February 28, 2004
“Yes” at both ends
Ever since 9/11, we’ve been patronized senseless to go on and live as if nothing ever happened. Spend, eat, drink, make merry, and live SUVicariously while somebody else picks up the tab, namely, hundreds of volunteers and national guards dying and being maimed in the dessert for reasons not all that clear or convincing.
Our current crucifixation with The Movie in the midst of all this suggests an irony beyond imagination, but not much of a surprise. The pundits say we’re not going to the flicks, we’re going to church. Maybe we need reminding about what Jesus did so we won’t get all that restless about the present macabre state of the environment, the economy, the legislature, the judiciary, the administration, that is, all the things we don’t do so we can continue to sit back as if nothing ever happened then or now.
Some take comfort in the notion that we are created in the image of God — that is, as God imagines us to be and become. Most often that’s taken to mean that we are free to choose the good — or the bad. Choice is not only a privilege, but a powerful amount of responsibility.
So it was with Jesus. What we seem to forget is that his choice, his Yes at both ends of his servant leadership — in the Wilderness and again in the Garden — is the truly salvific* act. The Cross, as some seem to think, was not a payoff to set us free, it was the logical — and horrible — consequence of another insecure religious and political system functioning at its very best.
*[a theologically overbearing word for “saving,” the kind you might expect in a place like this]