Then they laid hands on him and arrested him

Jesus in an orange jumpsuit.  That look on his face.
Detained without charges at Guantanamo.
Immigration police taker her in the night to deport her.

         The chief priests accused him of many things

The Messiah, bullied on the playground. Bullied in church.
Pepper sprayed.
Solitary confinement.
Afraid of her husband.

         After flogging Jesus, he handed him over

Christ, waterboarded.
Convinced by fear that her only way is working the street.
Gang raped by soldiers.
Homeless, arrested for trespassing.

         They twisted some thorns into a crown and put it on him
They struck his head with a reed and spat upon him

The Son of God unemployed on the Reservation,
his language forgotten, his history buried.
Arranged at 14 in a marriage to a 45 year old.
Kept out of view in an asylum.

         Then they led him out to crucify him.

A rape victim murdered for shaming her family.
Onlookers gather to watch Jesus receive the lethal injection.
Silenced, even her grief taken from her.

         The centurion said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

=========

(reposted with permission from Pastor Steve, www.unfoldinglife.net)

This old one is making the rounds again.

And as my friend Chett said on Facebook “In every joke, there’s a little reality.”

“Biblical Instructions Not Necessary To Build” hahahaha

(h/t Sacred Sandwich)

There was a fascinating article a few weeks back about the statistical research methods of Target. Essentially they analyze consumer buying habits to the minute detail so that they can almost predict when a person is going through a life transition (the article talks about the retailer making educated guesses at when women become pregnant and thus susceptible to new buying habits). And it’s not just Target:

Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a “predictive analytics” department devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them. “But Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, a consultant and the chairman of a conference called Predictive Analytics World. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think now.”

Thus, statistics and psychology converge as the analysts take a look at buying habits. For instance, pregnant women will often buy unscented lotion in their second trimester, supplements at 20 weeks, and cotton balls close to delivery (I don’t understand such things…I have cats). But the data supports their conclusions. So Target will send baby-oriented advertising to these customers to try to get them to change their buying habits and start buying more and diverse stuff from Target instead of elsewhere. It’s a big thing for them.

But here’s the key point that we can then extrapolate into the tactics of some megachurches:

The reason Target can snoop on our shopping habits is that, over the past two decades, the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs.

I would add…I wouldn’t put it past particular megachurches to do it too. continue reading..

Had lunch a few months back with a good friend and we spent time reflecting on a new ministry opportunity he had been given. He talked about being at a high liturgy church previously and now being at a low liturgy church.

Then he said this:

I think liturgy is like Jazz. You have to learn the rules to break them.

Lifehack.org also has an article called “improvise like a jazz musician” where they say:

Learn the rules so you can break them: Mingus learned to play in the highly structured environment of a classical ensemble; later, he studied the big band compositions of Duke Ellington.  There’s nothing sloppy or naive about his compositions, even when they break all the rules — Mingus knew the rules well enough to know why they had to be broken.

Hmm. That quote and concept has stuck in my head for a few months now.

In seminary we learned the old liturgies, studied how to write our own prayers, figured out collects (you, who, do, through!), and learned the “why is this like this” of the liturgy. Then we go and adapt or implement our understanding of liturgy with our churches or contexts. And sometimes we run into road bumps along the way.

One of the articles we got the biggest pushback from commenters here at HackingChristianity.net was “Seeing Communion Again for the First Time” where I talked about going through the full communion liturgy with all the blood atonement language after 3 years of writing my own liturgy. It was shocking. But the experience (and the comments from my respected friends and at least one now-current DS) showed me how much jazz I had put in my own liturgy and pushed me to move the pendulum closer to historical creeds and litanies rather than striking it out on my own.

But I can’t shake the jazz from the liturgy. I can’t, with integrity, leave liturgy unchanging and, at the risk of offending my Duke friends, sacrosanct. Heck, as my friend John Meunier has explored, even the UMC doesn’t consider their rituals sacrosanct and allow for variety so long as it is “not repugnant to the Word of God.”

I’ve seen this quote by Mary Hunt before: “to sacramentalize is to pay attention. It is what a community does when it names and claims ordinary human experience as holy, connecting them with history and propelling them into the future.” How can we name and claim an experience when we are using language and imagery older than the people in the room? How can we make liturgy truly the “work of the people” when it isn’t work to copy and paste?

Don’t get me wrong: I love the old liturgy. I use hymns as liturgies, I use Book of Worship liturgies regularly. But if I want to present an emancipatory image of God, then I have to use language and concepts that reflect and critique my culture, not perpetuate a foreign culture. It is not emancipatory if it isn’t directly critiquing the context, and while the traditional words are often timeless, my job as liturgist is to know the liturgy, understand its role, and then pull off a jazz rift at just the right moment, which by the grace of God I do.

In short, if liturgy is the work of the people, then does the communion liturgy include the people in it?  When will the sabbath be made for humans, and not humans for the Sabbath?

Thoughts?

“Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.”

attributed to Sir Francis Drake -1577

Matthew Paul Turner of Jesus Needs New PR has a rough story that just rips at my heart. A member of Mars Hill church was confronted about some of his actions by the MH leadership. And what follows is commonplace in rural fundamentalist Calvinistic churches…but I didn’t realize how intrinsic it was to the Neo-Calvinist resurgence.

Part 1 of the story is essentially this: A church member Andrew was engaged with another church member, cheated on her, the relationship ended and Andrew confessed his sin to his accountability group friend. After the church leadership got involved with many meetings, each time Andrew felt more and more ground under their feet. Andrew learned he was “under church discipline” and what that meant:

Something in his spirit told him not to trust them. Something caused him to believe that the men sitting in front of him were far less interested in restoring him than they were in having control, feeling powerful, throwing their spiritual weight around. Beating down a sinner like Andrew.

Andrew says that many of Mars Hill’s men feel beaten down. “Because that’s what happens there, especially when you question a pastor. You get beaten down. Until you submit.”

Andrew was offered a discipline statement to sign. Jesus Needs New PR has it on their blog post, but it entails (edits by MPT, CG = small accountability group):

Andrew will attend XXX’s CG and meet with XXX on a regular basis (define).
Andrew will not be involved in serving at MH.
Andrew will not pursue or date any woman inside or outside of MH.
Andrew will write out in detail his sexual and emotional attachment history withwomen and share it with XXX.
Andrew will write out in detail the chronology of events and sexual/emotional sinwith XXX and share it with XXX and Pastor X.
Andrew will write out a list of all people he has sinned against during this timeframe, either by sexual/emotional sin, lying or deceiving, share it with XXX and develop a plan to confess sin and ask for forgiveness.

So far, this is okay. I’ve done a behavior covenant before with a parishioner who needed it. That’s okay if a individual needs it and in your pastoral concern it would seem helpful. Fine.

Part 2 of the story gets REALLY scary: Andrew declined to sign it and told the pastoral leadership that he was leaving the church. The leadership wrote back that he would still be “under discipline” if he left and it would be “escalated.” Andrew had no idea what that would entail: Mars Hill posted on the church’s private social network an extensive letter about Andrew’s sins and how the church parishioners should act with Andrew in public in “permissible” and “impermissible” ways. For example:

What is not permissible? Refrain from associating with Andrew in social settings, such as eating a meal, attending a concert or movie together [Scripture references]. Such disassociation from Christian Community is designed by God to help him realize the seriousness of his sin and need for repentence (gospel shame – 2 Thess 3:14)

Read it all here. Amazing.

While others have written that this type of church discipline is closer to John Wesley than the UMC might be, I’m more interested in the term “gospel shame”

The term “gospel shame” is taken from 2 Thess 3:14 which says in the Common English Bible:

 Take note of anyone who doesn’t obey what we have said in this letter. Don’t associate with them so they will be ashamed of themselves.

But how often do the Church Discipline crafters go on to the next verse 15:

Don’t treat them like enemies, but warn them like you would do for a brother or sister.

As the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary states:

On the one hand, the larger church has the authority to shame the erring ones because of the latter’s deviation from the writer’s word as given in the letter (v.  14). On the other hand, the parameters of the reform are clearly prescribed: The larger church must not regard the erring ones as enemies, but (as in 1 Thess 5:14) they must “warn” or “admonish” them as believers.

Maybe I’m from the University of Phoenix of religions, but I think that refraining from social contact, posting a warning to other churchgoers about a forsworn former member, always reminding him in every social interaction that he is “unrepentent” sure is treating the individual more like an enemy than a brother or sister.

So…Gospel shame? Is this the Gospel? I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure it’s mainly shame, or the relying on psychological and sociological pressure to enforce biblical rigidity rather than relying on the Gospel and the love of Christ to transform hearts and minds.

I think this is a situation that reminds us all to examine our church disciplinary norms and procedures and see if we are treating the other with love or with rancor, with a twisting of Scripture to exert control.

As MPH closes his blog series with:

When I first read this letter, I was sitting in Starbucks, and I was shaking. Shaking because I was hurting for Andrew. And too, I was shaking because I was so angry that somebody (heck, a lot of somebodies–not just Mark) would use the words and messages of Jesus in such away.

And if this is how they plan to treat Andrew–as an “unbeliever”? How in the world do they treat people who really are non-Christian? (And not to mention the fact that Jesus hung out with Gentiles, tax-collectors, etc.)

Fine. If they don’t want Andrew to be a member of their church, take his name off the list! But this? I mean, seriously, did any of this letter, except for perhaps the “heavy heart”, infer that Mars Hill loves Andrew? Oh I know they think their actions represent love. But really, many of us have experienced firsthand that kind of “love,” and we know very well that it’s an abuse of the term.

I honestly wouldn’t wish this so-called “gospel shame” on Mark Driscoll, let alone somebody I know personally, somebody I’m called to love, somebody I am hoping to help restore.

And you know what’s sad? Many (not all) of Andrew’s friends (from Mars Hill) are “obeying” the advice in this letter. While every one of them has implied that they believe Mars Hill is completely out of line and blowing this out of proportion, they all end up using some variation of the words that Mars Hill told them to say.

Indeed. Thoughts?

I’m trying out a new year’s resolution: listen to a recorded sermon on Sundays so I get the same attempt at spiritual inspiration that my congregation gets with me in the pulpit. My pick this week was MLK Jr.’s sermon “A Knock At Midnight” (mp3link) given in 1957. While listening and puttering around, one section towards the end of the sermon caught my imagination. It was Dr. King saying this:

“The church can die as a result of the judgment of God as a result of refusing to stand up against evil.”

MLK Jr “A Knock At Midnight” 21:00

What poppycock. The church can’t die. Clearly Dr. King hasn’t read the blogs and especially the Call To Action.

• It’s our categorical imperative to sustain the Church and to reverse the Mainline Decline.
• It’s an immoral choice to focus on “side issues” like civil rights when our coffers and our pews are plunging.  What kind of socialist justice-loving church would that be?
• It’s a bad choice at General Conference to talk about distracting “hot topics” when we need to build up “vital congregations.”

Clearly, Dr. King’s priorities were all out of whack. What kind of church would focus on social issues when we need to be focusing on church growth and institutional preservation? We are destined to survive and we know that “God is not finished with us yet.” Right?

Right?

I kept listening as Dr. King railed against churches that freeze up or burn up. Turns out Dr. King was exactly on point with his sermon preached 55 years ago. I couldn’t find a full-text of this sermon, so I transcribed it below from minute 24 to minute 29. Any errors are my own.

We have two types of Negro churches that leave people disappointed at midnight. One freezes up and the other one burns up. The one that freezes up is that church that says it’s a dignified church. Preacher preaches a nice essay on Sunday, he tries to mean it. The choir tries to sing with meaning and power, but they don’t sing negro spirituals or gospel songs because it reminds them of their heritage. They are ashamed they are black and their ancestral home is Africa…They build a church that has no relationship whatsoever with their past…

I see this tendency in the Anglo-centric churches. They are the churches that build college-size campuses and walled gardens away from the neighborhoods. They are the ones who move out of the inner city to plant their church in the suburbs, with the unfortunate effect that homeless people don’t often make the trek out that far. The ones who are ashamed of their wealth (on some level) that they celebrate in semi-private cocoons and create a parallel culture to the one that they are called to serve. I’ve seen these frozen-up churches who have no relationship with their culture around them.

There’s another church that burns up. In this church, the emphasis is on muscle-ality rather than spirituality. In this kind of church, people have more religions in their hands and feet than they have in their hearts and soul. In this church, sometimes even the pastor depends on his voice, on volume not content. And the people leave on Sunday saying “we had a great service today and the preacher just preached this morning” and somebody say “what did he say” “I don’t know what he said, but he preached this morning!” (congregation guffaws)

Now the danger of this kind of church is that people will play with God. The danger of this kind of church is that people will make religion irrelevant, becomes mere emotionalism. Now religion when is real it is emotional, but the danger of this kind of religion is that they will have a zeal of God not according to knowledge. “Not only love the Lord thy God with all thy heart but with all thy mind.”

The other danger of this kind of church is that everybody will become so caught up in the irrelevant that they will not be concerned about the day-to-day problems.

The other kind of church is sadly on the rise in American Anglo churches as well, one that depends “on volume not content.” They are exemplified in either the feel-good sermons of Joel Osteen or the condemning-the-gays-and-women-and-hipster-men rants of Mark Driscoll. The refernce to churches that have a “zeal of God not according to knowledge” is my fear for the UMC as well. I fear we will have those types of churches that have a lack of value for theological education as a side-effect when our church leadership focuses on efficiency not effectiveness. Finally, if you read any of the conversations on the UM Clergy facebook group, you’ll see a perfect example of “being caught up in the irrelevant” fine points of doctrine that are used as weapons to condemn other pastors rather than as important articulations of values. The burned-up church is smoldering and it’s creeping this way.

Finally, in true Dr. King style, we get to the crescendo where the congregation is on its feet. It’s best listened to but here’s the transcript for conversation:

King: It seems that I can hear the God of the Universe saying “Don’t play with me and don’t play with my people.” It seems I can hear the God of the Universe saying to the Negro church and the white church also “People are hungry, they are in need of bread. Don’t play with me and don’t play with them. They come at midnight seeking bread, provide it for them.

“You don’t do that…I won’t hear your beautiful anthem. You can preach your eloquent sermons, you can pray your powerful prayers, but I won’t hear any of it because your hands are full of blood for the things that I am concerned about that you would let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

“If you want to know what it is I require of you, it is simply this: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.”

The Call To Action wants us to spend the next decade of church resources on navel-gazing, on bettering our churches and worship experience and coffers so that we can reverse the mainline decline. But that is the utter antithesis of King’s writings and sermons, as the Church he envisions is an outward-facing church that wastes its money on the poor and wastes its political capital opposing unjust laws rather than building parallel empires to the culture around us.

A church that doesn’t seek racial justice, that doesn’t provide for the marginalized in society, that doesn’t work for equality of all people regardless of their heritage or biology…that church will be left at the door at midnight, left in the darkness at midnight, left to be a zombie trudging forward with the image of movement but without the life behind it…at midnight.

While our church consultants and renewal groups tell us to stop talking about the hot topics, an echo from the past tells us today that if we aren’t in the business of equality and hot topics, then we are a church that has either burned up or frozen up.

My prayer for our General Conference delegates today is that they heed the call from Dr. King from 55 years ago and keep us as an outward-facing church: one that works on its discipleship, yes, but does so not divorced from the culture around us. Like the burned-up churches that are emotional without connection to intellect, we are in danger of being a spiritual practices church without connection to the practice of spiritual concern for others in both our structure and action.

So keep on working toward justice, Church. Keep on pursuing it for all of God’s creation, even when the church itself tells you that you are wasting your time, that that money won’t count towards being a “vital congregation.” Keep on doing it, and when all is said and done, the churches around you may burn up or freeze up or they may hopefully step up and be on the path towards the land where justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream. Keep that dream alive today.

Thoughts?

Here’s a bible-geeking out story for you. OpenBible.info has done a “sentiment analysis” of the Biblical record and posted an interesting graph about it (h/t O’Reilly). Here’s their methodology for you academic types:

Sentiment analysis involves algorithmically determining if a piece of text is positive (“I like cheese”) or negative (“I hate cheese”). Think of it as Kurt Vonnegut’s story shapes backed by quantitative data.

I ran the Viralheat Sentiment API over several Bible translations to produce a composite sentiment average for each verse. Strictly speaking, the Viralheat API only returns a probability that the given text is positive or negative, not the intensity of the sentiment. For this purpose, however, probability works as a decent proxy for intensity.

The visualization takes a moving average of the data to provide a coherent story.

Click here for the full readable size (there’s also a book-by-book analysis here)

It’s an interesting project and makes me wonder about a few things:

1. The Lectionary would benefit from a sentiment analysis. I would suspect the lectionary would be heavier on the happy sentiments than the darker sentiments (it’s Good News, right? Especially when we self-select out the difficult passages). I wonder then if we are giving a full understanding of the Scripture by excluding the “bogus” chapters.
2. A church’s history would benefit from a sentiment analysis. If a proper history or amalgamation of a church’s writings or committee reports (I know, a huge project), then it could be helpful for a church to understand its history and why certain periods of time seem better than others.

From my day with Leonard Sweet that I blogged about last week, one of his base concepts is that the language of the church is changing. He calls the shift the most important since Gutenberg created the printing press and that indeed the times we are in require a shift in perception and a willingness of the church to learn the language of the culture. The Gutenberg culture thinks in words and verses; the Google culture thinks in stories and narratives. And right at this moment both cultures are getting closer and closer to parity and both need to be taken seriously.

Sweet describes the paradigm shift from the Gutenberg World to the Google World well in this video:

Guiding questions:

1. How is your church learning the language of the culture?
2. How is your ministry context connecting with the images and narratives of the culture?
3. How do you retain the Gutenberg generation while reaching the Google generation?

I think the most important concept is that Missionaries either taught the people English to explain their concepts or they learned the people’s language and re-framed the Christian concepts. In the former, the natives had to translate foreign concepts in an odd tongue. In the latter, the missionaries had to be the agents of translation from an English culture to the native culture.

Is your ministry context providing the translation services or are you expecting the culture to do the translation?

Thoughts?

The lectionary text for this week is Matthew 22:1-14 (CEB/NRSV), the Parable of the Wedding Banquet.

The temptation is to do an allegorical reading, meaning that each character represents a real-life person. The king as God, the king’s son as Jesus, and the unworthy subjects who kill the king’s messengers as those who persecuted and killed prophets, and especially those who persecuted and killed Jesus and his apostles.  This makes sense and it has made sense to most of the commentaries I’ve read, from John Wesley on down.

But I’m with Dylan on this one: I can’t wrap my head around seeing the King as God. And if I can’t do that, then the whole parable becomes something utterly different.

The kings burns buildings down, not just seek justice for the killers, but burns entire cities. This is the God says elsewhere “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” not “a city for a killed servant.” And the king judges and dismisses a person on sight…this is the God of eternal love and forgiveness who has forgiven me and every reader of this blog…this king represents God?

Why is a story of a God who burns down people’s houses in this bible? We’re used to it in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament a God of fiery wrath and destruction isn’t found anywhere other than Revelation and one or two scenes in a particular Gospel called Matthew.

Maybe I’ve been reading it wrong. Maybe the King isn’t God at all. Maybe the King is a King.

If so, then maybe this isn’t a story of how God deals with backsliders or those who reject God and God burns them in fire. Maybe this is a story of how we ought to resist when the Empire and the World tries to bend us into shapes we do not recognize.

Reversing the Text

Some historical perspective: In the time of Jesus, Israel was occupied territory. Like any occupied nation, it would likely respond to the Empire around it in one of two ways. It would either fight them off by force, or it would try to preserve their values and their customs. Israel did both:  They had zealots who fought the empire with armed resistance, and Pharisees who taught rigid law abiding lessons and kept their culture pure and isolated from the Empire.

Why is this relevant? Look at the text again. When the king came calling, some went away to their homes and businesses and isolated themselves from the king’s wrath. Sound like anyone we’ve just mentioned? And some took and killed the king’s servants…sound like anyone we’ve just mentioned?

If you were an original hearer of this story, that might be the immediate connection. Some isolate from the king and make their places pure, some do violence to the king and are destroyed. Israel did both but now the Zealots have been killed. The Pharisees are losing by attrition the number of impure people they exclude to keep the holy pure. So what’s the better option?

Luckily there’s a third option. Remember the end of the story? The countryside is in flames from the king’s wrath. People are gathered probably awkwardly at the king’s banquet (hello your majesty, thanks for burning my city down, where’s the wedding cake?), and in their midst stands a garmentless man. Not just a poor man for history tells us that at a wedding, robes were given to the attendants at the door, so this man intentionally did not wear the robe. The king is enraged, angry, asking why the man has no garment, no wedding robe. The man is silent and is thrown into the darkness.

Now wait-a-minute, thrown into the darkness and is silent before a king. If I was a first-century Jew, that would spark a memory of Isaiah 52-53, the suffering servant. The one whose suffering will ease the pain of a nation. The one who is silent before kings. The King reacted in the only way he knew how: violence.

For us today, do we know anyone else who was silent before his accusors, was bound at his hands and feet, and thrown into darkness? A few chapters later Jesus is in front of his accusors, first the judean leaders, then Herod, then Pilate himself. He is crucified at the outer edges of town where the lights do not play. He was bound at his hands and feet, and the words of the Centurian “this ought not have happened”

When the world comes knocking at your door, demanding your allegiance, demanding you trade your values for its values, you can fight, you can flee, or like Jesus you can participate in your world but not be conformed by it, not be bent and unrecognizable by it.

Reshaping The Message

The story starts with a king knocking at people’s doors and getting them to do what he tells them to do.
Maybe this isn’t a story of how God deals with backsliders or those who reject God and God burns them in fire.
Maybe this is a story of how we respond when the world comes knocking and tries to bend us into a shape that we don’t want to be in.

We know a bit about this, don’t we? We’ve been bent into a shape of a mom who gives all her time to her kids and takes none for herself.
The shape of a dad who was is demeaned at work so he can put food on the table.
The shape of an elder parent moving in with their daughter when they lose their home to foreclosure.
The shape of a youth who starves herself to fit into skinny jeans.
The shape of a boy who doesn’t want to play sports but is forced to to be accepted.
Many of us have been bent into shapes that we wouldn’t have thought of being in years ago.
If you think back to years ago, would you have expected to be in the shape you are in today?

We are all being bent by the world, and we come to this text today not to be guilted into confessing God is king, but to see what help we can have when we have to respond to the world around us.

Remember that Jesus is the one telling this parable. In utter contrast to the worldly king, Jesus will give His life rather than take life. A few chapters back in Matthew 11:22, Jesus says “from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of God has suffered violence and the violent take it by force.” If we isolate ourselves and seek purity, kicking out non-conformity, then the kingdom burns, and our only hope is a man who refuses to bow down to any king other than the one who sent him. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, it is not delivered from it.

You are invited to build the kingdom, a kingdom opposed to all other kingdoms who rule through violence and force. If we are called to be kingdom builders, we will have to make the same choice. We can flee from responsibility, we can react in violent and unhealthy ways, or we can suffer together through the rough patches and emerge the other side wounded, bent, broken, but a little patch of the kingdom is redeemed.

We started this conversation because we were uncomfortable with the image of God as an unrighteous king. We will always be tempted not only by a kingly God, but that we can be kings too. Jesus sets us free from this temptation to become kings and rule our kingdoms with harsh judgment. As long as we feel personally charged with deciding who should pay for their sins and how, there will be no rest for us — not only because there is always some crime which we might feel charged to avenge, but also (and perhaps more importantly) because when we’re caught up in the vengeance cycle, those dark places we see and lash out at in others are bound to be projections of unacknowledged and therefore unhealed dark places in ourselves. In other words, people seeking vengeance are “treating” something that isn’t the wound, leaving the real wound to fester.

Jesus is the suffering servant. And I’m convicted that he invites you to resist the temptation to judge, try, and convict others today, and instead find new ways to suffer together when the world tries to bend us out of shape. And when we struggle together, there in our midst is a garmentless man, taking the brunt of the world’s force, taking the edge of the knife, taking our sins and rendering them powerless over us, if we only trust him to do so.

May all your images of God as a harsh judge be replaced by a God who sent God’s son to redeem the world.
May all the moments when you suffer violence for the kingdom be helped by knowing our Lord Jesus Christ suffered violence but was not overcome by it.
May when you look at your life and see it bent out of shape, do not be afraid. Our God is with you, and you can hide, or you can protest, or you can stand in silent refusal. And whatever you choose, God will never ever leave you alone.

Thoughts?

(Photo credit: “wedding banquet” by Andrew Juren, used by Creative Commons license)