The Divine Intrusion

          Today we enter Advent – a season of examining God’s intrusion into our world. There are many who claim Jesus… nationalists, evangelicals, progressives… who all seem to be flattening Jesus onto a banner, into an image. To me, they all seem to be claiming Jesus as a mascot, rather than allowing Jesus to disrupt them, they are seeking to weaponize him for their own cause. They forget that Jesus wouldn’t allow even his own disciples to weaponize him or his movement.

          Jesus was born under occupation but refused to be defined by it. He brings new insight into the Torah, bypassing institutional gatekeepers. He refuses tribalism, eating with sinners, outcasts, Samaritans, whoever. Advent is a disruption of the way humanity goes about living because Jesus, as God’s intrusion, reorders power. He critiques purity culture and cancel culture alike, dismissing control, and modeling presence over performance. He refuses to be a symbol for our use.

The political turmoil we are seeing today reflects a powerful community that is trying to remove the worth of individuals, by hollowing our democracy into a system run by elites, a community that believes it knows better than the greater populace on how things should be run. So, they set people fighting against each other, creating immense distraction, in order to reorganize the power structure in our country. Where people who think they know what’s best restructure power to diminish worth, the life and actions of Jesus restores worth by reordering power through love.

          Jesus stands above all of it. When Jesus gave worth to our souls, he shifted the dynamic structure of politics exposing claims of authority, hypocrisy, and the use of others to fulfill our own desires. He confronts each of us to see our own worth as well as the worth of others. He refuses our scapegoating, coming instead as one who redeems, confronts, heals and calls us beyond ourselves.

          He won’t allow himself to be used… not to defend tradition and order, not to proclaim salvation by a code of conduct and separation, not to claim justice without seeing God’s presence in him and his call to repent.

Advent isn’t about waiting… it’s about unsettling…

          It’s about taking the time to release the fragments of our desires and allowing Jesus to become the living Christ.

Christ Before His Judges

          The image with this post is by Maurycy Gottlieb, a young, Polish, Jewish artist who died at 23 back in 1879. This painting, Christ Before His Judges, depicts Jesus as the disruptor, how he might have been experienced as some 30-something upstart. But it continues to call into my consciousness Jesus the untamed provocateur who cannot be easily quoted, pointed to, or claimed by anyone, but must be followed.

          As you enter Advent, bow your head, quiet your heart and ask Jesus to show himself to you. Let his Spirit guide you into challenging how you live today. If you don’t know how to do that, contact me – we can talk.