Tuesday 25 November 2008

We continue with 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.
If you don't find joy in serving others, if you don't understand the joy in loving people, then come back to the cross. Get down in that funky blood and understand what it means to be at that funky tomb that was empty when that prostitute Mary Magdalene showed up and had a message for the world. You can't be committed to that funky gospel if you're not willing to pay a price. You need to be willing to bear a burden. You need to cut against the grain.

I readily return to this turn of phrase: Jesus didn't die for us...Jesus dies before us. We are invited into a way. A way that is already blessed...a way that Jesus walked and then when it was rejected, beat up, brutalized, and hung out to dry on the cross...God said, "Yes!" This funky gospel has already made a place for us. It is a place that has been and will be judged as blessed - no matter how funky it looks or feels. I often use these words from the group Osibisa about the road we will travel as followers of Jesus (even though I know they are not singing about "church"): It will be long I know, and the road will be muddy and long, but we'll get there, heaven knows how we will get there, we know we will. The "there" is here already -and the fullness of someday- so we can cut against the grain and turn upside down to view things with a new lens for life.

Connection: This journey of following Jesus is all about life...our life together...all the way.

It is as we remember the cross and how funky this world can be that we begin to hear and seen and smeall and tough and feel that you are present eternally to be our God, our Savior, our Companion, our way in and through all time. We give you thanks. Amen.