The Real Scandal (Mark 9:38-50)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Sep 27, 2015)

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The Problem Is Not Without—It’s Within

In the portion of Mark that we’ve been looking at, Jesus is leading his disciples to Jerusalem. Along the way, he’s been teaching them about the way of the cross (8:34). The world says greatness is being first and most important and strongest. The way of the cross says greatness means being last and welcoming the littlest. The world prizes upward mobility. The way of the cross is the way of downward mobility. The world wants certainty and security. The way of the cross celebrates the mystery of faith.

Today Jesus continues his lessons about the way of the cross.

John and the disciples have just complained to Jesus about a healer who is working outside their group. They sound a little like tattletales pointing the finger—“he wasn’t following us!” (8:38). For John and the disciples, it was a bit of a scandal to have an outsider healing people. Just as it might be a bit of a scandal for someone to suggest that sometimes the real healing at Gayton Road happens not in this building but in the building next door where the AA groups meet.

In response to his disciples’ concern, Jesus does what he does so well: he turns things upside down, inside out. He says that the real problem here is not to be found without but within. The real danger is not a stranger who heals people. Where else could that healing come from but God? The real danger for the disciples—or the “stumbling block,” as Jesus will start saying—is the disciples themselves.[1]

The “Scandal” of Losing Trust

Actually, the word for “stumbling block” is skandalon in the Greek, or as we would say, “scandal.” Now, Jesus is not talking about the flashy scandal that attracts the media: not the scandal of former governor Robert McDonnell, not the scandal of the Ashley Madison leak, not the common scandal of celebrity mischief. The kind of scandal that Jesus talks about today is what you would read not on the glossy pages of a magazine but only in the secret, and perhaps dusty, archives of one’s heart.

The scandal that Jesus talks about is losing trust, or as we sometimes say, becoming jaded. When Jesus first addresses the disciples, he warns them against “scandalizing”—against putting a stumbling block in front of—a little one who trusts in him. And as Jesus hinted at last week, little children are remarkable in this way. They walk through life with an exceptional trust and vulnerability. They expect goodness. They say, “Yes,” to life just like God did when God created the world and blessed it and called it good.

Jesus says that it would be a real scandal to cause a little one to lose trust in God. To make them dread the morning instead of eagerly anticipating it. To extinguish their dreams of the impossible with a cold bucketful of what the world imperiously calls reality. To shut their storybooks of truth and throw them into the account books of facts.

There is a sense in which it is these little ones who trust in God that are the lifeblood of our world, the real religious leaders. It is their spirit of trust that keeps us open to the God who is always doing a new thing.[2] And so, Jesus says, using exaggeration to make his point: anyone who causes these little ones to lose trust would do better to drown. Because to make the little ones lose trust is to deprive our world of the only hope that it really has.

Deadly Scandals

When I was growing up, my family and I would religiously go out for Mexican food on Friday nights. My tastes evolved over time—from the burritos locos to the enchiladas verdes to chilaquiles calientes. But one thing would always be the same. At the end of the meal, having devoured baskets of tortilla chips and whatever my main course was, I was stuffed. And if my mom or dad asked me how the food was, I would reply, “I’m full to death.” Just as someone still sitting at her work desk after 8 hours might say, “I’m bored to death.” Or like someone who was tired of a nagging problem would say, “I’m sick to death of this.”

They’re all exaggerations, of course. In each case, we’re biologically very far from death. And yet, our exaggerations get at a certain truth. When we say these words, it’s because life has, in a sense, come to a standstill for us.

And I think it’s this kind of exaggeration that Jesus uses when his talk of scandal entertains the idea of lopping off hands or feet or taking out eyes. It’s a scandal enough that we cause little ones to lose trust, but that’s not the whole story, Jesus says, because really, when we do this, it may be a sign that we ourselves have already lost trust in God. To such an extent that it might be said we no longer live. And the real scandal for Jesus—the scandal that leads him to talk about missing hands or legs or eyes—is almost too easy, too plain for us to catch. The real scandal is not the dramatic public failure, but simply our feeling of self-sufficiency. The real scandal—the real stumbling block—is the trust we place in ourselves: our hands, our feet, our eyes.

We use our hands to possess things, and we acquire more and more. To the point that we are full…but unfulfilled. Full to death. And so the real scandal is not when a man is caught for embezzling but rather is the moment that his paycheck replaces his lifelong passion, whatever God is calling him to do. It won’t be long before such a life is nothing more than burnt ash.

We use our feet to go places, to reach a destination that we think will be better than where we are. To the point that we are busy…but bored. Bored to death. And so the real scandal is not the shocking affair that covers the frontpages but the loss of wonder in the here and now. It won’t be long before such a life is nothing more than burnt ash.

We use our eyes to see how we are seen, to see how we stack up against the world. To the point that we can be idolized…and yet somehow sick of ourselves. Sick to death. And so the real scandal is not the paparazzi photos plastered on the tabloids but the heart that no longer receives love freely because it thinks that love must be earned or won. It won’t be long before such a life is nothing more than burnt ash.

The real scandals of our lives go by unnoticed, like a text message we never receive because we’ve silenced our phones. In such moments, we are as good as dead. Biology may confirm that our bodies are alive. But what life is there in a world in which we only can trust ourselves, a world that is limited only to what we can imagine or muster? Such a life becomes meaningless. Or as Jesus would say, flavorless.

The Great Cook

Left to our own devices…we would eventually lose flavor. We would become fossilized around our habits and assumptions. We would become automatized, like a computer program set into an infinite loop.

Thank God we are not left to ourselves, to our dulled desires and our petrified presumption. Everyone, Jesus says, is salted.[3] And so pardon my imagination as I envision a great Cook stirring all of us into a big pot of Brunswick stew, and then occasionally adding a dash of salt. The salt does not magically transform us into something different. It draws us out of ourselves even as it makes us more ourselves. There’s a paradox here. When we trust in ourselves only, in our hands or feet or eyes, our flavor stays locked inside and we lose ourselves. But when we open ourselves up to the unknown mystery and allow the great Cook to sprinkle salt on us, our distinctive and tasty flavor comes out and we become more ourselves.

And I’ve tasted it here at Gayton Road. Not the Brunswick stew—I mean, I have tasted that, and if any of you haven’t, you should. It’s wonderful. But I’ve also had a taste of the Brunswick stew that God is stirring. Ivan’s earnest hellos and handshakes, Emily’s channeling of our children’s energies into creativity, Daniela’s floral enthusiasm, Carl’s buoyant welcomes…each and everyone one of us have a divine flavor within us. And chances are, we’re not even aware of it, because we’re most flavorful, we’re most ourselves, when we’re not even thinking of ourselves. It’s like when a sports player is in the zone, or when a poet is caught in the rush of a spirit deep within herself. We are most ourselves when we are most in tune with the God who stirs within our hearts and calls us out of ourselves.

The great Cook desires this: that the sacred flavors we were created with be drawn forth from our lives more and more. The great Cook desires that we avoid the scandal of trusting ourselves alone and that we give ourselves over to an evolving recipe we will never know completely, that we allow ourselves to be salted and drawn out of ourselves even as we become more ourselves.

The great Cook desires, quite simply, to cook.

Prayer

Draw us away from the scandal of self-certainty, Lord. Salt us anew and from deep within us, from a place we know not where, bring out our unique and sanctified flavors in fresh ways. Amen.

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[1] The word Jesus uses is skandalízō, a verb that means “to cause to stumble.” Its noun form is skandalon, which is often rendered “stumbling block.”

[2] See, e.g., Isa 43:19 and Rev 21:5.

[3] “For everyone will be salted with fire” (Mark 9:49). This verse is cryptic, but many scholars read it as a reference to the ancient Israelite practice of salting sacrifice (cf. Lev 2:13). It is not uncommon for the New Testament to envision life as a sacrifice. In such a framework, this verse would be suggesting that we are all salted so as to become pleasing sacrifices to God—in other words, so as to live meaningful lives.

pealing

i have watched men
with carefully combed hair and
suffocated suits
turn god into bullet points

i have heard unrestrained laughter
pealing from a room full of
play and imagination
where the Impossible is not

Downward Mobility (Mark 9:30-37)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Sep 20, 2015)

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Grownups Move Up

By all accounts, the disciples of Jesus were grownups. They had already learned how things worked in the ancient world. They knew all about money and taxes: one of them was even a taxman. They knew all about power and politics: one of them was even a revolutionary intent on seeing Rome fall. They knew all about the humdrum routine of adult life: more than one of them got into a boat each day and went fishing for a living.

According to today’s text, these grownups following Jesus had a very grownup conversation on the road to Capernaum. What do grownups talk about? Well, once they get past the weather, and perhaps a bit of politics or scandal, they have a tendency to talk about themselves. They talk about their plans and expectations. And generally these are plans and expectations for moving up in the world: a new house, a raise at work, accomplishing a great achievement, winning an award.

We don’t know exactly what the grownups who followed Jesus were talking about on the road to Capernaum—Mark doesn’t tell us—but we can assume it went along these lines. Jesus was becoming more and more popular, and so his grownup disciples were naturally speculating on their own upward mobility. Who among them would be the greatest?

Jesus Moves Down

Grownups can be a bit silly. Sometimes they get so lost in their own plans and expectations that they do not see the reality in front of them. In the case of these grownup followers of Jesus, they were daydreaming together about their own personal success and greatness just moments after their leader had told them about a very different fate: suffering and death.

And so there is an odd movement to the story. The grownup disciples fantasize about moving up. But everything their leader Jesus says and does is about moving down. First, Jesus is literally moving down: he’s leading the disciples to Capernaum by the Sea of Galilee, and this would have involved a descent of thousands of feet over the course of two or three miles. Second, when Jesus addresses his disciples, the story offers us a delightful little detail: it doesn’t simply say that Jesus spoke to his disciples, but rather that he first “sat down” and then spoke to them. So they’ve walked down thousands of feet. Then Jesus sits down. And when Jesus speaks, his words are all about a downward turn: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

You can bet that Jesus’ words raised an eyebrow or two among his followers. Remember, these are grownups. They treasure upward mobility: they gravitate toward the biggest, the strongest, the most powerful, the best. Sure, they may say they’re content with a modest living and good health, but their eye is almost invariably directed upward: on whatever extra bit of power or money or security they can obtain.

I imagine that Jesus’ words would raise an eyebrow or two among us too, if we’re listening with honest hearts. “If anything is certain,” it is that at an early age, we have been taught the desire “to be the best, the strongest, and the most powerful. The attitude of ‘We’re number one!’ is nurtured with all diligence and on all levels [in our culture]: in athletics, business, technology, and military power.”[1]

Be last of all? Be a servant to all? To any grownup, which is to say, to anyone who has learned the way of upward mobility, Jesus proclaims an upside-down gospel: the gospel of downward mobility.

And Jesus—having walked down thousands of feet, having sat down amidst his disciples—takes a final step down on the way of downward mobility. He takes into his arms an individual who has yet to be initiated into the world of finance and politics and proper social behavior, an individual who is of little account to the world. He takes into his arms a little child.

A False Welcome?

Which might not seem so revolutionary in itself. If you think about it, even the most powerful or wealthiest among us will take a little child in their arms from time to time. Who would refuse to care for a little child?

But Jesus is talking about more than merely taking a child in one’s arms. He insists on welcoming the little child. Whoever welcomes a little child welcomes God.

And this is precisely where Jesus’ gospel of downward mobility sinks its teeth into real life, precisely where its rubber meets the road of reality. Because how often do grownups actually welcome a child? We’re all familiar with the expression, “to treat [someone] like a child.” To treat someone like a child means to look down on that person, to treat them as though their view of the world and their way of doing things doesn’t matter. And this expression suggests that the way we treat children, the way we welcome them, is often a false welcome. We may look a child in the eye and smile; we may nod as we listen. But in the end, we already have it figured out, and the only real question is whether the children will abandon their ideas and feelings and be initiated into our world, or not. In the end, we grownups have the right of way: we speak before spoken to, we interrupt when the child wanders off on a tangent, we instruct and direct as needed, we reserve the right to the last word.

Now I’m not advocating a rug rat revolution, and I don’t think Jesus was either. But I do think that Jesus is diagnosing a certain illness of our world, a certain grownupitis, of which the primary symptom is a settled and secured and self-enclosed life, a life that is calibrated almost exclusively to one’s own concerns and expectations. When we grownups with grownupitis welcome a child, it is often a false welcome because we welcome the child only insofar as the child becomes like us, only insofar as the child conforms to our image. In the end, we grownups with grownupitis are not welcoming the child at all…we are welcoming ourselves.[2]

Welcoming the Little Children

Moving from a false welcome, where we demand conformity to our world and our way of doing things, to a genuine welcome, means allowing the other to be other. It means allowing a little child to be a little child.

I’m reminded of a scene I recently saw on television. An estranged parent reconciles with her young son for an evening together. She sits at her son’s shoulder as he colors a picture. After a period of silence, she compliments him, “Hey, nice drawing. You’re even staying inside the lines.” Silence. Another attempt: “Hey, you want to do something? Why don’t we go get some ice cream? Wouldn’t you like some ice cream?” The son pauses, and an eyebrow arches momentarily, but he soon resumes coloring. No. It’s as if he knows that his mother, despite her good intentions, is patronizing him. Her comments betray a different world, the grownup world, a world where staying inside the lines is good, where goodwill can be bought at the price of an ice cream cone.

Moments later, the mother picks up a toy figurine, holds it close to her ear, opens her eyes real big…and says, “What’s that? You don’t have a house? Every hero needs a house.” Hearing this, the son giggles, drops his crayons, and picks up some surrounding legos to begin building a house. It’s at this moment, I think, that the mother has truly welcomed her son. She’s relinquished her concerns and expectations, and allowed her son’s world—a world of play and imagination, of the unknown and the impossible—to become her own.[3]

“As One Unknown”

Welcoming little children changes the way we see and live in our world. As grownups, our natural trajectory is upward. And the more we move up, the smaller things look below, the more we have a sense of control over everything. But the more we move down, the bigger the world becomes, the more daunting and inscrutable and open-ended. The world becomes a place full of secret treasures waiting to be discovered.

My third or fourth Sunday here, during the prelude, Corinne wandered with wide-eyed curiosity up the steps and ran around the altar and the lectern. I can only imagine what her inquisitive eyes took in…the bread, the cup, the stained glass windows and the empty space of the baptismal beneath, the big Bible up on the lectern, all the attentive faces staring back at her from below. I can only imagine what she saw and what she thought. But I have a good hunch—judging by her wide-open eyes—that she saw all these things as strange and wonderful, as mysterious and full of unknown power. And I’d like to think that that’s part of what Jesus admires and praises in little children. If we welcome little ones such as these, he says, if we move down and allow their world to become ours, then we will be taking one step closer to God. We will be taking one step closer to a special faith that looks for God in uncharted territory, that appreciates God especially in new and unfamiliar faces, that anticipates marvels and miracles emerging behind each and every corner.

To truly welcome little children, to move down and live in the uncertain and wonder-filled world of the littlest, is, as Jesus says, a true mark of greatness. For instead of merely welcoming ourselves—instead of reducing the world to what we already know and what we expect—we are welcoming God. We are welcoming the unknown, the unforeseeable, the unthinkable, the impossible.

Just as Corinne will discover God in the bread and the cup, in some of the special words that we say, in the love of her family, and in many other ways that none of us could imagine, so we too can discover God. Every time we welcome little children, we welcome a God of surprises and new adventures, a God whose promise of new life means that mornings cannot come fast enough. We become born again. As it was for Corinne that morning when she wandered around the altar and the sacraments, so it becomes for us as we wander throughout the mysteries of love and grace and forgiveness and hope—the fingerprints of God in our world. We enter a world where Christ calls us anew, breaks open our stale, self-enclosed view of the things, disrupts us with the unimaginable. By truly welcoming little children and their world of the unknown and mysterious, we meet Christ as the disciples in today’s text met him: not as the God whom they already knew, but as the God whom they could have never imagined.[4]

Prayer 

Lord Jesus, when you said
that to welcome a little child
is to welcome God,
what did you mean?

Are we to be naïve or to ask questions?
To be innocent or to be trusting?
To be shy or to sing?
To be docile or to be open-eyed?

Show us how to welcome and become
not the ideal child we imagine
but the real child you took in your arms and blessed.

Teach us,
if we have done too much growing up,
how to grow down. Amen.[5]

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[1] Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ: Downward Mobility and the Spiritual Life (orig. serialized in Sojourners, 1981; Maryknoll, N. Y.: Orbis, 2007), loc. 153. 

[2] John D. Caputo, The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), loc. 5485-5490: “[H]ospitality…means to make the other welcome, which is very much the opposite of what hospitality means in the world. Outside the kingdom, hospitality means welcoming the same, even though it pays lip service to welcoming the other. The world’s hospitality, which is carefully calculated and practiced under strict conditions, is extended only to those who are on the list of invited guests, which is made up of selected friends and neighbors who can be counted on to reciprocate. But that is precisely not the…welcoming of the other, but rather staying precisely within the circle of the same.”

[3] Adapted from Season 5, Episode 4 of The Wire: “Alliances.” Beginning at 47:45.

[4] Cf. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (trans. W. Montgomery; New York: MacMillan 1956), 403: “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’”

[5] Adapted from Present on Earth (Wild Goose Worship Group; Glasgow: Wildgoose, 2002), 86.

God Is Pleading... (Prov 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Sunday Worship on Sep 6, 2015)

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Discrimination in Ancient Israel

Since the beginning of time, we humans have made sense of our world by dividing it up. By observing differences. This berry tastes good. This other one gives me a stomach ache. This animal is friendly. This other one bites.

It’s only natural that this tendency to observe differences has affected how we relate to one another. We observe differences among people. We can then group them as we did with the berries and the animals. These people are reliable. Those people are aggressive. And that group of people over there? They’re just lazy.

The ancient Israelites observed differences and grouped people just like we do today, just like we always have. For them, the great divide was between the rich and the poor. The traditional wisdom of their day more or less taught that the world operated according to a law of reciprocity. If you did good, good things would happen to you: riches, honor, long life (Prov 3:13, 16). If you did bad, bad things would happen. In other words, the poor just got what was coming to them. We see this way of thinking in the book of Job. When Job loses everything, his friends state matter-of-factly that his newfound poverty and suffering means he must have done something wrong.

It’s no surprise that this way of thinking encouraged hostility toward the poor. They had it coming anyway, right? If the words of the prophet Amos are any indication, it was common practice in ancient Israel for the rich to treat the poor with disregard, as though they didn’t matter (e.g., 2:8; 4:1; 5:11-12).

Our text today, though, offers a subtle challenge to this discrimination against the poor. First it rejects money as the standard by which a life should be measured. Then it offers its own standard of measurement. “The Lord,” it says, “is the maker of [everyone, rich and poor]” (22:2). Which is a way of reminding people that everyone is made in the image of God and blessed by God (Gen 1:27-28). So in the end—or rather, in the very beginning—there is no difference between the rich and the poor. Both are made in God’s image. Both are blessed. Both matter.

Seeds of Discrimination

So far, so good, right? We’re on board here with the wise teacher of Proverbs. God made everyone. Everyone deserves that dignity.

But let’s not rest easy just yet: the funny thing about fighting discrimination is that it often becomes a sort of discrimination itself. Think about our world. If someone discriminates on the basis of race, we call that person a racist. So there’s a clear divide: you have racists and you have non-racists. All you have to do is address the racists: punish them, re-educate them, lock them up if you have to.

Our text today is well aware of this sort of reverse discrimination, I think. It knows that at the very same moment we say, “All people carry the image of God,” we may also be vilifying a person for being a racist or a bigot or an extremist. And so our text paints a more complicated picture of things. It says that discrimination comes not from certain people but from certain words and actions. It paints the picture of farming. It says that if seeds of injustice are sown, then quite naturally these seeds will grow into trouble and sorrow. In other words, if you want to get to the root of the problem, then you have to stop fixating on one person or one group of people and pay attention instead to the seeds. The seeds are the root of the problem. Any farmer can throw down the seeds of injustice. One farmer just as easily as the next.

Bryan Stevenson, a black American lawyer who’s been in the practice for thirty years, has observed how these seeds can be unintentionally sown. Here’s one particularly memorable story he tells:

I was in a courtroom…getting ready for a hearing one day, and I had my suit on and my shirt and tie…sitting there at the counsel table, and the judge walked in and…said, “Hey, hey, hey, hey. You get out of here. I don’t want any defendants sitting in my courtroom without their lawyers. You go back out there in the hallway and wait until your lawyer gets here.” And I stood up, and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, your honor. I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Bryan Stevenson. I am the lawyer.” And the judge started laughing, and the prosecutor started laughing. I made myself laugh because I didn’t want to disadvantage my client. … But afterward I was thinking to myself, what is it about that judge that he sees a middle-aged black man in a suit and a tie at defense counsel’s table, and it doesn’t occur to him that that’s the lawyer? Do I think that that judge is going to treat minority defendants differently? I do. Do I think that’s going to manifest itself in disparities based on race? I do. And that’s not somebody who is consciously bigoted; that’s not somebody who is proudly racist.[1]

We don’t have to be a racist or a bigot to throw down seeds that will take root and grow into a prickly pasture of discrimination. And that’s why racism or any way of stereotyping and discriminating against others is so infective. It is ultimately sustained and transferred not through people—not through racists—but through words and deeds that foster the fear of others and discrimination against them. The problems of our world cannot simply be attributed to unjust people. The judge in our story, for one, was no racist or bigot, and yet if his court verdicts reflect the offhand judgment that he made upon seeing the black lawyer at the defense table, then he may subtly be sustaining an unbalanced and hurtful worldview that promotes a fear of others, that discriminates against the already discriminated.

In the Courtroom: God Is Pleading

Let’s stay in the courtroom a moment longer. Because according to the last two verses of today’s text, that’s where we may find God. Our text sets the scene: the poor and afflicted are standing at the gate, which in ancient Israel was the equivalent of the courtroom. It’s where all the key decisions of a community went down. So here we are, sitting at the gate, which is to say, at the courtroom. And all of a sudden, God makes God’s entrance.

Now the theme of judgment is no stranger to the Bible. But it usually features God as the judge. Here in our text, when God enters, I imagine that there’s an audible gasp among the audience. Heads turn. People gawk. Because God does sit in the judge’s seat. God sits at the defense counsel’s table.

Our text is absolutely clear about this change of roles. Even in its English translation, you can hear the juridical echoes: “[T]he Lord pleads their case.” God is the advocate of the poor. Which doesn’t mean that God says they’re any more innocent than the rich, that they’re any better, but simply that God takes their side. And perhaps it’s simply because God takes the side of any person who is discriminated against. God speaks up for any person who because of institutional and cultural biases does not have a voice of his or her own. In ancient Israel, where the experience of the poor would suggest that their lives did not matter, God stood up and argued that their lives mattered just as much as anyone else.

And is it really any surprise? That in the end, God here is not the judge but the advocate who sits beside and suffers with and speaks for whoever is discriminated against? Isn’t this also exactly what God does through the life of Christ? Jesus was “born in poverty, and his family belonged to the lowest [level] of ancient society. When he announced his ministry he said it was directed to bringing good news to the poor.”[2] And he identified himself directly with the “least of these,” those whose lives the world said didn’t matter.

Make no mistake. All lives matter to God. But in Proverbs and in the life of Jesus, God specifically takes the side of the poor and says, “Poor lives matter.” And God does this precisely to address a world that by and large said poor lives don’t matter.

If God Is the Defense, Then Who Is the Judge?

The idea of God as defense attorney instead of judge is radical enough on its own. It should leave us restless enough as it is. But if we allow it stir about in our hearts long enough, it may disturb us even more deeply. For if God is the defense attorney…then who is the judge?

There is a sense in which, in the end, it comes down to us. God calls. We answer. God invites. We respond. God pleads. We give the verdict.

And today just as in ancient Israel, God is pleading. Not long ago I witnessed a scene we probably have all witnessed: a presumably overworked, underprivileged parent snapping mercilessly at a child in the grocery store. And I felt an inexplicably deep ache—not just for the child but for the parent, too. I felt an ache that was much deeper than my self-interest and my own personal concerns. An ache that wondered what unfair and complicated life circumstances had denied these two their dignity and divine blessing, told them they didn’t matter, and brought them to that one miserable moment. An ache that simply wished things were different. Perhaps you’ve felt something similar before too. That ache, that mysterious pain that stretches our heart—that, I believe, is not simply our own heart aching. That is the cry of God, the great defense attorney. A cry that may be as simple as, “Why?” Which is a question that no spoken response could ever satisfy.

Even today, God is pleading for justice. How will the jury respond?

The Jury’s Still Out

I don’t know what the verdict will be. The jury’s still out. I do know that God is an unconditionally faithful advocate, and our hearts will always be restless so long as we live in a world where some people’s experience tells them they don’t matter. I do know that God will continue to live with the oppressed and suffering, and will continue to speak up for them, perhaps in socially organized movements, perhaps in the strange aches that invade and stretch our hearts. And I do know that the verdict God calls for is one not simply of words but of deeds. Not simply of good wishes, but of good seeds.

At the bond hearing for the man who brought hate and death into that church in Charleston, the victims’ relatives had the chance to speak directly to him. And when they did, more than one of them planted the impossible seed: they forgave him.[3] They somehow were able to look beneath the enormity of evil that this man had done and to see a glimmer of the divine image, of that original divine blessing. God had made this man.

And several days later at a eulogy for one of the victims, a relative said that his grandmother “was a victim of hate, but she can be a symbol of love.”[4] In other words, hers was a life that was taken by hate, but hers is a seed that will yield the fruit of love.

God is pleading for justice. And the jury’s still out. It really is undecided. But if it follows the lead of Emanuel Church and plants seeds of love—especially for others, especially for those whose experience tells them they don’t matter—then I have a feeling God may yet win the case.

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[1] http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2015/08/14/april-24-2015-americas-incarcerated/25852/. Visited on Sept 1, 2015.

[2] John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (Church and Postmodern Culture; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 83.

[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/06/19/i-forgive-you-relatives-of-charleston-church-victims-address-dylann-roof/. Visited Sept 1, 2015.

[4] http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/25/us/charleston-church-shooting-main/index.html. Visited Sept 1, 2015.