(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on May 14, 2017, Easter V)
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Jesus for President?
During the last election season, I often wondered: what would happen if Jesus ran for president? Of course, it is entirely the wrong question. Jesus, I believe, would never run for president. The power to make laws and move armies and modify the world by force, is not the way of Christ. Jesus does not seek the power of the world. He lives by the power of love, which is the only power that can really transform the heart.
Even so, I still wondered what would happen if Jesus ran for president. Imagine a platform built on turning the other cheek and loving the enemy. What would that mean for the defense budget? Imagine an agenda that privileged the nobodies and the nothings instead of big business. What would that mean for our economy? Imagine a policy that welcomed the strangers, wherever they came from. What would that mean for home security? Imagine “a politics of mercy and compassion, of lifting up the weakest and most defenseless people at home,…of welcoming the stranger and loving one’s enemies abroad.”[1] Oh, we love Jesus in the privacy of our devotions and maybe at church on Sunday, but let him loose into the real world and we see just how crazy he is! No matter if he sought the support of Republicans, Democrats, or independents, you can be sure this presidential Jesus would get nowhere near the ballot. He’d be a joke.
It’s worth noting, I think, why Jesus would really be rejected. It has nothing to do with what some of the world calls “Christian values.” His rejection would have little to do with his stance on sexuality or abortion or gun rights—though his stance on these things might frustrate people too. His rejection would have a lot more to do with the sheer madness of never-ending forgiveness and unconditional hospitality and a most inefficient generosity. We have domesticated acts like forgiveness and hospitality into tame, reciprocal gestures that we extend only to friends or people like us. But when such deeds are let loose into all the world, onto the risky playing field of strangers and enemies, they become as Paul once called them: foolishness and weakness. Who would possibly want to see their nation run by such policies?
Why Jesus Is Rejected
The funny thing about our history, of course, is that America has often proclaimed itself a Christian nation. The Puritans aspired to become the biblical “city on a hill,” a light to all the world. Not too long after the Revolution and the War of 1812, people were talking about “manifest destiny”—saying that God had chosen America to bring salvation to the world. Folks back then may have read today’s scripture with a triumphal, “Aha!” They may have found approval in verse 9, for instance: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”
Fast-forward to today, and there remain echoes of this self-identification between nation and religion. In the recent “culture wars,” some Christians have postured themselves as the last stronghold of this nation’s Christian heritage. Only now, the tune has shifted from conquest to besiegement. The Christians that once trumpeted their triumph as a city on the hill, now broadcast their rejection as a sign of their righteousness. They might turn to today’s scripture with a proud, “Aha!” In verses 4 and 5, for example, Jesus is “a living stone…rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight,” and we are invited to be living stones like Jesus. In other words—some folks today might say, “Look, we are rejected just like Jesus was. We truly are ‘God’s own people,’ as 1 Peter says” (2:5, 9).
But unlike the Christians who claim rejection in today’s culture wars, Jesus and his early followers were not rejected on the battlefield of power, where competing parties fight to have their way. Jesus and his followers were rejected for refusing to play the game of power. Christ’s way of love—the weak and foolish way of forgiveness and hospitality and giving without return—was a threat to the game. Religious leaders and Roman leaders alike rejected him not because of his stance on the latest topics of debate, but because he overturned the world order, giving pride of place to the poor and the prostitutes, the blind and the lame, while not indulging the presumed authority and prestige of the men who wore long robes and liked to be greeted with respect (Mark 12:38). The powers that put Jesus on a cross were not misguided. If people actually lived the way that Jesus proclaimed, the way of selfless love, there would be no place left for the powers-that-be.
In the Hands of Our Mother
This vulnerable way of living—the way of welcome without question and forgiveness without end and giving without return—is what we celebrate today. At the heart of Mother’s Day is not biological motherhood, but selfless love. Some of us are blessed to have or to have had mothers who exhibited this spirit; others of us may have been blessed to find this spirit in another. In either case, today is a celebration of the precious individuals whose hands hold us as helpless infants, gently guide us as children, and build us up with love into the fullness of who we are.
And this celebration—this is the good news that our scripture proclaims today. Our writer addresses a persecuted community of Christ-followers, a community rejected by the world around it. But rather than saying, “God’s on your side—now gird up your loins, take matters into your own hands, and fight the heathen,” our writer says, “Be like newborn babies who thirst for milk,” and “Be like building blocks waiting to be built” (cf. 2:2, 5).
In other words, the writer is saying, “Let go.” Life is no longer in your hands. You are in the hands of another. You are the blocks in the hands of a builder, a baby in the hands of a loving mother. You are not called to triumph by the power of your own hand. You are called to grow by love in the hands of another. Thirst not for victory but for nourishment. Crave not control but to be built up. Rather than retaliate against the world’s rejection, remember that God, your Mother in heaven, loves you. Live according to that love, like your brother Jesus did. Remember that you grow not by victory or triumph over others, but by the love of God.
Growing by Love
When I was growing up, I nearly always had a soccer game on Saturday. Sometimes we won. Sometimes we lost. All the time, my mom was there. I remember her especially on the times when we lost. Those are the times when I grew the most. I grew then because my mom loved me just the same. I learned that winning and losing did not matter, that being faster or stronger or simply more skilled did not matter, that even the game itself did not matter. Only one thing mattered. Me.
I grew into salvation not by what I did. I grew into salvation by the love of another.
Prayer
Our Mother who art in heaven,
Our world thirsts for your love.
We have tasted its goodness,
And so we commit our spirits
Into your hands,
Becoming like children.
May we grow humbly and dependently
Into the salvation of Christ,
Who is the way and the truth and the life. Amen.
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[1] John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture Series; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), ebook loc. 1386-1387.
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