Wonderful, Riotous, Scandalous Love

It was a revolting spectacle.

With the blatancy of a Coriolanus, whose arrogant outpourings knew no bounds, Jesus ran riot with love.

And, like Coriolanus, his outrageous outpourings incited bloodlust in his opponents, scorn in his former associates and, perhaps, acute embarrassment and frustration in his followers.

For he was blind to the boundaries established by common wisdom and law, not to mention moderation and tact.

Long before the crucifixion, he was a horror and a disgrace.

For he acted like a man who had no bearings.

And his transgressions were unforgivable.

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Lost on us, of course, who have heard the stories of Jesus repeated so many times by so many respectful and respectable voices that we have become numb to their impact on his contemporaries.

Lost on us, of course, who have become so much more accepting of the things that he did.

Work with the poor?  Bless you.

Work with the sick?  Bless you.

Work with the imprisoned?  Bless you.

A blessing imparted as automatically and thoughtlessly as the afterward to a sneeze.

But, if you are a member of a traditional denomination, I challenge you to go a few steps

beyond.

Knowing that, in the name of love, you may find it necessary to commit acts that will be seen as hideous desecrations of yourself, your community, your country and your God.

One: 

Head down to the local bar, and start hanging out with the local publicans and sinners.

Drink and dine with them.

Perhaps you would care to invite them over to your place.

Two:

Tailor the following scenario to your own situation.  If you are a straight male...

Find a woman who is outside of your tradition, a woman who has been married to several men, and who is currently in a live-in situation.  Impart to her the most treasured piece of wisdom that you have...

Put away the preachy stuff, tell her something that comes from your own experience.

...and invite her to pass that wisdom on to the other members of her tradition.

Three:

In the course of your travels, you will doubtless meet some who are guilty of sexual transgressions.

You will be oblivious to any suggestion of judgment.

Four:

In the course of your travels, you will suffer the presence and touch of  undesirables, after which your more conservative friends will counsel you to seek purification through prayer, deliverance or exorcism.

You will take no such heroic measures.

Indeed, you will bestow some of your finest gifts upon them.

Five:

In the course of your travels, you will doubtless meet with those who ridicule your church; you may encounter those who would delight in the downfall of your church.

Should you range sufficiently far afield, perhaps on an international scale,  you will encounter those who would seek the domination of your country.

You will bestow some of your finest gifts upon them.

You will bestow some of your finest gifts upon those who serve them.

Six:

I’m sorry, but for this you will have to be able to die and resurrect bodily in this world.  If you could so do, then, again, tailor the following scenario to your own situation.  If you are a straight male…

Make your first reappearance to a single woman in a deserted place, at a deserted hour, and commission her to spread the word of your resurrection to your largely-male friends,  some of whom have been arguing recently over the question of  whom is most in your favor.

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Quite obviously, none of us can accept that final challenge.

But if you accomplish even some of these things, you may reasonably expect to lose some of your Christian friends.

Despite their knowledge of the call to imitate Jesus.

Despite their knowledge of Jesus’ social habits, his commissioning of the Samarian woman, his encounter with the woman who was taken in adultery, his contact with the woman who had an issue of blood, his healing of the servant of a Roman soldier, his healing on the Sabbath and his appearance to and commissioning of Mary Magdalene in the garden.

...acts that will be seen as hideous desecrations of yourself, your community, your country and your God.

Lost on us, of course, who have heard the stories of Jesus repeated so many times by so many respectful and respectable voices that we have become numb to their impact on his contemporaries.

But it was an outrage, then.

And it would be an outrage, now.

To some, it would be unforgivable.

If you are a member of a conservative Christian tradition, and you were to conduct yourself in this manner, you might find yourself ejected from your assembly.

If your are a pastor in a conservative Christian tradition, and you were to conduct yourself in this manner, you might find yourself without a flock.

As we all know, these things have been done.

For, in so many ways, things have not changed.

We have not changed.

*

A moral castigation?

Perhaps.

But there is something more important that hovers over our poverty.

It is a question that hovers over us, a question that demands an answer: a question that many of us will face from the pulpit on Easter morning; a question that was asked two thousand years ago; a question that inspired so many liturgical reenactments that it has been credited with launching medieval drama; a question that has inspired and informed art and inquiry down through the ages; a question that continues to be asked now, echoing through the centuries…

Please God, may my answer be not “A Pharisee”; may it be “A God who performs exceedingly and abundantly beyond all of my expectations; a God who so showered and showers the world with such indiscriminate love that it must run afoul of all of my boundaries and all of my understandings and all of my beliefs and all of the pieties that I have so carefully tended in your name;

“A love that will run as riotously as a river in spring, obeying none of the boundaries of my beliefs; a love that will scandalize the most carefully constructed rules that I have placed upon it, and so upon you…”

And then, beyond all of my Easter pieties and all of my Easter celebrations and all of my conventional and respectable projections of Easter happiness, I will find the wildness of Easter joy, for you are, and ever have been, our gasp of delight at the unexpected…

And that is the birth of hope.

It is the question that was asked by the radiant angel at the tomb:

Quem quaritis?

Whom do you seek?

Our answers will speak volumes.

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I post new articles twice-monthly in “Author’s Corner”.

If you live in or near the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, and you would be interested in meeting with others for discussion and/or prayer, please contact me at rob@towarddawn.org.  All are welcome, regardless of identity or personal choices.  Please understand that I do not have the resources to guarantee that I will be able to read or respond to all other correspondence.

Toward Dawn is a privately-funded outreach, and it neither solicits nor accepts contributions.

                                                                                                                                                              Rob Wright

Rob Wright holds advanced degrees in education and performing arts, and he has been a professional teacher for over sixteen years.  In his home denomination, he has served as a lay minister in liturgical, educational and ecumenical activities.  He lives in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire with his spouse of twenty years and their daughter.