Wrestling with the Ruler Passionate for Justice

Guys, I'm wrestling.

Every time I see/type/say that phrase I hear it in the voice of my pastors from St. Louis, "I'm wrastling! Are you wrastling this mornin'?"

Well yes, Pastor Tony, this evening, I am.

This afternoon I received word that there will not be justice from Denver's "Justice Department" for my friend Michael Lee Marshall, who was killed while in the Denver Sheriff's custody in November.

I mourned the loss of this friend, who I and other dear friends knew from Network Coffee House. You can actually see Michael featured as the first photo on Network's website.

I mourned yet again a few weeks ago when the Michael's autopsy was finally released, bringing fresh grief and a deep sense of horror at the brutality of his killing. His death was ruled a homicide, which essentially just means he did not commit suicide. Even death by lethal injection as a result of the death penalty is considered a homicide on the autopsy report...which says something very significant about the death penalty, but that's another topic for another time.

So as I mourned again today, it was not fresh grief, but something slowly built and deepened like the deep cracks embedded in the hands and feet of my homeless friends - cuts never allowed to heal continually broken over until they will likely never fully repair.

The Bible states with abundant clarity God's hatred of injustice and His deep care for the poor. Proverbs, the book of wisdom, declares, "Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker." Those who spend themselves on behalf of the poor will have lives that light up the darkness and cast away the night. 

As I read through the prophet Isaiah's words tonight, I was struck by the promise of a ruler who was passionate for justice, one who would set things right. 

"'When this is all over,' Judah answers,

'the tyrant toppled

the killing at an end,

all signs of these cruelties long gone, 

a new government of love will be established

in the venerable David tradition. 

A Ruler you can depend upon

will head this government, 

a Ruler passionate for justice, 

a Ruler quick to set things right.'"

-Isaiah 16:4-5 The Message 

Oh! My first emotion was joy. A Ruler who is passionate for justice? One quick to set things right? This is a promise that brings hope, it means these injustices and these power-hungry people taking advantage of the weak, poor, and powerless will not rule forever.

But then I think more and find to places of wrestling...

Why, if true religion is to care for the widow and orphan in their distress (read: care for the poor,  marginalized, and oppressed), are so many people who call themselves Christians failing to follow Christ's religion? 

And why, if God is one quick to bring righteousness and bring justice, does our world look so very wrong? Why is there still such great injustice? Why was Michael Lee killed? Why did he have to live in a world where being black, homeless, and mentally ill was a death sentence? 

These are not popular questions, there is no answer. I'll be the Christian that admits, I do not know.

And I can tell you also that no other Christian actually knows the answer to "why is God good but the world full of evil?" Everyone has an answer, but no one actually knows. If we did, we'd understand God, and I just don't think it's up to me to understand and answer for God.

So here's what I'm wrestling over. 

Perhaps (some of) the answer to my second question is found in the first. I believe in God's sovereign love, He grants us free will. And as we all learned from Batman, "with great power comes great responsibility. And perhaps we have misplaced, misused, and greatly abused this powerful gift of freedom. With it, we have not chosen the right path of generous love, selves spent on the poor and oppressed, and the choice to see first with compassion and last with judgment (as a side note: I believe if we were to truly lead with compassion, we would never get to judgment). 

Perhaps we can never know the answer to why God does not stop all bad things from happening. I could theorize and have ideas of why I think this is, but this isn't the time or space for such thoughts. Rather, I will share my choices when faced with these thoughts I wrestle through. 

First is that I will choose to believe that God is loving and that His very being is good. I will choose to believe that God is passionate for justice, that He is in the process of righting all wrongs, wiping away all tears, and setting every captive free (another blog post will be about who exactly is the captive, and I think it's a broader term than we'd like to admit). 

Second is that I will choose to live the life called for in Isaiah 58. I will not fall by the wayside, so entrenched in my internal debates and wrestlings that I am paralyzed from action. I will choose to spend myself on behalf of the poor. I will choose to fight for the rights and lives of those marginalized, whether they are oppressed because of their poverty, sexuality, skin color, religion, gender, or more. I will choose to share my food with the hungry, invite the homeless poor into my home, put clothes on the shivering ill-clad, and be available to my own family (Isaiah 58, paraphrased from The Message).

So at the end of all this wrestling, this thinking, these prayers, is a choice.

What will you believe, and how will you choose to live? 

I implore you, do not be among those who pretend to do what is right, who say the right things and go through the right religious steps all the while failing to see the poor human being on the street corner, holding a cardboard sign and asking for a little help. 

"Cardboard Sign"

by Katy Owens

Cardboard doubles

as shredded sheets

"Spare a little change,

trying to make ends meet

Just seeking refuge

from the cold and sleet"

Well, the Savior didn't have a place

to lay His head

So maybe they're closer to Him

than I am

But people see the signs

All they do is stare

Wonder, what's he done

and where's she been? 

I couldn't cast the stone

cuz my record ain't clean

No one gave me

the judgement rod

And you, sir, don't look like God

Driving by

rolling up your windows and

down your nose

"Probably for drugs,"

your judgments say

"Lazy bum will

squander it away"

As if you and I

never fail, please don't forget

we've just been given

a better circumstance,

missed some unfortunate

happenstance

Do you squander love?

Waste your privilege? 

We're all the same

Skin bones and blood

And I know I'm

begging for change

on the streets of human love

Forgetting I've been given grace

from the Divine

Covered by love that looks like

water blood and wine

Maybe my friend

the "homeless bum"

is really a bit closer

to the One

Caitlyn Jenner, Homelessness, Racism and Christians

This isn't really a blog about Caitlyn Jenner, it's about how we respond to Caitlyn Jenner.

This isn't a blog about whether it is right or wrong to change one's identity, because I believe I should spend more time getting the log out of my own eye than picking the speck from the eyes of those around me. With my remaining time, I want to spend it like Jesus did, seeing and loving the human being in front of me - regardless of their gender identity, race, sexuality, socio-economic status, education, or religion.

In the past week since Vanity Fair released their magazine cover with Caitlyn Jenner on the cover, I have watched the internet blow up, and a lot of the responses have honestly broken my heart.

I posted this on my Facebook page, "You know what makes me sad? All the "Christians" who are blowing up about Caitlyn Jenner and starting Facebook arguments about how wrong being trans is, but have spent the past year turning a blind eye to the sins of racism, oppression, and injustice in our country and world. Let's spend our energy fighting for peace, love, and justice, not tearing down people we don't know without stopping to ask and listen. The question, "what would Jesus do?" should preface your Facebook posts and your real-life interactions. Remember who Jesus hungout with, remember the Samaritan woman He befriended."

There are a lot of people who align themselves with the religious institution of Christianity who have voiced some very strong opinions about Caitlyn Jenner, and as a result about all transgender individuals. Many of these comments have varied from disrespectful to downright cruel, from calling Caitlyn Jenner disgusting and a disgrace, to simply refusing to call Caitlyn "her" and refer to her as "Bruce."

Here's the thing. I think if Jesus were standing here today, He'd call her Caitlyn. I don't care to argue God's opinion on changing one's gender. I don't know God's mind, and so I won't pretend to speak authoritatively on something that has not been revealed to me. But whether He agreed with her gender change or not, I believe Jesus would respect her desire to be called Caitlyn.

Because here's what I do know about God. I know God is love. And I know God met and meets people where they're at. God is this beautiful person who comes to where we are, He doesn't expect us to ascend the mountain top to find Him after becoming perfect on our own strength. He comes wherever we are, and stays there with us until His unending love has moved us.

I know this because of the people Jesus spent time with when He as on earth.

He ate dinner with tax collectors, people who took money form the poor to put extra food on their own tables, people truly hated by nearly everyone. He spent time with prostitutes, He even let one touch His feet and wash them with perfume. He got near enough to lepers to heal them, people who were so unclean with a highly contagious disease they couldn't be near the cities and had to live outside the city far away from friends and family, He got close enough to heal them.

Once Jesus met a woman at a well around noon. In those times, women went to the well each day to draw water, they typically went in the mornings because it was cooler and they could avoid the heat. Noon was the hottest part of the day, when no one would usually be at the well, and this was the time this woman, the Samaritan Woman, went to the well. She went at this time to avoid all the other women, because of her lifestyle and the choice she had made, she was looked down on and considered a disgraceful woman. And Jesus met her there, risking His own reputation by talking to "that kind of woman." And He saw her, a woman in need of love. He met her right where she was at, loved her in that moment, loved her as "that kind of woman."

This is the Jesus I wish Christians looked a little bit more like.

We spend so much time drawing lines in the sand instead of getting to know a fellow human being. So much time is spent preserving the wall between "us" and "them," focusing on what keeps us separate instead of what makes us all human, what makes us all divine beings created in the image of the Almighty God of the universe? Flawed creation, by our own doing, yes...but His divine creation nonetheless.

I think if we spent a little more time seeing humanity as God's precious creation, we'd have less time to spend pointing fingers and posting angry, hurtful, and damaging things on our Facebook pages.

What I've found is that the more I interact with people who are different than I (gender, sexuality, religion, race, education, housing situation, mental state), the less I see a "them" and "they" and the more I delight in being an "us." See, it's really easy to judge "them," because they are separate from me. I'm not grouped in with whatever they aren't doing right, whatever is wrong about them. It keeps me clean while allowing me to still cast the judgements. But when it becomes about us, I suddenly am confronted with my own issues, with whatever isn't right about myself. And that's harder to deal with, but that also breeds a space of compassion and empathy, because suddenly we are all humans together, all broken together, and all beautiful together.

It's easy to tell people you don't know how they should live, what they should do, what they're doing wrong, and how they should change. And we like to do that. Keep people impersonal, walk up to a stranger on a street corner and tell them to clean up their act and get right with God, stop living this "life of sin." But what I've discovered is when I get to know people, I no longer want to tell them how they should live, what they're doing wrong, and what they need to do to be a better person.

I think it is in this space of relationship, of seeing what we have in common rather than our differences, that we see God.

See, when we draw all these lines between "us" and "them," we lose humanity. When young black women, men, and trans individuals are shot by the police and media call them "thugs" and say they deserved it, or ignore peaceful protestors in Baltimore and call all the protests in Ferguson riots. When poverty is criminalized and homelessness is made illegal. When someone on the street corner with a cardboard sign is labeled a lazy drunk undeserving of money who should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. When someone comes out and is suddenly labeled a "sinner" going to hell...

Jesus didn't put up these walls. He drew designs in the sand and asked the man who was sinless to throw the first stone. And when none could stand blameless and all had walked away, He was still there to kneel down by a naked, shaking, shamed woman and held out His hand to bring her to safety.

When we put up these walls, we miss Jesus.

One of my favorite places in all of Denver is The Network Coffee House. It's a place for my homeless friends to hangout, a safe space to have coffee and relax without fear of the weather or harassment. It's a place to be human. It's where I've learned the most, and where I meet Jesus every week in the face of my broken friends who simply know they are loved. They know they don't deserve it, and they know they are His children.

What I see more and more clearly, the more I interact with the poor and those who, on the outside, look different than me, is that we are truly all the same. We should be united in the fact that we are created in the image of God, the divine in us. And we should be united in the fact that we are all broken, sinful and flawed, the dirt. Dirt and divine, that is who we are. Created out of dust into the image of the Divine. What a beautiful God to create us and love us so spectacularly.

And so as I see it, my job is not to inform people to stop living in sin, God can handle that if He desires. My job is to follow the greatest commandment, to love God, myself, and my neighbor. Because if I love God, I will love myself, as His image-bearer. And I will love my neighbor as myself, for I will see they too are created in the image of God. Beautiful and lovely just as they are.