Lynching

Here's how deep, persistent, and radical the love of Jesus is...

Recently, while driving not far from here, I saw something that turned my stomach. An effigy-type image of a person was suspended from a large tree outside a home, with a sheet-covered image propped up by the tree next to it. I suppose the residents could claim to passers-by that this simply was a leftover macabre display from Halloween. However, the "hanged" person is clearly African-American, and the sheet-covered image has a pointed head above its blank eyes. No one in the area in which I live could mistake it for anything other than a mock-lynching.

Google "lynching" and you'll stumble into a horrific, extra-legal chapter in American history. The grisly history of lynching is particular painful for African-Americans. I was horrified by what I saw, and then angered. I imagined finding the address and writing the resident(s). I thought about putting something in our local paper. I even considered sneaking onto the property under the cover of darkness to cut down the effigy. Quickly returning to sanity, I gave up the last idea. We do have freedom of expression, I guess. Then there's all that legal private property stuff. Finally, there is a large, mean-looking dog chained near that tree, and I'm really not a hero, in spite of my imaginings.

And here's what really cuts to the chase - whoever put that hateful, Un-American display out there is something much more than someone who happens to have upset me. He or she is a person completely and fully worth the life, death, resurrection, and promised return of God's own Son...no less than me. That's the Gospel; like it or not. There is no pecking order of who deserves the cleansing power of the blood that trickled down the cross. Period. My venom toward this unknown person is no different than his/her venom toward of particular group of God's children. It means that the only hope we both have is the cross.

In some ways it was easier before I became a Jesus-follower. Then you could just judge people, categorize them, dismiss them, and scorn them. Now you have to see Jesus in them; even the ones who make you mad.

Darn. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Consumer

I never took a class in economics. (Most people who know me can tell you it shows!) However, I do know that we are in a holy season with regard to the North American economy - holiday shopping days. And during those days, as a citizen, I am regarded primarily in one crucially important way - I am a consumer.

The economy depends on me. Specifically, it depends on separating me from the money I have available to me, or it depends on me being sufficiently in debt that I willingly am separating myself from my money on a monthly basis, month after month, forever and ever - amen. I have to have a sufficiently high drive to consume goods and services to do my part.

Consumerism defines us in ways that are not limited to the economy. For example, many church experts say that people approach church involvement with a consumer mentality - i.e., "What do I get out of it?"

Here's something interesting...When John the Baptizer was preparing the way for Jesus, Luke the physician recalls that he had stinging words for some of the people who came to him to be baptized in the Jordan River. Specially, John said, "Bear fruit worthy of repentance!" (Luke 3:8.) When asked what that means, John did not tell people to worship more, to read scripture more, or even to pray more, as important as all those are. Instead, he told people who had two cloaks to give the spare one to someone who has none. He told tax-collectors to collect a living wage and what the Romans required, and no more. He told Judean soldiers to stop augmenting their wages by extorting from the citizens. In economic language today, he was telling people to stop defining themselves as consumers, as if life was only about what they could get out of it.

Interesting culture we live in...we use consumerism ("What can I get out of it?) to celebrate the birth of the One who came saying, "I have come to give my life as a ransom for many." Interesting...I'll see you around the next bend in the river, which is getting colder these days!