The Cheerful Offender

My pending box is as full of ugly comments as my house is full of sick children. To my great delight, some people who are deeply offended by my brand of Christianity read my post of a couple days ago and were utterly repulsed. I say delighted, of course, because it looks like outrage produces clicks, and if there’s one thing I’m addicted to, it’s stat checking.

So I went carefully over “my brand of Christianity”, just to make sure I hadn’t said anything truly outrageous, and, as usual, I’m happy to report that the gospel I so indefatigably articulate here, day after day, is the same one that has been spoken of for a couple of thousand years. And, news flash, it’s still offensive. It was offensive then. It is certainly offensive now.

Good Friday itself is the heart of the offense. It might not feel like it to the various people buzzing around church, polishing brass, veiling crosses, dusting, cooking, busily preparing for our greatest Feast. As I clean my house today and begin double checking Easter baskets, the last thing I’m going to feel is offended. But I’ve been at this a lot of years. I’ve had years of offended-ness and anger peeled off, layer by hideous layer. I’ve looked at the cross over and over and felt the sting of defeat, the ugliness of myself illuminated in its agony and abandonment.

How shall I, and all true Christians, turn round from the cross where our offenses against God have been wiped away, where we have sat and rested a while, where there is only the deeply settled peace of joy, how shall I turn around and face an offended world?

Because the world loves to get its back up, especially now. It’s the westerner’s favorite thing–to find out how someone else is wrong and then point it out for them on social media, to destroy another in the flighty, heady rush of a fluttering tweet, to say, “I’m tolerant” while hitting Block Block Block on Facebook. The very way that headlines on Internet articles are written now prepares the reader to gather up offense. Here’s Ten Things Christians Need To Stop Doing; Hollywood Cares About Transgender Rights And So Should You; I won’t go on. None of these are news headlines, they are ways for you to measure yourself, and others, and either come out standing up tall, or needing to make serious adjustments.

And really, that’s where the true offense of Jesus lies. You should change. You should pull yourself together and Be Perfect. You should have been pure as the wind driven snow. You shouldn’t have loved yourself more than everything in the world. You should have worshiped God and him alone. You shouldn’t have lied, and wanted your neighbor’s car or house or spouse. You should have been perfect. And deep down, you know it. The fact that you aren’t is why you’re so angry, with yourself and everybody else. And so you should change to be perfectly good.

Jesus, hanging there naked, when you should have been hanging there naked, says to you, “You can’t do it”. Nothing you can yourself do will make you acceptable to God. You are unacceptable. I am bleeding out here, because of your incredibly ugly sin.

That is cosmically hard to look at and accept. Even Christians, who have found themselves grappled to the floor by God’s mercy, have a hard time accepting it. We are always still trying to tidy ourselves up before we look God square in the face, because it’s humiliating. It is humiliating and devastating to say to God, “I failed. I sinned. I am wrong.” No one wants to do that or think it or anything.

The problem for the unbelieving world, the #safespace #checkyourprivilege world, is that the person who has been humiliated before God, who has tasted defeat, who is sitting there helplessly at the foot of the cross, has also seen and tasted something else. The foaming cup of God’s poisonous wrath, drunk down to the dregs by Jesus, means that the wine in your cup is torturously sweet. You said you were sorry, and Jesus forgave you of all your sins. And now, well, that’s it. You’re forgiven. You’re not an offense and a by word any more. You can go wander around Walmart in a daze of freedom, because God isn’t angry with you anymore. Sure, forgiveness is humiliating. You are forever in debt up to a level you can’t even begin to think about actually owing, and so you don’t. The debt was paid by someone who wanted you to go free, to be clothed in nice things, and eat beautiful food.

How can I, forgiven, turn around from the cross to face an unforgiving world? Well, pretty cheerfully it turns out, and without too much fear and trembling. Because no amount of cultural approval is worth trading back the forgiveness of God, who absorbed his wrath against me in himself so that I could go free.

A blessed and holy Good Friday to you all.