Trigger warning: violence

Beloveds of God, we are nearing the start of the Lenten season. Beginning the journey with Jesus to the cross. Remembering that our lives are sacred, miraculous, wild, and worthy of love. Remembering, too, that we are mortal.

The first time I remember really thinking about my own mortality was the spring of my sophomore year in high school. The year was 1999. There was this popularized, made-up story, about a girl at Columbine High School (remember “She Said Yes”?), and they ran with it like an invitation to holy war. Kids were primed to die for their Christian faith, to stand up for Jesus and take a bullet from some supposed outside enemy. They told us that anyone who wasn’t the right kind of Christian was an agent of ‘the enemy’ and an imminent threat to our salvation. They made us wish for violence so we could go out as martyrs, ignoring the Beatitudes and the servant heart of Jesus in the process to get us pumped up ‘for Jesus.’ 

To make a long story short, I have been writing journal entries entitled ‘if I die today’ since high school. Not worried so much about how people would remember me, as wanting to make sure my family and friends would be okay. 

Lent is a good time for this conversation, as we walk together to face, head on, the arrest and state-sanctioned killing of the man we call Jesus the Christ. The Lamb of God who was slain. The one who was defamed, mocked, spit upon, who refused to hate when it would have been so much easier to go down swinging. His final words, “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing” echoed again last month in a mother's final words “I’m not mad at you,” spoken shortly after she dropped her child off at school, when she chose to disrupt injustice by putting her body in between violence and her neighbors. I cannot help but wonder if her family and friends are okay, especially considering how publicly she was slandered within hours of her live-streamed death.

And although Jesus was called “King of the Jews” as a way to mock him, and his disciples, while he died, we have taken that up as a statement of faith, haven’t we? In light of would-be kings, we point to Jesus the crucified as our example, our leader, our Lord. It is this crucified God who saves us, not a warrior dressed in riot gear. Jesus put his body in the way between state violence and his beloveds. We honor that sacrifice when we refuse to give in to the hate and fear which surround us, when we re-member that all of creation is dear to our Savior.

Grae and Peace,

Pastor Andrew Tobias Nelson