Subversive Grace

Today is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy--you know, in case you live under a rock and didn't know.

I was living in Kazakhstan at the time, having arrived in country two weeks earlier to begin a year teaching English. My team was getting ready to give placement exams that week. I was in my flat and around 10PM a neighbor came down to tell us that some plane had flown into some building. I imagined a confused Cessna. We didn't have cable hooked up at the time and being new in country, US news wasn't really on the forefront of my mind.

Then an American expat called. We had met him the first day in town and it turned out he was the US embassy liaison. The embassy was 20 hrs away by train. Apparently, it wasn't a Cessna and it was a big deal. It was an attack and we were told to lay low. The embassy later emailed us instructions to change up our route to work and to continue to lay low. Except that there were only 50 odd Americans in town and we lived on the outskirts with only one road into work. So yea, not really going to be able to change up our route. I mean, this side of the street or that side of the street isn't really a big change. And how low can you lay when you're clearly foreign. Actually, I was the least foreign looking of my team--heh.

I was politically neutral then, raised Republican, but skeptical of their intentions toward minorities. After Kazakhstan, I moved to Los Angeles and started grad school. This pretty much ensured a leftward movement in my politics, but eventually the strident polemics of my colleagues pushed me rightward again.

But today, 10 years later, as I reflect on how I've been making sense of the world beyond my immediate circle of life, it is clear that politics as it is being played out in the soundbites in the media has nothing to offer. Jesus subverts it all. Jesus is not a Republican, and Jesus is not a Democrat. I think God-fearing people really need to let that sink into the marrow of their bones. Bush was never the end of the world, nor is Obama. Really.

This is what Jesus said about himself: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (The gospel of Mark, chpt 10)" That's not a liberal agenda; it's not a conservative agenda. That's the Jesus agenda, rescuing people from darkness and ugliness and offering peace and beauty in the kingdom of God.

10 years later, I find that on facebook the apolitical friendships I had in college have been tainted with a hard crust of partisanship--Republicans are reprehensible. Democrats are evil. Whee, Obama won!! Yay! Osama is dead.

The Jesus call is to "act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with [our] God." These words were written collectively to the nation of Israel, but to carry it out would require the heart of individuals to change. As we interact with people and institutions, as we carry about our business, this is the grid we should be pushing everything through. Am I acting justly? Do I have an opportunity to extend mercy? Does my conduct reflect the reality that the Almighty God is near?

"On earth as it is in heaven" is a line from the Lord's Prayer. When our lives are characterized by justice and mercy and humbly living with God, we become part of extending the reign of the kingdom of God on earth. In the wild chaos of our current "Great Recession", Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the only way and his way doesn't look like the ways we understand or are comfortable with.