{"id":1476,"date":"2014-12-21T12:39:22","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T17:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/tomzampino\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2015-12-22T06:10:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T11:10:03","slug":"no-he-wasnt-boring-meek-and-mild-or-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tomzampino\/2014\/12\/no-he-wasnt-boring-meek-and-mild-or-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"No, He Wasn&#8217;t Boring, Meek and Mild, or Safe"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p align=\"LEFT\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/454\/2014\/12\/Good_Morning_From_the_International_Space_Station.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4612\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/454\/2014\/12\/Good_Morning_From_the_International_Space_Station-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"Good_Morning_From_the_International_Space_Station\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">I have to admit that the\u00a0image of an anemic, <em>meek and mild,<\/em> almost\u00a0frightened-looking Christ\u00a0has always left me brutally cold.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">If, as the Church teaches, He came into the world to transform us \u2013 indeed to <em>save<\/em> us \u2013\u00a0well, He certainly better have some real fight in Him.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">The world, myself included, does not respond kindly to hesitant\u00a0and feeble requests made by those we think of as weaklings.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">We\u2019d just as soon dismiss them, make fun of them,\u00a0trash them.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">But\u00a0we do take notice of confident, dynamic \u2013 and, yes,\u00a0sometimes frightening \u2013 personalities.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">I believe that we\u2019ve gotten the Christ imagery all wrong.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Perhaps intentionally.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Because Christ was anything but weak, anything but mild, anything but\u00a0non-confrontational.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Today\u2019s homily\u00a0at St. Mary\u2019s Church in Manhasset, New York, truly turned the <em>Jesus-as-weakling<\/em> imagery on its head.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Our celebrant took careful note of the <a href=\"http:\/\/documents.routledge-interactive.s3.amazonaws.com\/9781405824101\/jesus2.pdf\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">words of Dorothy Sayers<\/a>, first\u00a0published in 1949.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">Here is how Sayers described the one we all too often think of as <em>meek and mild. <\/em>Every description\u00a0she sets forth here\u00a0is a gem.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">We need to think on these things:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">The people who hanged Christ, to do them justice, never accused him of being a bore \u2013 on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him\u00a0 \u2018meek and mild\u2019, and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk and water person: they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven\u037e but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites\u037e he referred to King Herod as \u2018that fox\u2019\u037e he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a \u2018gluttonous man and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners\u2019\u037e he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple\u037e he drove a coach and horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations\u037e he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people\u2019s pigs and property\u037e he showed no proper defense for wealth or social position\u037e when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">But he had \u2018a daily beauty in his life that made us ugly,\u2019 and officialdom felt that the established order of things would be more secure without him.<\/p>\n<p align=\"LEFT\">So they did away with God in the name of peace and quietness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>No,\u00a0Christ wasn\u2019t boring. He wasn\u2019t meek. He wasn\u2019t non-confrontational.<\/p>\n<p>We can\u2019t do away with Him in order to secure\u00a0our <em>peace and quiet<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Because He\u2019s never been safe.<\/p>\n<p>And He never will be.<\/p>\n<p>Peace<\/p>\n<p>Image Credit: NASA via <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/Main_Page#\/media\/File:Good_Morning_From_the_International_Space_Station.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>, Public Domain<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have to admit that the\u00a0image of an anemic, meek and mild, almost\u00a0frightened-looking Christ\u00a0has always left me brutally cold. If, as the Church teaches, He came into the world to transform us \u2013 indeed to save us \u2013\u00a0well, He certainly better have some real fight in Him. The world, myself included, does not respond kindly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1976,"featured_media":4612,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>No, He Wasn&#039;t Boring, Meek and Mild, or Safe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I have to admit that the\u00a0image of an anemic, meek and mild, almost\u00a0frightened-looking Christ\u00a0has always left me brutally cold. 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