Joan Osborne | Dolly Parton |
Friends,
I'm doing well enough after my surgery that it is annoying to not be able to get around. I guess that is good news.
Rest has never been my strength but I'm trying to do better. I committed to some things, and it's just too much. So I'm experimenting with actual Sabbath time. We'll see if I can stand it!
-Liz
What we need right now is Jesus
According to our faith, I suppose Jesus is always what we need. But I mostly what we mean by that is something spiritual, that we need to keep Christ in our hearts, in our church, in our actions. Today I'm talking about Jesus, the living breathing guy who hung out with the oppressed and stood up to the leadership around him. We need him.
Our Philippians text (2:1-13), includes what is possibly the earliest hymn of the church (v. 5-11) and it suggests we are supposed to be like that living breathing man. The first followers of the resurrected Christ reminded each other that they could be like Jesus in the world.
If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus ... (Philippians 2:1-5).
We are called to be like the anointed one. Not that we are the same as Jesus, but that Jesus life is our model for how to live as children of God. We couldn't, or didn't, figure this out for all the previous generations, but Jesus did figure it out, and with him as our guidance, we can do likewise.
That, I think, is exactly what we need now.
A wandering, no many wandering prophets, hanging out with sinners, with the poor, with those society sets aside, providing healing, pep talks, and big dinners.
When I was younger this was my image of how to be a Christian. Christians do what Jesus did. Along with that image was a very low Christology--I believed in, or at least related to, a very human Jesus. A human Jesus who calls us to take risks, even risks that might result in death.
[Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross(Philippians 2:8).
That is a big ask. Most of the time I'm not willing to do that.
As I get older I realize that I not only don't risk my life, I often don't do the first part of this text: Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others (2:3).
I put the protest at the ICE facility on my calendar every week, but I don't go. I see the harm done to immigrants and get angry but do not act. I see the struggles of those that are poor and plan to give money, but do not follow that plan. On and on and on goes the list of what I do not do. Jesus is the archetype for how to engage the world; I cannot give up the basics of non-Jesus living.
I have a job, I have neighbors and friends, I spend time with family, make crafts, and read books.
Honestly, as I get older, Jesus becomes, for me, more and more divine, and as such, more and more remote. The same mind is not in me as was in Jesus. I don't feel the ability to rise up and take the risks he did. Sometimes I use the defense that he only lived to 33, but to be honest, I didn't do this when I was 20 something, either.
What, then, is our calling in this time and place?
It is helpful to remember exactly what Jesus did do in his lifetime. He affected only a small community: from Capernum to Jerusalem is a 2.5 hour drive. And in that limited area he ate with the people around him, preached to people around him, healed the people around him. He didn't overcome Roman, or even local authorities. He stood up for what was right but didn't, in fact, change the system. He changed the people he met.
Surely I can do that. Surely we as a church can do that..
What is your church doing, or thinking about doing these days? How are you being Christ in your particular place? Just reply to this email to let me know what's happening.
What if God was One Of Us by Joan Osborne. Just a stranger on the bus. A song I really love (4:50).
John Pavlovitz writes that Dolly Parton Knew How to Be Human.
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