Revolutionary
Jesus
“Jesus
is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an
utterly alternative self-image, and thus reframing your entire
identity.”
Richard
Rohr
On my Facebook page,
there is a constant stream of folks telling the world what Jesus
stood for. Some seem to believe they're honoring him when they go
into church on Sunday and condemn homosexuals as an abomination—as
though Jesus would have agreed. Some churches are still teaching and
preaching that mental illness is demonic possession, and that all
that's needed is to accept Jesus into your heart and you will be
healed. Some have the notion that the he approves and even protects
their right to carry guns. There is a dictate in some religious
circles that the man is always head of the household and must,
therefore, be obeyed, even if he's brutal, feral and obscene. Others
feel that women should not even speak in the church, much less from
the pulpit—and somehow, they just know that Jesus would think as
they do. Folks are free to believe whatever they want to believe, I
guess.
I'll say this about
Jesus—according to scripture, he always stood with the outcast and
the poor. He represented peace and pacifism. “Peace be unto you.
My peace I give you.” He practiced hospitality by
feeding all comers. He provided healing for free and for anyone who
showed up, regardless of their state of purity. He put his hands on
prostitutes and lepers, went into the catacombs to heal a mad man,
and blessed women as well as men. He said, “Let the little
children come to me,” without parsing them into groups of boys
and girls, clean and unclean, believers and unbelievers. Nowhere in
the scriptures did he condemn anyone—except those who rejected the
“least of these,” and believed that they knew the mind of God
better than he. Those he called vipers.
Jesus was a revolutionary
of the heart. He wanted to shake people awake, to change hearts from
exclusion to inclusion, from cold and hard, to warm and yielding. He
wanted to overturn the laws that bound people in ways they could not
possibly overcome. We must not misrepresent Jesus' ministry by
wrapping it in our own prejudices and narrow definitions. He does not
belong to one religion or one nation; he is not wrapped in the stars
and stripes and armed to the teeth, nor is he honored by our
condemnation of anyone. He came to change our hearts by breaking them
open so that light might shine into our darkness. May it be so.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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