The Golden Ass

In group discussion on Michael Gonzalez’s sermon on Matt 23: 1-12, he noted that, in election season, he sees a lot of pastors saying things like, “God is sovereign and in control.” They are trying to be helpful, but that can often serve to avoid entering into the struggle of shared life together, which involves and requires shared struggle, shared grieving, and shared endurance (Michael is African American, btw). What Jesus actually calls, beckons, and invites - in a word, ELECTS - us into is his “sovereignty over” and faithfulness to a people joined to one another. For more on this, see my reflection on Day 1, Sunday.

Of course, this provoked me to imagine how to relate to my white friends, and to my white community, in relation to Matthew 23.
“And, the greater among you shall be your servant. And whoever will exalt himself will be humbled, and whoever will humble himself will be exalted. But alas for you, scribes and Pharisees…” – Matthew 23: 11-13 So, if I consider my own place in relationship between Matthew 23 and my white friends more as my entering into the narrative voiced by Jesus, as our placing ourselves inside the story, and less as my speaking at and criticizing my white friends for not entering, then what? Can distant criticizing become invitation and beckoning into divine joining? Can we enter in, with fear and trembling, with sacred awe? With the practices of confession and lament, along with repentance?

It is with this context and these questions in mind that I have a reflection on a portion of Matthew 23 for each day of the week of “Election 2020.” Of note, I wrote all of these before “the election,” so my reflections aren’t in reaction to the results. If you would like to go back and engage with my previous reflections on Matthew, you can click on the following links: Monday, Day 2, Tuesday, Day 3, Wednesday, Day 4, Thursday, Day 5, and Friday Day 6.

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Saturday, Day 7:

“Alas for you, scribes and Pharisees, charlatans, because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the upright, And say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers,’ we should not have had a part with them in the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you bear witness regarding yourselves that you are the sons of the prophets’ murderers. And you – you fully measure up to your fathers. Serpents, brood of vipers, how may you escape the verdict of Hinnom’s Vale? So look: I send prophets and wise men and scribes to you; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and drive from city to city; Thus accrues to you all the righteous blood shed on the earth…” – Matt. 23: 29-35

I have said in my heart: “Why are they beating Rodney King, and why is it cause for such social unrest, such violence? Surely he did something for them to beat and punish him that way! Law and order must be maintained!”

I have said in my heart: “But OJ did it! This is an injustice and a travesty! Why are they jumping and screaming and hugging and crying tears of joy! This isn’t right! Law and order must be maintained!”

I have said in my heart, “Racism should not and does not need to be discussed in church. Church is about the salvation of souls. This makes me uncomfortable.”

I have said in my heart, “Do not remove and destroy our history and our monuments. We should honor the history of our fathers. Those violent extremists are destroying our freedom and our way of life!”

Thus I bear witness regarding myself that I am the son of the prophets’ murderers. And I – I fully measure up to my fathers. Serpent, brood of vipers I belong to, how may I escape the verdict of Hinnom’s Vale?

We quote the prophet Martin Luther King as though we love him, but we turn our backs on his invitation into shared life with him. We kill him, and then we praise him (when he was murdered, he was one of the most hated men in America). We praise him, and we conveniently gloss over those particular words of his that challenge our ways of life. I am so blind to this that, when black people point it out to me, I genuinely don’t know what parts of MLKs teachings to which they’re referring. At other times, I have perhaps known but, in my pretense, dressed myself up in an honorable “righteousness of God” while, in my heart, arbitrarily proclaiming the prophet a dangerous Marxist (which, his being being non-violent, was obviously my partaking in an arbitrary system of meaning in accordance with my own desired socio-political ends).

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

How will you escape the destiny of our path towards utter useless to God, towards total rot and fruitlessness before the Anointed? Can you enter into his election for you, into his desire and beckoning into shared life with those who are not like you in ways you would otherwise, without the reign and royal sending of the Spirit and without a corresponding conversion of desire, never do?