Because sometimes you just have to say things...

As someone who talks for a big portion of his vocation, I also like to write a lot.  This post though is different.  This post is not going to be written, I recorded this today and am posting it to my blog.  I have always said that the Blog would be a no holds barred window into what I am processing and thinking and feeling, that is someting that will continue.  I am fully aware that there will be people who do not like this video, that will not watch till the end, that will shake their heads and write me off.  That's okay. Again I am sending what I feel I need to say at this time in life and in history.

Sanitizing Jesus

So here we sit in the middle of a global pandemic.  Many acting like spoiled children watching things blowing apart because enough was finally enough, one more black man was killed in the street by a bad cop....this following a black woman being killed in her own home by a bad cop, which followed the news of two white men hunting down a black man while a third recorded the whole thing on video.  We have seen white people systematically calling the police on people of color for no reason at all, from sleeping in the common room of a dorm that they live in, to going to the pool in the development that they own a home in, to walking through central park in an area set aside as a nature friendly area just for reminding a person that they are supposed to have their dog on a leash.  

We watch as protests turn violent and if we would watch and listen and realize we would understand that they have done so but not always for the reasons that many want us to believe.  The images on the news of people that have been attacked and tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets as they peacefully protest are beyond troubling.  

Last night one of my best friends was undone.  He is an episcopal priest, who happens to have been more than a small encouragement to me.  We worked in the same community in Baltimore.  He watched as the person residing at 1600 PA Ave. Had the police use tear gas, and rubber bullets to clear a group of protestors from the outdoor area in front of St. Johns Episcopal church, some of those individuals were clergy members and people that worked with and in the church.   The purpose for their being in the courtyard area was to offer water, medical attention if things took a violent turn at the protests and give people snacks, and a place of respite from the heat and the stressful situation that they all are finding themselves under.   Once cleared the church was used as a backdrop...a photo op complete with props.  My friend was upset...as was the bishop of the church, as are many other clergy members...myself included.  I am un-done and wonder so many things when it comes to my fellow evangelical pastors. I wonder how this act will be justified and then I realize that it will be, and my heart breaks even more, but that's not what this is about.  

As I have been scrolling through my feed, reading news, watching what people I know and respect are saying when it comes to all that is going on, the protests, the riots, etc.  I am seeing a narrative that is troubling.  There is what seems to be an effort to sanitize Jesus, and if anything this has made me realize how much the Evangelical church by and large has done so.  

When we read scripture it's easy to formulate how we would react in any given situation laid out in any of the stories we find there because we have the beginning, middle and end of the story.  It's easy for us to look at all that was going on in Egypt and the Exodus and the wandering in the wilderness and decide to judge the children of Israel for their screw ups because we have the end of that story.  We know that it took 40 years of wandering to get anywhere.  It's nothing to look at the book of Judges and wonder why the people kept screwing up over and over and over and why they had to be judged.  We look at things in the New Testament and we see the works that Jesus did and we see the people he healed and we forget that there was more to it.  American Evangelicals have a hard time with the parts of Jesus that fall into the pattern of the social gospel, because we think that all the ideals that are espoused in socialism are bad, or we see it as a bad word, and yet Jesus in addition to prayer and teaching also talked of and regularly hammered home the importance of the least the lost and the lonely.  

One of the things that really bothers me though is how we read and understand the human aspects of the one that saves us.  Realizing he was fully God and fully man matters, he is so other and yet he is so like.  

Where am I going with this?  People say that there is never a reason for violence, never a reason for that type of anger and angst.  What would Jesus do.  Someone then posted a picture of Jesus turning over tables in the temple and chasing people from it.  His anger and frustration obvious, the destruction of property visible, and I have to pause and re-think even some of what I understand about Jesus.  

John 2:15–16 (HCSB) — 15 After making a whip out of cords, He drove everyone out of the temple complex with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables. 16 He told those who were selling doves, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning My Father’s house into a marketplace!”

We all do it myself included at times.  Forget that Jesus got angry,  Jesus at times acted in what we would see as irrational.  Cursing a tree that was not even supposed to have fruit on it because well it didn't have fruit on it.  When we find him in the garden before his death we see him asking to not have to deal with or go through this whole thing.  He was so anguished he was sweating blood.  This is what Mark says:

Mark 14:33–34 (HCSB) — 33 He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began to be deeply distressed and horrified. 34 Then He said to them, “My soul is swallowed up in sorrow —to the point of death. Remain here and stay awake.”

Jesus was distressed and horrified.  He did not float he did not just go to his happy place.  

Throughout his time on earth Jesus, the one that we claim to serve, the one that we want to be like, systematically spent time with anyone but the majority.  He not only questioned but called leaders out for their hypocrisy, he touched people that were not whole, he healed people that no one would go near, he forgave people that were supposed to be stoned, He fed people that would later turn on him.  He got angry, he got frustrated he acted in ways that don't fit the picture of gentle Jesus Meek and Mild and yet too many times that's all we want to do is point to gentle Jesus. 

I know some will think that this is my way of saying the violence and looting are someting we need to not just see and attempt to understand but condone.  That is NOT WHAT I AM SAYING. I don't know how Jesus was able to do it. How he was able to be angry and sin not, how he was able to pray the prayer not my will but yours be done and mean it, how he was able to turn the other cheek, or watch a man he loved and knew and spent time with betray him.  I don't know and I don't understand but I do know that to tell people that Jesus never got angry, that he never broke things, is equally wrong. 

So what's this all about.  I guess it's me trying to make sense of how I can best stand with the people I love  and care about.  How to stand with Rachel and her family, or Jim and his church, or Mike a guy I went to school with.  How to pray for Todd and Missy and Keith some of whom I have not seen for ages.  How do I as a white man, a minster, a father, and a god dad/uncle to some that have chosen me to be that uncle. How do I as a recipient of white privilege make a difference?  Is it even possible or do I just sound like some trying to be woke white guy that will never understand?

This is where I would guess a lot of us are.  And maybe that's the point.  Maybe we are starting to see what it feels like to be hopeless and helpless.  Maybe that's what it will take for us all to finally say enough and not just stand in the gap, but stand in front of...to protect to uplift...to show that people are people...and all people should be treated as they were created, equal!