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WEDNESDAY THOUGHT 4/15/09

This’ll Never Sell!
 
“This is all wrong,” I can hear an ill-tempered editor growl, as he takes big swipes across the pages with his pen. “Look, there’s no revenge element in this Jesus story.  Picture Clint Eastwood in the JC role strolling into Pilate’s palace, spurs clicking on the stone floor.  Okay, skip the spurs.  And Pilate groveling and whimpering right before Clint pulls back the curtain, squints threateningly at him and announces, ‘I told you’d I’d be back!’  Then he flattens a handful of guards and drags Pilate, along with a few of those  pompous temple elders, out onto the front steps and proclaims himself the winner, as everyone cheers.  Now that would sell!’”
 
What my fictitious editor (along with most of the world) fails to get is that this is a redemption story, not some revenge flick.  It’s not about big-screen climaxes or (how Hollywood might revise the script) “How Jesus Found His Groove.”  It is an implausible story told with humility and quiet strength … totally believable yet impossible to believe without those special 3-D glasses of the gifts of faith and grace.
 
My point:  Easier believed than expressed, I’m sorry to say.  But it seems to me that the “proof” of Jesus is in 2,000 years (and counting) of one-on-one transforming outcomes and redemptions.  It is in that quiet, personal — amazingly unmistakable — voice, that no-room-for-doubt breaking of the bread.  All we have to do is open our hearts, open our eyes and accept.  Now, that’s a pretty terrific story.  Enjoy. — jri
 
“When he was at the table with them,
he took bread, gave thanks, broke it
and began to give it to them.  Then
their eyes were opened, and they
recognized him, and he disappeared
from their sight.”  
        –    Luke 24:30-31