They say that they love me. But I don’t feel that love from them. They say that they love me—but that they hate my sin. Yet I feel only disapproval, condescension and judgment from them. And what of their sin, their personal failings? Because they are different in kind, does that provide them a different kind of absolution, a greater forgiveness? By common assent or practice do they make their common shortcomings more a forgivable human frailty, even a badge of identity or twisted virtue? But others, because of their misfortune of time, place and prevailing prejudice, are persons that a table cannot be comfortably shared with. Not comfortably, not really.
They deign to share space with me, talk to me, even indulge me, it appears, only because it’s a duty, a burden they bear in the example of Jesus. They see themselves as laborers about His harvest, converting souls to “saved” status as fast as they can get them to say, “I believe.” Cajoling or prompting conforming responses, they’re flipping salvation switches, taking the tally, and moving on, culling out another, then another, claiming more and more numbers for their side of the ledger. It’s all about goats vs. sheep, their beliefs vs. others’, their cultural identity vs. others’, conservative vs. liberal, Republican vs. Democrat, life vs. choice, heterosexual vs. homosexual, literalist-evangelical vs. liberal humanist, saved vs. non-saved and seeker too, legalism and judgment vs. love and humility—they vs. me. That’s what I hear; that’s what I feel.
But where’s the table? You know the one, where Jesus sat with the most prominent cultural and religious pariahs of the day, those people most shunned by the synagogue and the community. You know the one, where, by His example, He made clear that we all fall short of God’s righteousness, that we are all-alike sinners, not some-better-than-others sinners. And why would He sit with them? Why, just to be with them in fellowship and community; just because He actually did love them and care personally about them; just because they really were first in His interest and in His heart—and first as recipients of the promises and possibilities, the assurances that only He so caringly could give.
I want to talk and listen to someone like that, someone who listens and understands, who cares about me and accepts me as I am, not who he wants me to be. I can only trust and listen to someone like that. I can only be vulnerable and safe with someone like that. I can only want to learn to be like someone like that.
But who is their messiah, really, this god they claim to serve, and what has he to do with me and the biblical Jesus? And why does it appear as if they serve more their own cultural, political interpretation of Judeo-Christian life—with Jesus claimed, yes, but reinterpreted to affirm or rationalize the self-serving rigidities of their own identity and community? In them, I sense or experience precious little of Jesus’ love, His compassion, forgiveness, inclusiveness and, importantly, His humility. In its place, like a dusty lump of coal in my soup, they offer legalism, close-mindedness, self-righteousness and judgment.
Two millennia ago, I’m told, an occupied, dispirited Israel looked for a Davidic, conquering Messiah and deliverer from the Romans, a restorer of their nation and their independent cultural identity. They could not see or accept in Jesus another kind of deliverer, a spiritual deliverer, a restorer of their relationship with God.
In the same way today, the more aggressive expressions of cultural, political Christianity lift up a Davidic Jesus as their deliverer from secular humanism, liberalism, other spiritualities, even other Christian views. He would be their conquering, culture-restoring Messiah. And they, too, now appear unable to see or accept in Jesus another kind of deliverer, a spiritual deliverer, a restorer of their personal relationship with God. Do they fear the real, the profound personal and cultural changes an indwelling Spirit of Christ might necessarily bring?
First written: Fall 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
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