Tag: Jesus

The Longest Night of the Year

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the longest night of the year

photo credit: Adam Hill (http://www.adamhillstudios.ca/)

Last night I attended a special service at my church known as “The Longest Night of the Year,” or “Blue Christmas,” when we as a community remember those for whom this season is marked by grief rather than celebration. We make space to bring our unfulfilled longings, losses, and pain into the open instead of hiding them behind any kind of festive veneer, and we sings songs that are full of both sorrow and hope.

The room was dark except for a few radiant candles. Sometimes the room was filled with beautiful, gentle music; other times it was hushed and still. We passed around a fresh cedar bough–a symbol of cleansing and healing–and as each person held it in their hands, they were invited to name their sadness aloud or take a moment of silence to bring it to mind. Then they would pass the fragrant branch to the person beside them and we would all speak over them, “Oh God, surround them in your love.”

Many of us shed tears, but it was not a depressing atmosphere. It was honest and sad, but hopeful. We believed that Jesus is coming, and that he has come–that Jesus is with us now. I believe that many of us left feeling both stronger and more vulnerable than when we came in. (At least, that’s how it was for me.) That space was holy. I cannot think of a better way to observe Advent.

Earlier this week, I wrote a reflection on grieving with hope for SheLoves Magazine’s Advent series. It’s a brief meditation on one of the lesser-known women in the Christmas story, and what it means to celebrate the light even while we are surrounded by darkness:

“Women figure prominently in the story of Jesus’ birth. From an early age, I learned about Mary’s unwavering trust in God, and her courage; I was told about Elizabeth’s joy at the fulfillment of a dream she had long since abandoned. Yet as an adult, I find that the most haunting female presence in the story is a woman I never learned about during my childhood—a woman who technically wasn’t even there…”

Head on over to SheLoves Magazine to read the rest.

What American Christians Get Wrong About Israel

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banksy graffiti on the wall

Graffiti art by Banksy on the dividing wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories

Over the past month in Israel, violence has been ratcheting up towards the possibility of all-out war. I’ve noticed that Christian friends on social media have begun voicing support for Israel, or commenting on the inherent violence of Muslims. In bewildering circumstances like these, it’s easy to cling to simplistic ideas of good versus evil, typecasting individuals and societies as villains and victims. But until we deal with our unconscious biases and ignorance, we will not be able to see clearly what is happening, and we will not be able to respond effectively. A wise and faithful response to the crisis requires us to educate ourselves about the history and wider context of the conflict. As American Christians, what assumptions or beliefs may be obscuring our view?

We Equate Modern Israel with Biblical Israel

In Genesis chapter 12, God tells Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you,” which many Christians interpret to mean that believers have a responsibility to offer unconditional political support the modern nation-state of Israel. This is an inaccurate assumption because in reality, there are important differences between the twelve tribes mentioned in the Old Testament and the nation-state of Israel. Ancient Israel was a theocracy, governed by priests based on direct revelation from God; modern Israel is a secular democracy, established through the actions of the British colonial government and the United Nations in the 1940s. Furthermore, the nation of Israel is not synonymous with the Jewish people. Not only is there a global community of Jews who have lived outside of Palestine for thousands of years, but within the nation itself, 20% of the Israeli population is Arab, and Arab Christians and Muslims across the Middle East also trace their ancestry back to Abraham.

The belief that Christians are commanded to “bless” modern Israel tends to imply a divine stamp of approval for particular Israeli policies or military actions. But instead of unconditionally supporting Israel or any other nation, we as Christians should be evaluating a government’s laws and actions through the lens of the Kingdom Jesus taught: do they result in freedom for the oppressed, or protection for the vulnerable? Do they result in the naked being clothed, the hungry being fed, and the homeless housed? Or do they result in the opposite?

We Misunderstand the Abrahamic Covenant

The Abrahamic Covenant is God’s promise to guide and protect Abraham and his descendants, and to give them the land of Canaan; they are commanded to be circumcised as a sign of faithfulness to this covenant (Gen. 15, 17). God not only promises Abraham that his descendants will become “a great nation,” but declares that “all peoples on earth will be blessed by you” (Genesis 12:3). So, the Jewish people are chosen not as a special ethnic group who are more important to God than all other people, but as a conduit of blessing for the whole world. In the Old Testament, non-Jews like Ruth and Rahab join the covenant community through faithful action, and Jesus mentions Gentiles who were cared for or healed by God even when Israel was in distress (Luke 4:25-27).

Jesus fulfills this promise by widening the covenant to include not only people of Jewish descent, but anyone and everyone who joins the family of God through faith. As the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2, Jesus has made Jews and Gentiles “one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.” Paul goes on to say in Ephesians 3:6 that “through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.” God’s loving plan for the whole world has been revealed in Jesus.

We Ignore the Occupation

Israel invaded Gaza and the West Bank during the Six Day War in 1967, and continues to occupy these territories today. Having their homes demolished, losing their land, facing mass incarceration without trial, and denied equal protection under the law, many Palestinians are losing hope of things ever changing. Gaza’s 1.8 million residents live in poverty, unable to access adequate food or safe drinking water, experiencing 40% unemployment; in the West Bank, Palestinians’ water supply is often cut off or destroyed by Israeli settlers. Crossing into Israel for work, Palestinians spend hours each day waiting at security checkpoints, and in emergencies, this restricted movement sometimes means that people die before they can reach a hospital. Palestinian Christians have voiced their belief that conflict will not end until the occupation ends, and they are calling on the international Christian community to hold the State of Israel accountable for its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

The occupation creates an unequal society in which Israelis hold the vast majority of power, wealth, and land, and in which their safety and well-being is maintained at the expense of the safety and well-being of Palestinians. The segregated inequality in which the two groups live generates the fear, resentment, and hatred that breed violence in the first place, and the occupation is a barrier to peace because it depends upon exclusion and violence for its very existence.

We Forget about the Church’s Mission of Reconciliation

Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are called children of God,” and the apostle Paul makes clear that a large part of the Church’s mission in the world is reconciliation. Forgiveness, enemy love, and creative nonviolence are all things that Jesus modeled and taught, and throughout history there are numerous examples of this kind of “Kingdom living” bringing peace and healing in situations of conflict. God is the source of true peace, but He brings peace into the world by working in and through human beings.

Working for peace does not mean being neutral, but it does mean that we move past tribal alliances with the people who are most like us. Peacemaking means that we stand on the side of compassion, of life, and of justice, no matter whose government or ideology we find ourselves standing against.

The truth is that the only way for either Israelis or Palestinians to achieve the freedom and safety they want is for them to recognize the humanity in each other, to understand that their well-being is tied together, and to work towards a future in which all are respected and included, regardless of their religion or ethnicity.

The New Testament makes clear that our allegiance as Christians is not to any earthly government or ethnic group, but to God and his Kingdom (Matt. 6:24, Acts 5:29). So, I don’t stand with Israel. Neither do I stand with Palestine. I stand with every human being who is angry and afraid, and I stand against the occupation which blocks their shared future.

Love & Solidarity: My guest appearance on the JesusHacks podcast

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JesusHacks podcast

So… a few weeks ago, Neal Samudre found my blog and asked to interview me for something called the JesusHacks podcast. As part of a podcast series on what it means to love your neighbor, I shared stories about incarnational living in the context of the slum communities I got to know in India. I love storytelling through writing, but working in the medium of spoken words was an interesting experience–exciting, and also a little intimidating! Hearing my own recorded voice played back was kind of a jolt… but I guess none of us really knows what our voice sounds like to other people until we hear it recorded 🙂 Anyway, this week the podcast went live! You can give it a listen here, or on itunes.

 

Choosing Love Over Fear When It Comes to the Refugee Crisis

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Palestinian refugees in Damascus at Yarmouk camp, 2014

Yesterday I wrote a blog for the Huffington Post about what it means to respond as Christians to the plight of Syrian refugees.

This week, I’ve continued to read news stories about the refugee crisis–a crisis which had been unfolding for quite sometime before the Syrian civil war produced enough refugees and enough shocking images at one time to awaken our collective conscience. I attended a town hall meeting here in Vancouver last Tuesday where I learned that despite that bloody civil war and the expanding empire of ISIL, the vast majority of the world’s refugees still come from Africa rather than the  Middle East. At Kinbrace, I’ve also spent time talking with refugees and refugee claimants from Ethiopia, Nepal, Iran, Afghanistan, and other countries, and their stories remind me that even in places that don’t make the headlines, millions of people fear for their lives every day because of oppressive government regimes and armed conflict.

These stories fill me with sadness, but also with frustration and anger over the way that many of us in the West have allowed fear to prevent us from extending compassion to those who are in urgent need of our help. Hungary has now closed its borders to Syrians fleeing the conflict, and the government is arresting those who deem an illegal crossing their best bet for survival. Refugees continue to drown in the Mediterranean as “Fortress Europe” deliberately refuses to help as a matter of official policy, in order to deter further immigration. But those who are desperate enough to risk the lives of themselves and their children on the rag-tag dinghies of human smugglers will not be deterred from making these deadly voyages, because they clearly have no choice. These journeys are their last hope: either they risk losing their lives, or lose them for sure by staying where they are.

Many in Europe are afraid that the influx of Muslims will threaten the “Christian identity” of Europe, but as Giles Fraser so starkly pointed out in an article for the Guardian newspaper on September 4, the Christian identity of Europe is threatened not by Muslims, but by Christian politicians who refuse to live out the Biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and care for the oppressed.

And what about North America? Canada welcomed 19,233 government assisted refugees in 1980, but that number has plummeted to just 6,900 in 2015. Furthermore, despite the government’s promise to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over 3 years, Canada has settled just over 1,000 Syrians so far. Meanwhile, the United States has taken in fewer than 1,000. So far, we North Americans haven’t shown ourselves to be any more hospitable than Europe.

Another security concern that has been raised is the possibility of terrorists slipping in amongst the flood of legitimate refugees seeking asylum. Security experts have already addressed the unlikelihood of this happening. Yet few people have talked about the way that welcoming refugees from Muslim countries actually offers our nations an opportunity to address the root causes of terrorism: poverty, lack of opportunity, traumatization and loss of loved ones in conflict zones, and hatred of the West due to foreign policy and military interventions which negatively impact Muslim civilians in the Middle East. This is a chance to show genuine love and concern to our Muslim neighbors, and to provide a secure future for exactly the kind of children who might otherwise be at risk for radicalization by opportunistic terrorist organizations who prey upon those who are impoverished and discontented.

As citizens of a world increasingly interconnected by economic ties, military involvement, and technology, the refugee crisis is not some distant issue from which we can pretend to be entirely separate. The current situation forces us to confront our political and military contribution to the crisis, and challenges those of us who follow Jesus to live out some of the core tenets of our faith.

What Jesus Can Teach Us About Confronting Racism in Ourselves

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Racism is obvious to us in hateful individuals who may utter racial slurs or openly support groups like the KKK. Unless we are willing to look more closely, racism is less obvious when embedded in the day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system, or when subtly continuing to shape the socioeconomic landscape of our country. But the most difficult place to see and acknowledge racism is likely within ourselves. Today I’ve written an article for Sojourners about what we can learn from Jesus on that difficult path of self-exploration. Strange as it may sound, even the Son of God had to conquer ingrained prejudice. Here’s an excerpt:

Many whites balk at the suggestion that their views and assumptions might be racist because they know themselves to be moral people who live decent lives and maybe even have some black friends. They certainly don’t hate anybody, and they aren’t supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. Because they understand racism on an individual rather than systemic level, it seems impossible to hold together an image of oneself that contains both “good person” and “racist.”

Yet individual guilt and hatred often have little to do with white America’s unwitting participation in the institutional racism of our society. We can’t avoid bearing a resemblance, warts and all, to the culture that raises us… (read the rest) 

This is the challenging, humbling work of repentance. If we desire to see the Kingdom come in the world, we must first be willing to clear the way for it to break into our own souls.

what Jesus can teach us about confronting racism in ourselves

Is Hell the center of Christian faith? guest post for Greg Boyd

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heaven-or-hell

A couple years ago, one of our sending churches withdrew financial support from Andy and me.

This came after a theological discussion with the pastor and staff about why we were in India. We explained that we wanted our lives in the slum to mirror the way that God chose to be with us when he entered into the human condition and into poverty through the incarnation, and we described the practical ways we had become involved in our neighbors’ lives.

Yet there was confusion over whether or not these things were part of Jesus’ message; whether they were “focused” enough to merit church support. As the conversation progressed, both we and the staff realized that we were operating under different assumptions about what “Good News” means, why Jesus came to earth, and what the mission of the Church is.

The pastor and staff were not careless or hard-hearted–they probably asked the same questions and handled the situation in much the same way as would many evangelical Christians across North America. They were simply acting out of a belief that hell is the central problem for human beings, and that saving people from hell through right belief is the Church’s primary purpose. Against the backdrop of looming eternal torment, any efforts to alleviate suffering in the here and now or to address its systemic causes in society quite logically seem like a waste of time, or even a dangerous distraction from our spiritual rescue mission.

I wrote a guest post about this for pastor Greg Boyd’s blog over at ReKnew Forum. Recognizing how often our faith is “hijacked by religion, politics, and the assumptions of the day,” Greg’s vision for ReKnew is to create a space for “believers and skeptics alike” to “ask tough questions and consider a renewed picture of God,” one that authentically reflects Jesus rather than the historical and cultural baggage we’ve layered on top of him.  Click on over to read my post.

Jesus was not just born to die.

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Tomorrow will be Christmas. This is the day that we celebrate the Incarnation: God entering into the human condition, revealing the dignity and beauty that lies hidden in our beings. Jesus comes to earth to reveal God’s love for us. This is not a severe holiness that cannot stand to be in the presence of sin. This is a humble and compassionate presence that makes its home amid the darkness, despair, and dysfunction of our misguided lives and our unjust society. This is not an angry deity demanding retribution with blood, but a gentle shepherd here to feed the harassed and anxious sheep who have no one to care for them. God takes on flesh and reveals Himself to be God with Us, the Human One, who derives his power from weakness and vulnerability, who comes not to be served but to serve. Jesus is born into the human race, and through his example, he invites us into the fullness of our humanity. He teaches us not to wait for heaven after death, but to concern ourselves with life before death by living in the reality of the Kingdom right now. Jesus shows the way for us to fully embrace this suffering world that God has made His home, and to be at home within ourselves despite our imperfections and our shadows. Being at home amid darkness does not mean that we do not work towards the transformation of our own hearts and of the world, but it means that we do so from the starting place of knowing that we are loved, that this love has filled every dark corner already, and that God is with us.

I have often attended Christmas Eve services that seemed to skip ahead from the birth of Jesus to his death and resurrection; services that finished with an altar call, as though Jesus’ birth and life were merely the back story to set up for the “the main reason” He came to earth. As though Jesus was simply born to die.

We sometimes want to condense the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus into some cosmic formula instead of recognizing the significance of the entire story, and without entering into the story ourselves to learn what the incarnation means for us as we seek to grow into the nature of God while living an embodied existence among our fellow creatures. Crucifixion and resurrection are also things for each of us to experience in our own lives rather than simply one-time historical events for us to remember, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we have Lent and Easter to reflect on these mysteries. The incarnation alone is a mystery significant enough for us to spend an entire season entering into, and that is what Advent and Christmas are for.

 

Trust Issues

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I was grieved when I saw the news: four children and their parents, murdered in front of each other in their own home, not far from where I grew up. A fifth child, narrowly surviving, witness to the destruction of her entire family. I fought back tears as I made my morning coffee, feeling a rush of emotions, but surprise was not among them. The tragedy is disturbing, of course, but not shocking. If anything this kind of tragedy has become disturbingly and shockingly commonplace.

I know that for many of you this will be a hard word, but please hear me out. I live in a violent neighborhood. People often get kicked, punched, beaten with pieces of metal, knocked unconscious, and even cut with knives during domestic disputes, fights between neighbors, and the self-harm that sometimes results. In the approximately two years that A. and I have lived here, we’ve seen a lot of that violence firsthand, but the death toll from this violence over that same period of time is zero. I would like to say that I can’t imagine how high it would be if people in our neighborhood had access to guns, but the truth is that I can imagine. I imagine that if guns were involved in these interpersonal conflicts, then our neighborhood would more likely resemble the violent slums of Guatemala, or the American inner city where we attended church during university, where gun violence claimed the lives of people in the neighborhood virtually every week. I remember that we once took up a collection at the end of the morning service to pay for the funeral of a young teenager whose grandmother couldn’t afford to bury his body. Another Sunday, we prayed with a man whose younger brother was in the ICU after being hit in a drive-by shooting targeting their apartment complex the night before.

That neighborhood was a lot like the one where we live now: it was a vibrant, complex community which included many wonderful people and networks of relationships, but it was also a place where poverty, addiction, psychological trauma, personal dysfunction, and broken relationships often led to violence. But because the violence in the inner city was usually perpetrated with efficient, lethal weapons that could be used from a distance, rather than with hands or dull peeling knives at close range, it was frequently fatal. Both of these neighborhoods are violent, but the difference between them in terms of loss of life is hard to overstate.

I believe in wholistic approaches to problems, and I have no illusions about a simple change in government policy bringing about wholeness in society. But neither do I have any illusions about the relationship between the prevalence of guns in the United States and the prevalence of gun-related deaths in the United States. Well-reputed scientific studies from Oxford and elsewhere have demonstrated that rather than making a family safer, the presence of a gun in the home increases the risk of violent death in that home. That increased risk has also been proven to exist regardless of what type of gun you own, how many you keep in your house, or how you store them. Americans often keep guns in their homes for the express purpose of making themselves safer, but these guns are statistically used far more often in homicides, suicides, or unintentional shootings than in self-defense. Research also shows that across the country, states with the lowest rates of gun ownership and the strongest gun control legislation have the lowest rates of gun-related deaths in the country while states with the highest rates of gun ownership and the loosest gun control laws have the highest rates of gun-related deaths.

All of this evidence points us to the question: are guns actually making us safer? The evidence also points us to an answer: No.

As a society we need to take a good, hard look at how we have integrated violence into our culture. We accept it as normal and necessary when it comes to “domestic security” in the form of warfare, torture, and executive kill lists, or when it comes to “justice” in terms of the death penalty. We celebrate violence as heroic when it’s sanctioned by the state and committed against people whom we fear and with whom we have nothing in common. But when the violence is turned inward on ourselves—and it is the nature of violence to eventually destroy those who use it is as well as those against whom it is used—we mourn, we are shocked, and our reactionary fear leads us to fortify our defenses against further violence… with more violence.

As a human being, I understand the way that fear triggers irrational, self-protective instincts. But as a Christian, it saddens me that we as a society would rather take our chances in the mode of kill-or-be-killed instead of venturing down the path of enemy love that Jesus blazed for us. We could argue for a long time about which specific legislation or action plans or public policies are needed to make our country safer, and those conversations certainly have their place. But that is not the conversation that I want to have here. I am more interested in the heart of the issue, and the heart issue, as I see it, is our religious faith in violence.

Jesus says, “Do not fear those who kill the body…”

…but we trust more in our capacity for violence than we do in God for our protection.

Jesus says, “Seek first the Kingdom…”

…but we seek first our own physical safety, and the safety of our material possessions.

Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

…but we wait for intruders with deadly weapons under our pillows.

Jesus says, “All who draw the sword will die by the sword…”

…but we are more willing to take that risk than the risk of following our Teacher.

I’m not questioning anyone’s legal right to own a gun. That right is most certainly laid out in the law. What I’m asking is, why is this right to own weapons so important to us? We have the legal right to bear arms, yes, but I believe we also have the freedom to choose to live beyond the condition of violence that results from putting so much trust in arms in the first place. How do we actually want to live?

And ultimately, in whom or what do we put our trust?

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The Neglected Center

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This week I read a very insightful article* about cultivating a “spirituality of contentment” through living a simple lifestyle that draws us into greater connection with God, our neighbors, the Creation, and ourselves. The author of this article, Dee Dee Risher, writes as a seasoned veteran of this approach to life, and as someone who is well-acquainted with its particular gifts and struggles. She is aware that “simple living” has the ironic tendency of becoming a very complicated existence which obsesses over material concerns: how many things do we own? How much money do we spend? How many square feet do we live in? According to Risher, all of these material concerns as a tell-tale sign that the external changes in our lives have outpaced the inner transformation of our heart, so that we are ascetically denying ourselves of things without moving toward some alternative. Simplicity, she says, is not about going without. Its about building something new: moving positively toward a fuller life that would have been impossible without the clutter in our lives being cleared away. If we try to throw off the yoke of mainstream culture without developing an alternative dream, then we will never be content because we will always be longing for the very things we have decided to set aside. For most of us middle- and upper-class North Americans, the narrative that has been programmed into us is upward mobility, accumulation of possessions, comforts, and status. It involves making a place for ourselves in the world and then sitting back to enjoy the fruits of our labors, letting others compete with us and fare poorly or well as they may. This is essentially the American Dream. If we want to walk a different path, then we need a different dream to guide us, because merely building our identity or our life in opposition to something will only turn us into a hollow inverse of what we wish to change. We won’t have created anything new.

//

I resonated with this problem of externals outpacing internals. Perhaps that’s exactly what’s happened to me, living in the slum. Up til now, my spiritual growth has always been driven by external experiences. As I have chosen to act on what I felt was right, what I read in the gospels of Jesus’ life, my experiences of reaching out to others to serve them and to get to know them has always led me into deeper understanding and experience with God. External actions and circumstances have seemed to drive internal transformation, and perhaps that’s as it must be, in the beginning. Until we leave the realm of what we already know, how can we encounter anything new, or challenging, or larger than ourselves?

But I think this necessary and appropriate pattern may have led me, somewhere along the way, to mistake the means for the end. Serving the poor is the ultimate goal, I decided, living as simply as possible in the worst possible place and doing as much as possible to help. Alas, I am discovering that the opposite is true: compassion and service and simplicity should be the means of communing with God, of recognizing God in myself and the people around me (especially the suffering poor), and of joyfully living in Love’s embrace.

How did Jesus live? I asked myself. He hung out with outcasts, poor people, blind people, sick people, enemy soldiers, their yellow-bellied tax collector cronies, and heretical half-breeds like the Samaritans. So that’s what I’ll do, I thought. Find the poor and the outcasts, befriend them, tell them that God loves them, and invite them into the community of the Kingdom in which there is always a place for them at the table.

What I failed to realize until I was smack-dab in the middle of the needy crowds, trying to offer hope to the down-and-out people spit out by the system, was that Jesus didn’t just up and begin his mission with the sheer force of willpower. It takes more than principles or warm fuzzies to sustain any kind of long-term commitment to the messy occupation of loving other people, particularly in a demanding and depressing context like a slum. I neglected to pay attention to the forty days of fasting and prayer in the desert which immediately preceded Jesus’ public life, the lonely hours of prayer and solitude which sustained it, and the 30 years of spiritual preparation that preceded it. Jesus was only able to do what he did because of his strength constantly being renewed by God inside Him. He was only able to maintain hope among misery because of his intense awareness of God’s loving presence; to experience joy in the midst of exhaustion and suffering because he was already well-experienced in cultivating an awareness of God’s presence in all circumstances; to weather frequent rejection and confrontation, and eventually total betrayal, because by the time these things happened to him, he had such an unshakeable sense of his identity as the Beloved of God that he was entirely free from the opinions of others—free enough to serve others without any need of gratitude, to love even those who repaid his compassion with hatred.

This incredible love and courage was only possible for Jesus because he had already experienced this unconditional love in the depths of his own being. It had defined him, and it had become the root of everything he did.

//

As for me, all the labor of love has been exhausting, and my feverish attempts to pour myself out has revealed an emptiness in myself that I was never aware of before. Now its impossible to ignore the aching expanse within myself that has yet to be filled with the unconditional love of God. I am yet to claim my identity as the Beloved, and am desperately trying to build an identity for myself out of all the good things I am doing. See how much I suffer! See how much I am willing to sacrifice! My soul yells. I will earn your love yet. And yet…

God is not waiting for a display of faithful obedience, for exploits of courage and self-denial in order to embrace me. He embraces me with my empty hands and tattered clothes, as the beggar that I am. As the child who could ever do anything to make her Parent love her more or less. As the Prodigal son, returned home after all his fruitless attempts at making a life worth living for himself apart from the love of his Father.

I am the poor, I am the sick, I am the rejected. I wait in grief and hope for the mercy of God to reveal my true identity to me, for God to rock me to sleep in strong arms like a newborn baby, safe and wanted and loved. My neighbors often bear their scars and their struggles openly on their faces and in the rough edges of their lives, but mine are hidden inside.

I am the poor and they are me. God is in us, and we are in Him. Perhaps the whole purpose of life is for us to realize, together, the depth of our poverty, and to help one another to accept the Love that will satisfy it.

*Cultivating A Spirituality of Contentment by Dee Dee Risher

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The Bad News is Over

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          As a mentor of ours in New Zealand likes to say, “The Good News is that the bad news is over.” He says that to discover what Jesus’ message is for a given person or society, you first have to find out what the circumstances of that particular person or group are: their motivations, their hopes and fears, their problems, and their life experiences. What is it that is keeping them from God? Where are they in need of hope, or healing? The amazing thing about Jesus is that even while he proclaims universal truths about what it means to be human, he also approaches individual human beings with a personal message of truth for them. God is one, yet he meets each of us on different journeys and in different ways.

To the rich young ruler, the good news is that Jesus is inviting him to cast off all of the wealth, possessions, and comfort that have blocked him from experiencing real life with all of its joys and sorrows, and he lays before him the opportunity to commune with God through loving service and relationship with other people. To the impoverished paralytic by the side of the pool of Siloam who has never known comfort or riches, who has spent years waiting for someone more powerful than himself to rescue him, Jesus speaks words of healing and empowerment: “Get up and walk.”

To the Pharisees, who have spent their lives pursuing the spiritual disciplines of fasting, pious works, and thorough obedience to religious law, Jesus breaks through the delusion that they have achieved true relationship with God by denouncing heir false piety and pointing them toward the path that would rescue them from their particular bondage: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” His repeated, harsh rebukes of these arrogant men are actually a loving and persistent call for them to embrace the only change that could save them. But with those who are buried in shame and guilt rather than pride and apparent righteousness, Jesus takes a different tack. There is no rebuke from him for the woman caught in adultery. Jesus never snuffs out a smoldering wick or breaks a bruised reed, and he recognizes the poor in spirit when he sees them. In this case, it is the self-righteous accusers who are shamed out of following through with the punishment they had planned, and Jesus offers that fallen woman the surprise of mercy and a fresh start instead of the anger she expected from God and society alike.

Everyone’s journey is different. Some people come chasing after Jesus with a determined hope that refuses to be turned away—think of the blind man crying out to Jesus over the demands of the crowd for him to shut up, or the guys lowering their disabled friend down to Jesus through a hole they had dug in a stranger’s roof, because they were determined to get to Jesus in spite of the long line of people waiting outside. Other people are just minding their own business, or even hiding from Jesus, when he begins pursuing them: that’s the Samaritan woman at the well, who’s taken off guard by the man who strikes up conversation with her in spite of the taboos which divide their genders, their religions, and their races. That’s also Zacchaeus, who thinks he is inconspicuously observing Jesus from the safe distance of his tree branch when Jesus puts him on the spot and invites himself over for lunch.

And so it is with our journeys: different people, different seasons, different truths which Jesus speaks into our lives to guide us down the particular path which will lead each of us to God. I’m trying to get better about accepting that, so I can stop judging other people according to the truth that has been give to me. Like Peter on the beach with Jesus, hearing that the road ahead of him will include suffering and a sacrifice of his personal freedom, I turn to others and want to know, “What about these guys? Are they going to have to give up as much as I do to follow you?” And Jesus, still the same 2,000 years later, replies simply, “What is that to you? You, follow me.”

It is probably my growing awareness of the unique and personal nature of journeying with Jesus that has me so frustrated with the spiritual formulas, the moral rules, and the angry God of judgment that I so often hear proclaimed in churches as supposedly “good news”. This message of fear and judgment does nothing to cure the disease of the righteous religious people who already know the formulas and keep the rules, and it crushes the people who are already “bruised reeds”–the sexually broken, the abused, those who already hate themselves and expect rejection from God with equal intensity.

I think the Good News is love—in all of its universal truth and individual expression. Love was what Jesus offered to pharisees, paralytics, and prostituted women alike, but because he knew each of them down to the very core of their being, the path toward God he offered to each of them was unique. The good news for each of them, and for each of us, is that the bad news is over.