Understanding "Jesus Saves"

 

When the Capitol in Washington was set upon by rioters recently, not a few carried signs and banners reading, "Jesus Saves." Gun rights and, Jesus Saves. White Supremacy and, Jesus Saves. Forgive the indelicacy but there it is — defecating in the Capitol building and, Jesus Saves. Beating a police officer mercilessly with a pole bearing an American flag and, Jesus Saves. Another officer is dead, crushed with a fire extinguisher and, Jesus Saves. Poor Jesus, what his self-proclaimed followers have done with him and his message of light and love.

How embarrassing for Christianity — a religion made to look ridiculous by those who think they are his disciples. Someone might say, "Well, any religion can be twisted up." I'd say that's just a deflection. Anyway, to make the claim Jesus Saves means nothing, unless one understands that claim to have a personal and transformative effect. In other words, pray only for one thing to be saved — myself.

I might contemplate this icon of Jesus' Bright Face until it is imprinted in my heart. Then I can take it, and the prayer below, to the news of the day.

Jesus, save me from the incendiary heart.

Jesus, save me from feeling victimized.

Jesus, save me from any trace of superiority.

Jesus, save me from my foolish reasonings.

Jesus, deliver me from discouragement. 

Jesus, deliver me from inner confusion.

Jesus, deliver me from old guilt.

Jesus, deliver me from cynicism.

Jesus, rescue me from entitlement.

Jesus, rescue me from hostility.

Jesus, rescue me from my secret darkness.

Jesus, rescue me from stereotyping.

Jesus, free me from kidding myself.
Jesus, free me from labeling people.

Jesus, free me from defensiveness.

Jesus, free me from my rationalizations.

Jesus, release me from the fictions. 

Jesus, release me from making anyone or anything a god.

Jesus, release me from self-congratulations.

Jesus, release me from the silliness I swear by.

Jesus, redeem me from being so afraid.

Jesus, redeem me from being so self-assured.

Jesus, redeem me from aligning myself with the vain.

Jesus, redeem me from entertaining distractions.

Jesus, preserve me from hoarding.

Jesus, preserve me from distorted self-interest.

Jesus, preserve me from the perversion of religion.

Jesus, preserve us from war with ourselves.

Jesus, save me from self-righteousness.

Jesus, save me from listening to the impious.

Jesus, save me from your enemies.

Jesus, save me from the admiration of power.

Jesus Christ, the Apple-tree

I recently discovered this photograph of an apple that looks as if it has been hand-painted. I was taught as a boy that God is all-knowing and all powerful. I like to add: God is all-imagination.

I'm thinking of the carol we might hear now that we've stepped into December: Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree. The poem verses may have been intended as a carol, though it seems to have been around a good while before appearing in church hymnals. And though the lyrics make no reference to Christ's birth (Mary and Joseph, angels and shepherds) somehow it has found its way into the repertoire of more familiar Christmas carols. 

Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree

The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The tree of life my soul hath seen
Laden with fruit and always green
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne'er can tell
His beauty doth all things excel
By faith I know but ne'er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
For happiness I long have sought
And pleasure dearly I have bought
I missed of all but now I see
'Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I'm weary with my former toil
here I will sit and rest awhile
I'm weary with my former toil
Here I will sit and rest while
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.

This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
This fruit does make my soul to thrive
It keeps my dying faith alive
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

An apple is spherical, like a little globe. And for the delight apples give us, they are images of total joy, joy even to laughter. Doesn't the world need laughter: kind laughter, the laughter of delight? Joy to the World is another carol we'll be hearing and singing. And if joy for the world is an angel-task, it's all the more a human one. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Catholics were known to be the world's joy-restorers. We've got our work cut out for us, a work that needs to begin in-house. Pope Francis has said as much in speaking recently to the seventeen new cardinals in Rome.

"How many situations of uncertainty and suffering are sown by this growing animosity between peoples, between us! Yes, between us, within our communities, our priests, our meetings. The virus of polarization and animosity permeates our way of thinking, feeling and acting. We are not immune to this and we need to take care lest such attitudes find a place in our hearts, because this would be contrary to the richness and universality of the church..."

In heraldry (the symbols of flags and coats of arms) apples are symbols of rejuvenation and fullness of life.  Rejuvenation comes from the Latin words re = again and juvenis = young. Imagine that - Catholics as the ones who rejuvenate or help the world to feel young and alive again! Jesus said:  "I have come that they may have life - life in all its fullness." John 10:10 

Oh Jesus, make us young again, 

young at heart,

for all the world, Jesus!

Fill us with delight,

and awe and wonder

before everything that is beautiful,

 good and true. 

Jesus, Questioning Teacher

Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked his disciples, "Who do men say I am?" They answered, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others one of the prophets." "And you," he asked them, "who do you say I am?" Peter replied, "You are the Messiah." Then he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him; and he began to teach them that the Son of Man had to undergo great sufferings, and to be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and doctors of the law; to be put to death, and to rise again three days afterwards. He spoke about it plainly. At this Peter took him by the arm and began to rebuke him. But Jesus turned round, and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter, "Away with you, Satan," he said; "you think as men think, not as God thinks." Mark 8: 27-35

Some Christians think of Jesus only as the Savior forgetting that he spent years first being the Teacher. Indeed, in these gospel verses Jesus is walking along the road and the whole class is with him. And, good teacher that he is, as they walk, Jesus asks questions, first of the whole group and then by singling out Peter. The best teachers ask questions to get people thinking and not just to have information spouted back.

So Jesus asks something like, "What are people saying about me these days?" And the disciples give a pious answer: "Moses, Elijah, a prophet." But then Jesus turns the conversation, asking them about their own experience. Jesus is supposed to be a lived experience, not simply a truth we swear by: a faith-sentence on a page.

And when Peter chimes in with another pious answer, "You're the Messiah," Jesus, knowing that Messiah means super-king, takes the opportunity to open up for everyone the ideas of suffering, rejection, death and rising. Peter refuses that idea saying, "Oh, nothing doing Jesus. Don't even think it, Jesus." To this Jesus gets really angry: in a flash of bad temper even calling Peter, Satan, who thwarts God's purposes. 

Well, the Gospels are alive and as much about today as centuries ago, so the questions Jesus posed are for us to answer too. We can either wrestle with those questions or click escape. 

We might fill in the blank at the top of the page. But don't give a catechism answer, and (as I often say to people) don't use any religious sounding words in your answer: Savior, Redeemer, Blood of the Lamb, King, Lord, Messiah. Resorting to religious vocabulary is too easy. We might have to sit a long time to identify and express the deeply personal and interior experience of Jesus which is ours. 

"Christ, you have come to disturb us," Dostoevsky wrote. To be disturbed is the last thing many religious people want. But to allow my mind, my heart, my  consciousness, my inner aspect to be changed or troubled...?

We usually think of the disciple as a follower. But that's awfully passive. Instead, I'd say a disciple is a student. I want to be Jesus' pupil. That's why in every icon, even where he is depicted as a child, Jesus holds a scroll with a sentence for me to experience personally. Sometimes the scroll is rolled up (or the book is closed) leaving me to ponder what message Jesus has in store for me individually.

But could I suggest the message won't be: "There, there now, everything will be alright," but rather something more like, "Wake up now, sleeper!" And that message might be for our nation, for the world, for the Church...

Here in this mosaic of Christ the Teacher, Jesus seems to be looking off to the side of the classroom where so many of us hope to hide. What if I dared to open the teacher's book? Which, by the way, is not a grade book!

Jesus Gives True Sight

They arrived at Bethsaida. There the people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him away out of the village. Then he spat on his eyes, laid his hands upon him, and asked whether he could see anything. The man's sight began to come back, and he said, "I see men; they look like trees, but they are walking about." Jesus laid his hands  on his eyes again; he looked hard, and now he was cured so that he saw everything clearly. Then Jesus sent him home, saying, "Do not tell anyone in the village."  Mark  8:22-26

Here is Buoninsegna's painting of Jesus restoring the sight of the blind man. Notice that the artist has painted a scene within a scene. In the middle, the blind man stands before Jesus, then he's pictured a second time immediately to the right and walking down the road, one hand in the air praising God while with the other, letting go of the stick he'd used for so long to help him find his way. 

The turreted city of Bethsaida is pictured in the background (remember we're told Jesus led the man outside the village). The spellbound apostles huddle close behind Jesus. 

We must recall too that in the verses just prior to this miracle, the apostles are fussing about having forgotten to take bread along with them, though they had just witnessed Jesus feeding five thousand people with so little. Let's hear again the words of Jesus as they sailed along:

Jesus said to them: "Why do you talk about no bread? Have you no inkling yet? Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes: can you not see? You have ears: can you not hear?"

Then right after calling the apostles blind and deaf to their faces, Jesus gave new sight to a blind man. Let's understand, this miracle isn't essentially about optical sight.Jesus would have me know that I can have 20/20 vision and detect even the most subtle clicks and beeps in the hearing test, and still be blind and deaf. 

Likely Jesus wanted the apostles to understand HIM clearly - who he is. But I think there's even more to it than that - Jesus wants us to see and hear each other clearly. He wants us to understand each moment well. He wants us to understand ourselves clearly! When I was a boy, my father would sometimes take us to Yankee Stadium ballgames. It felt gentlemanly, men wearing hats, jackets and neckties. Conversely, this morning's news reported that now baseball games rather routinely feature violence - pitchers and batters throwing punches, whole teams rushing out onto the field in a frenzy of fighting, the stadium erupting into a celebration of cheers. That's deaf and blind. 

But Jesus is patient with us. Notice the healing doesn't happen all at once but in stages. We grow in goodness. In the Gospel verses to follow, Peter will call Jesus Messiah, and then in a great misunderstanding, he will reject that Jesus will have to suffer as Messiah. Finally, Peter will even deny knowing Jesus the night of Jesus' arrest. Still, in one of the first Easter appearances, Jesus, ever patient, will recycle Peter in love, giving him new tasks, again inviting, Follow me." 

They went and joined him

He then went up into the hill-country and called the men he wanted; and they went and joined him. He appointed twelve as his companions, whom he would send out to proclaim the Gospel, with a commission to drive out devils. So he appointed the Twelve: to Simon he gave the name Peter; then came the sons of Zebedee, James and his brother John, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, Sons of Thunder; then Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas and James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus and Simon, a member of the Zealot party, and Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed him. (Mark 3:13-19)

WE SEE HERE THAT JESUS desires friendship, just like the rest of us.  No one wants to be lonely. Notice that Mark doesn't use the word apostle, but Jesus appoints the twelve as companions. And they are sent out with two mandates: deliver God's good news and drive out demons. On Sunday we pray the Creed which calls our faith apostolic. That means unlike the hymnal, faith must be taken out of church. 

I might suggest that the good news, joy-bearing part of the Lord's commission is what really needs attention in our Church. Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote: "I would have considered a vocation to the ministry except that so many of the clergy more resembled the undertaker." 

Saint Mark makes about twenty references to Peter. And in any listing of the apostle's names, Peter's name always appears first. Some folks will take this to mean Peter is supreme and hence the first pope, etc. I would say before any of that it means that Peter is the disciple who we should watch most closely. He's the first-disciple. 

Of course, a Catholic would say Mary is the first disciple, the first to welcome Jesus, but don't miss Peter for a second, for surely you'll discover yourself in his behaviors and thinking. Remember, it will be Peter who after Jesus is arrested says to the questioning stranger outside the jail, "I don't even know who you're talking about." 

James and John are among the twelve companions of Jesus. These two will disappoint later when they reveal how poorly they understand Jesus. They'll have their mother speak for them, looking for positions of influence and power at the right and left hands of Jesus in his new kingdom. Talk about getting it wrong! 

Jesus gave the nick-name Sons of Thunder to these two brothers. Maybe they had stormy dispositions, were short-fused hot heads who spoke or acted before thinking. 

Andrew is listed among the twelve. He's a good friend  who makes a point of introducing others to Jesus. There is a charming scene in John's gospel where Andrew introduces to Jesus a little boy who has some bread and fish which will be just what's needed to feed the enormous and hungry crowd. 

Philip and Andrew are Greek names which might cause us to wonder what kind of influences they brought to this first circle of companionship around Jesus. Religion often has a hard time realizing this: we don't all have to be the same!

If Matthew is the Jewish tax-collector who collected taxes from his own people on behalf of the Roman Empire, he'd be a rather lonely man. We might contrast him with Simon who was a Jewish ultra-nationalist (a Rome-hating Zealot). We can only imagine the arguing and resentment there could have been between these two.

So this is a mixed bag of men who might have found it difficult to get along. But Jesus works with what he's got (still). He taught them and corrected them when  needed. The word docility means  to be teachable. And perhaps the first character trait of a humble person is a willingness to take correction. Both are in short supply today.

P.S. We shouldn't sniff at Jesus for not having women counted as his first traveling companions. In the culture of  his ancient Jewish world his mission would never have  gotten off the ground if he had women among the group. It would have been unthinkably scandalous. But if we want to see how important women were to Jesus, we must read Saint Luke's Gospel. 

Jesus ~ Child Refugee

As soon as the wise men had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, and said, Rise up, take with thee the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt; there remain, until I give thee word. For Herod will soon be making search for the child to destroy him. He rose up therefore, while it was still night, and took the child and his mother with him, and withdrew into Egypt, where he remained until the death of Herod, in fulfillment of the word which the Lord spoke by his prophet, I called my son out of Egypt.

Meanwhile, when he found that the wise men had played him false, Herod was angry beyond measure; he sent and made away with all the male children in Bethlehem and in all its neighborhood, of two years old and less, reckoning the time by the careful inquiry which he had made of the wise men. It was then that the word spoken by the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled; A voice was heard in Rama, lamentation and great mourning; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because none is left.

But as soon as Herod was dead, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in Egypt in a dream, and said, Rise up, take with thee the child and his mother, and return to the land of Israel; for  those who sought the child's life are dead. (Matthew 2: 13-20)

I met a young Egyptian woman one Easter night, who at the end of the Vigil said she was angry and embarrassed by the Passover story which portrayed the Egyptians as the en-slavers and murderers of the Jews. It had never occurred to me how an Egyptian might feel about that story. I wish I knew where to find her today, to remind her that it was Egypt which so generously opened itself to Jesus, Mary and Joseph, saving Jesus from certain death. What a model for today!

A power-obsessed leader, jealous of a baby's royal title, was looking to kill the infant, and an angel warned Joseph how and where to find safety. In the tender image here (look again closely) perhaps painted on a parchment, it looks as if the family is crossing the border into the Date Palm land of Egypt. There is no indication in art or gospel page that anyone asked them, "Are you legal?"

We're basically a Christian country, so we're supposed to know this bible story. The problem with religion is when its adherents don't make connections. And when we don't make life-connections many people observe that disconnect  and say, "Why bother." 

Someone wrote recently, "Do you have a word of wisdom about the children at the southern border?" I don't have a personal word, just this Gospel-account which I believe is all we need. Egypt took in Joseph's family which was in trouble. Someone might say, "Yeah, well they were one family, we've got thousands crossing over." 

Joseph, Mary and her Infant (which we call the Holy Family) are a sign for us. The story encourages us to have hope, that children can survive in the scary world that too often doesn't consider their protection. Pray our country would do better by them. 

A burly man, carried a sign as he blocked the road to a busload of Central American children being taken to a processing center. The sign read, "Jesus would obey the law." No, he wouldn't. He'd remember the story his Mother told him - of how Egypt took them in when Herod wanted him dead.