God Afoot: On Nice, Dead Cops, and Batman

I know I should probably write something about Nice, but it’s all so overwhelming. I want to acknowledge it, I want to pull it apart and find God somewhere in there, but I’m at a loss.

And loss — there has been so much of it lately, hasn’t there? So much sorrow, so much evidence of how we humans can just screw the whole thing up.  How we can become so twisted it seems that there is no God-light left anywhere in the world. It feels like the whole planet is Gotham City and Batman went camping somewhere in the Canadian wilderness.

It makes me want to become like them — machete wielding and radical, not representing any God but rather my own radicalized hate and anger, my own displaced agenda.

And I think, what is my place is this type of world? What am I here, called to do? How can I be a light bearer, a peacekeeper in the face of this kind of evil? ISIS feels like thousands of tiny Hitlers running around doing his evil all over the world instead of concentrated in camps. ISIS feels like the devil incarnate, here to devour the most innocent of children.

And it’s so easy to make ISIS the face of Islam — the same way it’s so possible to make the Dallas and Baton Rouge shooters the face of Black Lives Matter. But all of these are just isolated assholes, renegades who have hijacked a cause for evil. It’s easy to place blame but really, it’s a cop out. It’s a way to expend a whole lot of energy pointing fingers and social media memes at people, while the little asshole Hitlers run around and work their evil.

Satan is so good at keeping us busy and distracted.

But how do I find Jesus here? How do I be the “encouraging Christian” when really all I feel like doing is tearing my clothes and pouring ashes over my head? For surely, if there is to be a great tribulation, this must be it.

It was our pains he carried — our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. 

I was reading Isaiah the other day. I was sitting in my big comfy chair in my living room — not my office, which is the sacred place I usually do my Bible study. I sat in the early morning quiet and read Isaiah 53, and I wept as if I were meeting Jesus for the first time.

I experience Jesus in a highly personal way, and I think this is a good thing. I get that there are theologians out there who think Christianity has become too individualistic. I get it — sort of — but I adamantly believe that faith in Christ must start and continue first and foremost at the most intimate and individual level. After all, it’s my soul that needs saving, and my heart that needs turning. It’s your soul and your heart. Each of us need to make our own decision to follow the Radical Rabbi. If we don’t start there, we’ll never really get anywhere.

But I admit this has created a sort of tunnel-vision awe when it comes to Jesus; I see the miracles He works in my life and they are good. But in my own ridiculously self-consumed way, it makes it easy to forget about what he did for the world out there.

I’m not proud of this personal dose of megalomania; rather, this is my confession.

It was our sins that did it to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him — our sins!

As I read Isaiah I felt for once a membership in the entire world, my participation in the world of sin that Jesus bore on his back. It was no longer just the anger, the lack of forgiveness I hold in my heart for the friend who abandoned me, the brother who hurt me, the words that stung, or the words I had for the driver who cut me off. It’s no longer just about the hurt I lick and nurture there in those wounds, both deep and superficial. Or about the guilt I feel or the white lies I told or the time I was a gossip or the way I kept the biggest piece of anything for myself.

It’s the whole weight of the evil world that’s there on Christ’s back.

When I think of the families murdered in Nice, I see stripes on my savior’s shoulders.

He took the punishment, and that made us whole. 

If the families of the people who died in Nice were standing in front of me right now, I know that they will not feel whole. I know that they will not feel healed. I know that offering them a story about a man who lived thousands of years ago and suffered a horrific kind of death might not be very comforting. It might not be comforting to them at all. I get that.

All I can offer you is my love. My humanity. And my belief that somehow, some way, Jesus will redeem this fuck-all world.

Through his bruises we get healed. 

I am a martial artist, and I remember well the days when I sparred, coming home with huge, lumpy bruises, blue, black, pink, yellow. They way they ached and screamed at the slightest touch. Those bruises hurt. And they were nothing compared to what Jesus went through. They were just the tiniest little part of what he bore.

Reading Isaiah made me remember those bruises, made me wince in remembrance. I imagine Jesus wincing again with every murdered black child, every dead cop. I imagine the angels sobbing as they count the strollers on the promenade in France.

And God piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him. 

I think of him, my Jesus, bearing the weight of every murdered soul. Every raped body. Every abandoned orphan. Even every puppy starved half to death.

Every cop murdered in Baton Rouge and Dallas.

Every person killed on 9/11.

Every person of color stolen from us.

Justice miscarried, and he was led off — did anyone really know what was happening? 

Just as no one recognized who he was and what God was doing through him, just as they could not see the resurrection coming, so might we have hope that God is afoot in the chaos, even if we do not yet sense his coming victory.

He will not work as we expect him to; I’ve learned that this is God’s way. He will redeem this chaos through resurrection work, through the work of the Spirit. Individually and holistically, God is afoot.

The plan was that he gave himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it — life, life and more life. 

We’ll hear it in the stories, individual and separate; in heart miracles and soothing spirit whispers, healing will come. Darkness can not snuff out the light, and resurrection work will light up the world in redemption.

And God’s plan will deeply prosper through him. 

If the world is an ugly sort of Gotham, there is no superhero greater than Jesus to save it. His cape is made up of the stripes on his back. Instead of a utility belt, he has a thorny crown. And when it feels like evil has already won, Jesus’ Holy Spirit will surely save the day.

This is the encouragement my empty, wondering hands have to offer.

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All scriptures in this post are from Isaiah 53 (MSG). 

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