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Whenever we face despair in our country one of the most common refrains is, “People just need Jesus.”

My friends, I have bad news – Jesus is not the solution.

At least not the Jesus most of us mean.

The Jesus who is a neat little add on to our lives. The one we keep close in case we find ourselves in trouble or need reassurance that we are good people.

The Jesus who is only after mental agreement that he is God and asks little from us in return (besides inviting people to church and trying to cuss less).

This Jesus allows us to occupy pews with prejudiced hearts and systems unchecked. This Jesus allows us to pray “Thy Kingdom come” without considering the implications.

This Jesus allows us to imagine we are faithful disciples while doing most of our learning from cable news. This Jesus will make your life better if you simply pray at an altar or raise a hand with all heads bowed. This Jesus is easy. 

This Jesus fits comfortably next to the gods of power and wealth and upward mobility. This Jesus doesn’t mind sharing space because this Jesus is enamored by those things too.

This Jesus allows us to harbor hate and bitterness. This Jesus allows us to distance ourselves from the world and feel good about it.

This Jesus surely didn’t mean love our enemies and turn the other check, because this Jesus is reasonable and really only wants us to be happy and healthy and make it to heaven some bright morning.

This Jesus has been invited into the hearts of slave owners, rapists, abusers, power hungry preachers, white supremacists, idolaters, war mongers, and the like and done nothing but help them feel more holy in their un-Christlikeness.

He is little more than a prop on the campaign trail and a get out of hell card should this whole thing turn out to be true.

This Jesus is powerless. And a fraud.

But there is a different Jesus.

One who is not beholden to the American dream. One who does not bend like a reed when politicians ask us to change our convictions for the promise of power. One who does not ask too little of us.

This Jesus is Lord.

This Jesus throws out the charlatans and calls the religious folk “white-washed graves.” They have the right hymns and sound bites and bumper stickers, but nothing of life and love on the inside.

This Jesus will not allow us to sit complacent. This Jesus will not allow us to settle for platitudes. This Jesus doesn’t want to just make you into a nicer version of yourself.

This Jesus will not tolerate our prejudices or violent words or the space we make for other gods. This Jesus demands we repent and turn from all things that look like death and destruction.

Even when we enjoy them. Or we want them. Or sell our souls to justify them.

This Jesus instructs us to love our neighbors, to welcome the outcast, to care for the sick, and imprisoned. This Jesus is less concerned about borders and budgets and security and constitutional amendments than we’d like to think.

This Jesus will call into question all our allegiances. To self, to family, to politicians, to country.

This Jesus is not safe. He will disrupt everything. He will put us at odds with people who follow the other Jesus and the kingdoms of the world. There will be hurt and pain and ulcers. He told us this. That following him would bring division because following him turns it all upside down.

This Jesus said, “If you want to follow me be ready to go to the death.” The other Jesus convinces us this was only hyperbole and we can go on living just the way we like.

But the true Jesus, the one from Nazareth, the one crucified under Roman rule and resurrected from the dead, he is Lord. And he is the only Jesus worth knowing.

This Jesus and all the disruption and difficulty and hard reflection that he demands is worth it. With this Jesus we find that this is the only way to truly live.

With this Jesus we find change and transformation for ourselves and the whole broken world. With this Jesus we find there is another Kingdom where the last are first and the greatest are servants and that even death leads to victory.

This Jesus pushes us outside of our walls and comfort zones and partisan talking points and air conditioned answers and confronts us with what is real and true and right and good. This Jesus changes minds and votes and spending behavior and addictions and priorities and conversations and attitudes and neighborhoods.

May we know this Jesus. May we follow him.

May we allow this Jesus full access to all our biases and comforts and brokenness to do with as he pleases. May he do his best work in places we don’t even realize need work.

May we put to death the false Jesus that has for too long masqueraded in our sanctuaries and rocked us to sleep. May we put away apathy and comfort. May we turn from the gods of power and wealth and personal success in order to fully and loudly proclaim, that Jesus is Lord.

And may this change the world.

You’ve heard about the kids in camps at the border. You’ve likely heard that the US government argued in court that it should not have to supply these kids with blankets, beds, soap, or toothbrushes.

And you’ve probably heard from someone that while this is sad we can’t do much about it because we have to “take care of our own first.”

I’m convinced this is less about helping veterans and more of an excuse to justify our apathy and/or disdain toward these kids and their families. We seem to only apply it to those fleeing north at the border and refugees from around the world.

What we mean is: These people don’t deserve our help because there are others more like us (in color, language, country of origin, culture) who deserve it based solely on their similarity to us.

Used this way, “take care of our own first” is not a Christian argument.

As Christians we are called to care for all people, regardless of their likeness to us. We are told to love our neighbor. Jesus says this is the second most important thing we can do.

When questioned about who exactly our neighbor is (so we can be sure to love only those we have to and not those other, yucky people) Jesus blows the doors wide open by including someone from a different faith and a despised country and ethnicity. Someone that good religious folk would have avoided due to their differences. Someone who doesn’t live next door or on the right side of the border and someone who doesn’t attend our community church. Someone not “our own.”

Jesus says the one we’d rather not help is indeed our own – a neighbor.

“Taking care of our own first” includes taking care of our neighbors. All 7.5 billion of them. With Jesus we don’t get to pick and chose who is our neighbor.

And there is more.

We’ve been baptized into the Church Universal. Our boundaries are far broader than national borders. We belong to a great congregation that includes every tongue and tribe and people.  Many of those fleeing persecution and poverty and violence are people who also belong to this Church.

We call these people Brother and Sister. They are family. Members of the communion of saints and the great cloud of witnesses. St. Paul writes that together we are members of one body. People we say will spend all eternity with us.

No matter their legal status or language barriers, these are truly our own people.

And among them are children. There is no child on the face of the earth who does not belong to us, who is not our responsibility. Jesus doesn’t want the children hindered. He welcomes them and blesses them. Honors them.

Children are often among those considered the least of these – people who have limited power or resources  – like children held in camps at no fault of there own. Jesus identifies with those who are most desperate by saying how we treat them is how we treat him. So its not just a kid who is being denied medical care or a blanket (which is shameful enough), it is Jesus too.

I see too many of us making excuses as to why we can’t or shouldn’t help. Why we shouldn’t feel bad. Why we should care for others instead because they are more like us.

The only way we can make these arguments is by viewing these people through nationalistic lenses rather than through Jesus Christ.

It is too easy to see differences in how people vote or look or believe or come from. We divide out those we like and those we don’t. Those we know and those we don’t. Those who can help us and those that can’t. Those who belong and those that don’t. Those we deem worthy and those who aren’t. 

These distinctions do not exist in the Kingdom of God. Our allegiance is to something grander and more wonderful and far more transformative. We belong to a better way.

So yes, lets care for our own first. But “our own” is a lot broader than maybe we originally intended. Jesus keeps moving the lines we draw.

Young and old. Undocumented or documented. Asylum seeker or desperate nighttime crosser. They belong to us and with us. We belong to them.

We belong to a different Kingdom and a different way. Even our enemies are included.

This is how it works in our Kingdom. And as long as we have a voice and a vote I’m convinced we should be insisting that the elected officials of this nation make it a priority to treat all people from all places and all legalities with the utmost decency and care.

We can have a secure and safe border and a process for immigrating and seeking asylum. We can have laws and boundaries for the safety of everyone. And we can do those things while offering dignity and toothbrushes to anyone and everyone, including veterans and the homeless.

It is not a money issue. It is a heart issue.

If our government can’t figure out how to do it, they should move out of the way and allow humanitarian organizations to care for these precious people who are ours.

Because we take care of our own first. And you are our own. And they are our own. And those folks over there are our own. We claim veterans and the homeless and immigrants and refugees and single parents and all those other people too. We claim everybody as our own because in the Kingdom of God there is always room for more.

In the Kingdom of God no child goes without a blanket or a parent because of lines in the sand. In the Kingdom of God their pain is our pain. And their victory is our victory.

May we have hearts to know and love our neighbors. May we know and love and care for those who live down the street and around the world and in detention camps. May we see people instead of categories; the image of God instead of legal status.

May we find that taking care of our own means including more and more people. And may we find that this is the key to changing our hearts and the world.

May the Kingdom come on the southern border as it is in heaven.

Scott Rodgerson, Unsplash.com

We know how it turns out.

But sometimes we don’t.

We know life conquers death.

But sometimes we don’t.

We know who we are and what we believe.

But sometimes we don’t.

We have faith.

But sometimes we don’t.

We know how we should live.

But sometimes we don’t.

Holy Saturday is a strange day. Fixed in-between the crucifixion and the resurrection is this time of uncertainty and waiting.

On this side of history we know what is to come. We are resurrection people.

But sometimes we aren’t.

Sometimes despite knowing in our heads we feel unsure in our hearts. Despite all we have seen and sung and prayed, we still wrestle with doubt and what-ifs. Sometimes our tears threaten to drown us.

We join the followers of Jesus in their grief and anxiety, replaying over and over how things could have been different. We wring nervous hands and bite shaky lips because somehow we have ended up far from where we set out to be.

What in the world happened?

It is in this in-between place that so many of us find ourselves. Waiting. Wondering. Hurting. Trying to catch our breath.

We have more questions than answers. We have more fear than faith. We have more holes than wholeness. We feel the sting of death and this broken world.

We are Holy Saturday people.

And here on this black Saturday, we are not alone.

The women will gather what is needed to prepare a dead body. The male disciples will dismiss the testimony of their friends. People will go home confused and unsure. The fishers of men will go back to fishing for fish.

And it is here in their confusion and doubt and fear and anxiety that they meet the risen Lord. Jesus comes to them not when they have it all figured out but smack dab in the middle of not knowing a thing. He meets them in sorrow. He meets them in pain.

Holy Saturday people, take heart. You are not forgotten. God is still at work. Do not give up and do not give in.

It is not your perfection that saves you. It is not your lack of mess that makes you clean. It is not your certitude that makes you strong.

God is near. Even when morning feels a million miles away. Even when we don’t deserve it. Even when we aren’t sure which way is up.

Hold on to whatever hope you have. You are not abandoned. Holy Saturday will come to a close and be met with a new day and a new reality. All that brings doubt and fear and destruction is on its way out.

Hold on. One more day.

Hold on. As long as it takes.

There will come a day when Holy Saturdays are no more.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. There will be no mourning, crying, or pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look! I’m making all things new.” He also said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:4-5

May we remember. And may we find the strength to hang on until that day dawns.