I’ll admit, I often take the easy way out when I write one of these blog posts. Sure, I might tell a deeply personal story, or talk about a difficult recent event, but I tend to wrap it up in a neat little package that ends with “... Jesus loves us and we’re supposed to love each other” and sign off with “Yours in Christ.”
And Jesus definitely loves us, and we are definitely supposed to love each other. But digging into what it means to love each other can make people feel uncomfortable.
On Tuesday night, I went to see a Mavis Staples concert. I hear she was followed by Bonnie Raitt, but I didn’t stay for that part. I was there to hear the Chicago Blues and Gospel sound that she’s been famous for since she was a member of the Staple Singers at 11 years old. You might remember some of her oldies like “Let’s Do It Again” and “I’ll Take You There.”
Mavis is also known as an activist. Her father’s Chicago apartment was a regular host to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he decided early on that “if [MLK] could preach it, they could sing it.” So freedom songs and protest music became part of their regular concert repertoire.
As I was sitting in a crowd that was split between people who were there to see Mavis Staples and Bonnie Raitt, I became acutely aware how uncomfortable some of the spectators might have been. Especially when lyrics started decrying the politics of gun violence and killing children. It isn’t quite as easy on the heart as “Let’s Give ‘em Something to Talk About.”
But in his time, Jesus wasn’t very palatable, either. Even his followers, who truly believed what he taught, tried to get him to be less abrasive among the politicians and law-driven clergy he was speaking out against. Flipping tables in the temple was the least of it - he was asking for crazy things like feeding and clothing the poor without asking how they got that way, tending to the sick with asking for repayment, treating women as equals, not abusing children … honestly, it seems like activism hasn’t changed much in 2,000 years.
Yes, the bottom line was loving your neighbor, but loving everybody meant a political shift as much as a religious one.
Just like some of the activists of our own time, Jesus was arrested and killed. For being a delinquent. A rabble-rouser. For stirring up trouble and making it difficult to maintain the status quo for the people who had it easy.
Love isn’t always easy. But we are lucky enough to live in a free place where we should be able to rouse some rabble and ask for the things Jesus taught us to ask for.
Yours in delinquency,
John Johns