not the way those who truly want to follow Jesus.
Jesus does not endorse John's methodology of guilt and shame. He does not endorse life-change through fear of punishment or anxiety about the future. And he has no intention of separating or dividing, splitting nations, races, religious factions, and groups into the haves and the have-nots.
To broken humans who have been torn up by the world, Jesus brings mercy and compassion, helping all persons come back to a sense of who they are in God.
John got this fundamentally wrong about Jesus. Such basic, foundational spiritual work never happens by guilt and shame . . . nor by division and separation.
This work happens through love . . . mercy . . . compassion . . . reconciliation. And this is how Jesus still goes about his work in our world . . . denominational power plays, political rhetoric, and social divisions notwithstanding.
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