Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do unto me…
As the vitriol in the world increases and hate is normalized and legislated I’ve waited for Christian churches to rise up and fight back. Sadly, that hasn’t happen en masse.
I was raised a “public school Catholic” so my understanding of scripture and Jesus is pretty rudimentary, maybe even childlike. In my naiveté I expected “Christians” to live out Jesus’s words and deeds. You know the “love thy neighbor”, “be a good shepherd”, helping the poor, and overturning the tables of the money changers and merchants in the temple of Jerusalem (my translation of this is to go out and actually fight against institutional injustice). Sadly, the absence of action was the reason I left church.
I’ve often said I’m not a good “pray-er”. Ninety-nine percent of the words don’t resonate with me. The one exception is a single line in the Lord’s Prayer, “on earth as it is in heaven.” Whether you’re referring to the biblical Jesus or the historical man, he was a revolutionary. He not only preached love and inclusion, he fought against injustice. I remember during the height of the coverage of the George Floyd atrocity and the BLM movement I approached my pastor and asked why he wasn’t encouraging his flock to go out in the streets and peacefully protest the injustices. He said that message would make many in the pews uncomfortable. Good Lord, you can take than literally or figuratively, in his time on earth Jesus made A LOT of people uncomfortable. I think that was part of his mission.
This week kicks off the holiest of weeks in many Christian churches, Easter. But what does that really mean?
For many years I practically slept in the church during Holy Week. Being in the choir meant you got a front row seat to the hauntingly beautiful Easter rituals. I loved the music, starting with the deep, aching music of Holy Thursday to the triumphant verses at the culmination of Easter vigil.
Remember when people used to wear those plastic bracelets imprinted with the letters WWJD? Well, let’s ask ourselves, What Would Jesus Do?
I’m pretty sure he’d abhor the ritual adoration of his story while we are allowing a growing amount of pain and injustice to be inflicted on those less fortunate.
Instead of the pomp and circumstance of reenacting the stations of the cross, don’t you think he’d want us demanding the end of the illegal deportation of immigrants and the return of all those unjustly sent to an El Salvadorian concentration camp? What if the church re-enacted the brutal kidnapping, detention, and possible death sentence of Kilmar Abrego instead. That’s what “my Jesus” would want us to do.
When religious institutions are more comfortable reenacting the life of their “savior” who died more than 2000 years ago rather than walking in his footsteps… he definitely hasn’t risen.
