Saturday, July 20, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The Lord has promised good to me
A bruised reed he will not break.
This is the gentle Jesus about whom Isaiah is prophesying.
A smoldering wick he will not quench.
Silent, meek, mild, stealthy and effective will be this Jesus.
Until he brings justice to victory.
We always seem to expect our hero-savior to be a soldier, and for victory to arrive on the heels of bombs and mortars, destruction and death, sacrificial death of course (for the Good Cause), but death nonetheless.
And yet there have been some who chose the way of “falling upward,” or civil disobedience and nonviolence. They took their cue from Jesus. They learned the lessons of Jesus, he who “does not contend or cry out.”
For example there was Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Who moved mountains.
Gandhi and friends suggested five “pillars” of non-violence: respect, understanding, acceptance, appreciation and compassion. Wow. This is how I want to live, and the way most of us want to live. If only those others … would want this too.
The Pharisees went out and took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. When Jesus realized this, he withdrew from that place. Many people followed and he cured them all, but he warned them not to make him known.
Confronted by the powers-that-be, Jesus chose neither violent resistance nor meek submission. Mr. Digbee, an Amazon reviewer of Walter Wink’s book, “sees these two poles as variants of the biological ‘fight or flight’ response to threats.” What a good point he makes. We have fallen into those biological variants since brother murdered brother in Genesis 4. The story of Cain killing Abel is echoed in the Koran. And now, rescued by Jesus who would not harm a fly, we are free to make a better choice, informed by those five pillars: respect, understanding, acceptance, appreciation and compassion.
When I think back to yesterday’s devotion and the ideas behind TED (The Empowerment Dynamic), I realize that creators, challengers and coaches all live by those five pillars. This is not rocket science, and it certainly is not new. Bible stories and relationships are based either on respect-understanding-acceptance-appreciation-compassion … or their opposite. Not love or hate so much as love or disdain.
Take misery and sorrow into your hands, for on you the unfortunate depend, of the fatherless you are the helper.
When Jesus says, “Follow me,” surely he is saying follow me into the dark, infested-with-evil places left behind by the rich and famous, who far too often found their way out on the backs of those they left.
Proudly the wicked harass the afflicted, who are caught in the devices the wicked have contrived.
This is no way to run a world. We all become more and more short-sighted, selfish and unhappy. Even the church, perhaps especially the church, what has often been called the Body of Christ, loses itself within itself.
You shall have no one to mark out boundaries in the assembly of the Lord.
Thank you Jesus, for your quiet, complete rescue and restoration, which we eagerly await even as we appreciate it now.
Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I delight. I shall place my Spirit upon him and he will proclaim justice!
(Micah 2, Psalm 10, 2 Corinthians 5, Matthew 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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