Monday 24 November 2008

We continue with the piece from Friday from "Hope on a Tightrope" by Cornel West.

Behold, that first century Palestinian Jew was born in a funky manger. He had some funky working-class parents sometimes dealing with unemployment and underemployment. He walked on some funky and dusty roads, didn't he? He brought together 12 funky folk.... He picked them right from around where he came from. It's so easy to forget the funk in Jesus' life because our church can become so easily deodorized.
The funky gospel of funky Jesus can become so Americanized that it is reduced to marketplace spirituality, prosperity gospel, and Chamber of Commerce religion. No! We want to keep focused on the funk of Jesus, especially that funky blood on that funky cross.

So...part of this deodorizing has to do with sell-ability. What can the marketplace sustain...what will it permit...what can get by and connect with the consumer!?! If there is no money to be made or no immediate or self-gratifying pay-back for the consumer, we often look elsewhere. And yet, it is not the task of the followers of Jesus to market a message or a product. We are invited to point to the "funk of Jesus." The "funky blood on that funky cross" show how far our God goes to show the worth of humankind. By that, I would suggest God points us to a way of life that has great worth. The way - which may appear funky at times - stops at nothing to let itself be known. The blood and the cross demonstrate the distance we go as people made in the image of God for that is how far God goes with us. That is a dramatic move. The Gospel never pulls us away from the cross to some 'adventure in prosperity." The Gospel will pull us into the way of the cross so that the well-being of all the funky people -like me- will have room to dwell in the house of the Lord.

Connection: Don't worry about what will sell...consider what will bring people life in the midst of a whole community of others. Then, there will be peace in the land.

By the blood of your Beloved, O God, you lift us up and brush us off and make us your own and remind us that such a way of life is the Reign of God making itself known and present among us. Thanks be to you, O God. Amen.