When Jesus came near to Jerusalem and saw it, he wept and said: If only you had known the things that make for peace. —Luke 19.42
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My friend and I meet for lunch. We comment on the weather. We catch up on our children, grandchildren, and bodily ailments. We bemoan the travails of old age, the pathos of our favorite sports teams, and the mind-boggling complexity of smartphones and smart TVs.
My friend and I roam across a variety of topics, carefully tiptoeing around the elephant in the room. We have a tacit agreement not to speak of the elephant. But alas, the elephant stomps over, shimmies its rump against our table, and shits.
And that gets us going. We go round after round—decrying, deriding, readjudicating the elephant—until we inevitably slip into the slough of despond.
At our last meeting my friend got so dismayed he blurted out: Let’s change the subject, for God’s sake! Let’s talk about Jesus!
(My friend is Jewish.)
Really? Jesus?!
Yes. Anyone but that damn elephant.
Okay. I’ll tell you one of my favorite Jesus stories and then you tell me one of yours.
Deal.
I told him about Jesus confronting Zacchaeus, a wee little man, with wee little feet, and wee little hands whom everybody looked down on because he had used his civic powers to defraud people of vast wealth and make himself filthy rich.
One day Jesus took him aside for a private conversation. A few hours later Zacchaeus publicly confessed his sin, repented, and promised that he would give back four times the amount he had wrongly taken and furthermore he would give half of what remained to the poor.
Jesus put his arm around Zacchaeus and said to the stunned crowd: Today salvation has come to this house.
(Note to evangelicals: That is what salvation means!)
What’s your story? I asked my friend.
The Good Samaritan. The Samaritan overcame his racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry to tend to a battered, wounded, forsaken person belonging to a group he had been taught to despise.
And then, as I recall, Jesus said that’s what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.
(Note to Christian nationalists: That is what Jesus said!)
As it turns out, there’s more than one way to ignore the elephant in the room. This is one: Talk about Jesus.
Your turn.
Embracing a Jesus story that has meaning in my daily life is a good practice. Meditating upon the Good Samaritan story, one sees compassion in action. We realize the importance of touching the wounds of those who suffer. A typical cultural question is,”If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?” But the Good Samaritan reverses the question: “If I do not help this man, what will happen to him?” There is a Good Samaritan within each of us. Building relationships in this manner, one that transcends race, culture, religion, or perspective, would truly be revolutionary!
There is also the inner question, If I do not help this man what will happen to me? Who do I become?
Conversations these days inevitably go to the elephant in the room, as he & his minions shit on the White House (the people’s house), shit on us all (terrorizing us in the name of catching “criminals” & killing innocents in the process); taking health care & giving us anti-vax propaganda; taking our land & giving us more corporations robbing our riches & our heritage; & on & on…
Jesus! A powerful, wise healer who taught of love & forgiveness & compassion.
When he saw that a mob was surrounding a woman who had loved a man other than her husband (what was her husband doing, anyways?), ready to throw stones at her (until she was dead – justice?), Jesus said: “Let he who is without guilt cast the first stone “.
I believe then they walked away, ashamed.
Today, the stones fly… Lord help us, Jesus. Help the blind to see & the deaf to hear!! We need your love, your comfort, your wisdom today (& every day).
The elephant in the room can’t be ignored. The only way to avoid him is to leave the room after he shits on your table. Then somebody else has to clean up the mess.
My favorite Jesus story is when he ran the hucksters and money changers out of the synagogue. Righteous rage and indignation. There’s a line from a song by Pete Seeger that goes something like this, “Jesus died to save our sins. Oh, lordy mama, we’re gonna need him again!”
Yes yes yes. But the best way to settle your spirit is to join a gathering of your neighbors on the street standing up for the America we love.
Amen brothers; Amen sisters!!🙏
Trying to follow Jesus, trying to pray, trying to live with grace is certainly a challenge these days, and when it is a burden, I know I should just give it up in prayer and keep on living as Jesus asked his followers to do. Bad things abound with our present administration. I thought of Kushner’s thoughts, “We can’t ask God to weave a magic spell around us so that bad things will only happen to other people, and never to us.
People who pray for miracles usually don’t get miracles, any more than children who pray for bicycles, good grades, or good boyfriends get them as a result of praying. But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayer answered.”
Harold S. Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People
I agree with Stephen AND I have two favorite “Jesus” stories! Pilate repeatedly asks Jesus to admit that he is “king” of the Jews. Jesus refuses and finally tells Pilate: “For this reason alone was I born unto the world: To bear witness to Truth.” Pilate demonstrates that he understands Jesus on a deeper level when he jumps into Jesus’ “reality” and asks, “What is Truth?” And then he abdicates his judicial responsibility for the more favorable political optics back in Rome.
A second favorite was born when I learned the accurate translation: “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” is accurately, “Be ye whole as your Father in heaven is whole.” In other words, live an intentional life that attempts to integrate your inner darkness and inner light,” the yin-yang of wholeness. Heal, whose root is connected to health and heart.
The deranged Elephant’s presence demands we take strength from Wisdom traditions to fuel our activism.
Heard a good one today….Christian Nationalism is just white supremacy in bible drag.
Not sure what this has to do with elephants though.
Randy, you brought your favorite elephant to our discussion. Can anyone have “just one favorite story” when the new Testament is full of the chronology of him or the bridge to the old testament. (Now, is a less pious way, I will tell you my secret favorite story, the one about????,,,oops, I can’t remember. Being 81 saved me again)