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Recently I read a beautiful article entitled "Easter has to encompass
difficult issues: Jesus represents all who have been rejected," by
Thomas Berg, who works for an inner-city agency that cares for
Edmonton's homeless people. Here's a small portion:
"When the church operates according to its birthright as a liberating
force, it welcomes hard issues. ... When it operates out of a self-
preservating fear, concerned with maintaining a religious structure
that serves absolutist convictions about who and what God is, it
hides from engaging the world... It then deserves Jesus' condemnation
of 'neglecting the weightier matters of justice and mercy and faith.'
"... Justice and mercy and faith spring up in surprising places and
ways; ways the church is often loath to recognize, ways that have
been deemed non-Christian. Perhaps in too many of our churches, Jesus
would also be deemed unChristian, or non-Christians. Because Jesus
was and is about the inversion of every mechanism of exclusion. He is
the "stone that the builders rejected that has become the cornerstone.
"He is the upside-down one. He is the beggar Christ, the homeless
Christ, the feminine Christ, the gay Christ, the interracial and
international Christ. He is about peace. He is about mercy over
sacrifice. He is about standing in the place of the victim in order
to give faces and names to victims.
"This is Easter. And it's with Easter eyes that we are able to see
and respond to the world's hard issues. It's through Easter eyes that
we are able to respond in mercy to our neighbour."
This week, let's contact one VMM person. In addition to our prayers,
it helps us as part of the VMM community to be Easter persons
Cecily
