It’s election year in United States, and the other day I was having a conversation with my spiritual mentor about the current state of politics in our country. Quite frankly, it’s difficult for me to listen to any of the candidates talk because nobody seems to be interested in talking about any policies or worldviews that are not short cited, or too simplistic and nationalistic solutions to complex into related problems. I don’t feel like anyone speaks for me or to me., And that’s just the reality. Parentheses on a more positive note, I was listening to a the Ted Radio Hour recently that advocated looking at the municipal level-mayors, council people, etc.-to see a place where politics is still working in United States. If you’re interested check it out Ted Radio Hour).

Donald Trump is a decidedly disturbing presidential candidate to me. To be quite honest, with his nationalistic and practically fascist statements he reminds me of the rise of Hitler. However, I was thinking recently about his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and it struck me how odd the slogan is. It’s easy to say “let’s make America great again”, but it’s also just as easy to ask, when was America great? Were we great in the 1950s and 60s when we were oppressing people of color in our country? Were we great in the 1980s, when we were struggling to keep up with the environmental damage done by unregulated factories? I’m not saying our country isn’t great. I love the United States, and still cry profusely whenever I sing the national anthem. I am blessed and grateful to have grown up here. But life isn’t about making America great. Life is about simply being the best citizens we can be and trying to make this world a better place. But there’s something at stake that’s even more significant, and that is the question of where we put our ultimate trust. America doesn’t need to be great for me to have a great life. My trust is placed somewhere else. This is not a new thing.

In Paul’s firsts letter to the church at Thessaloniki, he makes a decided dig against the nationalistic leanings of the Roman empire. He makes a remark about people claiming peace and safety when there is none and then a change will come instantly. Though it’s easy to assume that this is somehow about the end of times, it’s enlightening to realize that peace and security was actually a political slogan of the Roman empire, and what Paul is actually doing here is confronting people with the question of where they put their faith. If you decide to put your faith in the Roman empire  (or the United States) you will be decidedly shocked and disappointed when that empire is incapable of really protecting you. The only Kingdom where we have actual security is the Kingdom of God. Granted, that security isn’t always tangible or evident, but ultimately God is calling us to a deeper security, based in eternity.  Regardless, it’s a great reminder that neither our trust nor our security comes from any earthly “greatness”. America can be great (if it decides to take care of the least of these and the outcasts) or it can be not great. Either way, I am called to live my life wisely, to do my best to provide for my family, but most of all to place my trust in a King and Lord whose name is not Cesar nor Trump nor Mr. President.

Jesus is pretty ambivalent about housekeeping.

In a few different episodes, he takes religious leaders to task about their emphasis on external/irrelevant purity in comparison with the more difficult (and necessary) task of personal, INTERIOR life change.

In one instance, he puts it in terms of washing dishes: don’t focus so much on the cleaning the outside of your cups (the part that everyone can see), when what is inside the cup is so filthy and corrupting.

In another instance, he contrasts the cultural/religious emphasis on avoiding certain foods (again, what everyone can see) with the thought that it’s not what goes INTO a person that corrupts them, but rather what comes OUT of hearts (and mouths) that breaks us down and hurts ourselves and others.

It seems to me that Jesus is clear on his priorities: internal, SPIRITUAL growth and transformation as opposed to mere external (and sometimes arbitrary and artificial) holiness.

But “bad religion” has a peculiar habit of falling back on the externalities whenever it fails at the harder interior work. Sometimes I feel like the church in North America, with its uncomfortable alliance with consumerism, nationalism, and comfortable affluence, has fallen prey to this peculiarity.

I think it haunts us as a people: our spiritual systems and theologies that demand little to no life change have failed to produce the internal, heart-level transformation that Jesus is looking for (and that secretly we all crave), and so we do what religion has always done: We look at external “markers” of holiness.

It’s not malicious, it’s just the way religion works.

Cups are easy, hearts are hard.

I’m not saying I’m not guilty of this, by the way. I know that I fall victim to it again and again. But somewhere along the way I got tired of washing dishes. Somewhere along the way I decided to let Jesus challenge the deep things in my heart: my pride, my selfishness, my self-centeredness, my narcissism, my arrogance.

I decided to give up control and let Jesus fight those battles.

“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil hearts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” (Matthew 15:16-20)

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“St. John the Baptist Preaching in the Wilderness” by Anton Raphael Mengs

I was reading a book recently by a popular Christian leader, and he had this to say about John the Baptizer:

Several things about John stand out right away. He was an unusual dresser with strange eating habits. Just in case you’re uncertain, wearing clothes made of camel’s hair was not the height of fashion, even during the time of Jesus. We are told he ate locusts and wild honey. I suppose the wild honey was to help get the locusts down. (Erwin McManus, The Barbarian Way)

Overall, I get what the point he was trying to make: John (as well as Jesus) was a provocative character. However, I think McManus overlooked a crucial point. First, this is what the New Testament actually says about John’s dressing habits:

In those days, John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea…. John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. (Matthew 3:1, 4-6)

Second, Jesus has this to say about John:

For all the Prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who is to come. (Matthew 11:14)

Lastly, notice this description of Elijah—a prophet—from the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament):

‘He (Elijah) had a garment of hair and had a leather belt around his waist.’ (2 Kings 1:8)

When you consider the thread between those three passages, you begin to notice that something else may be going on which is  a bit beyond the outsider, “barbarian” nature of faith (which I happen to believe in, by the way). If John was conscious dressing like Elijah—and I believe he was—the Baptizer wasn’t merely trying to shock people; he was trying to signal something to them, namely, here comes a prophet. 

Prophets were a unique breed in Jewish culture; they showed up to put the people (and, more specifically, the religous and political leaders) on notice that they had strayed from the Instruction (Torah), and (most often) that they were neglecting the poor and the outsider. Moreover, prophets tended to embody their message, meaning that they didnt’ just speak or write it; oftentimes they acted it out, in sometimes disturbing (and thoroughly gross) ways: nakedness, human feces, and broken pottery were involved.

When you understand the message that John was bringing to the people around Jerusalem, it’s pretty easy to see that he (and later his cousin, Jesus) saw himself as carrying on that tradition.

So when the people of Jerusalem came down to the Jordan river, their reaction actually wasn’t, “Wow this guy is weird.” Rather it was more like, “Wow, there’s a prophet!”

John made perfect sense in his context.

However, as I thought more about this passage and what it said, I actually became troubled on a different level. I started to wonder what this approach to people in the Bible (“Wow these people were weird! They were like from another planet! You wouldn’t even know what to do with them!”) actually says about God and His mission in the world.

You see, the more that we turn people in the Bible into something resembling spiritual space aliens, the easier it is to convince ourselves that there is something unique and special about “those people,” something that we ourselves could never measure up to.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

One of the names that Jesus embodies for believers is “Emmanuel”, or “God-With-Us,” and that phrase means everything, because it is the essence of the Gospel: God enters into humanity, takes on our limitations, embraces our junk and dirt, walks through the muck and the mire of life on earth and ultimately says, “You are okay.”

As Church father Athanasius put it, “God came down to humanity in order to raise humanity up to God.”

Let me spell it out clearly: The Incarnation (“God-With-Us”), along with the Biblical record, means that Jesus (and John the Baptist) made perfect sense in his context. It means that God is somehow perfectly at home within humanity. Now, it doesn’t mean that Jesus wasn’t provocative, or that he didn’t stretch people’s perceptions or understandings.

But he certainly wasn’t a space alien.

Furthermore, the message here is that in a way we are in the same boat as John the Baptist, or even Jesus: John wasn’t a space alien; Jesus wasn’t a space alien… neither am I, and (presumably) neither are you.

God uses normal human cultural context, and “normal” human beings, to bring about amazing, unforeseen changes. Even as a prophet, John made perfect sense in 1st century Judaism.

You make perfect sense in the 21st century.

What does God want to do through you?

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