Ordinary Time - Is Jesus still weeping?

As [Jesus] came near and saw the city, he wept over it . . . (Luke 19:41)


One of the things that evangelical Protestants lack is geographical specificity. Other religious groups have centers: Roman Catholics have Rome; Orthodox Catholics have Constantinople; Muslims have Mecca; Jews have Jerusalem. Evangelical Protestants are, by and large, decentered. We have no holy city, no particular place of pilgrimage. Some might say, in a theological sense, that we are, as a scattered people, God’s own dwelling, and we need no earthly city to give us an identity.

So, it’s possible that Jesus occasionally stops and weeps over Rome, Constantinople, Mecca, and Jerusalem. It could be that those cities are occasionally washed in his tears.

And maybe he pauses now and again to weep over us.

In Luke’s story, right after Jesus’ time of weeping, he went into the Temple and chased out the moneychangers and sellers of animals intended for sacrifice. Yes, these people had turned the Temple courts into a religious strip mall, but they had also wiped out the purpose of those courts: To allow non-Jews to come close to the Temple and engage in worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In effect, the people of God were eliminating their witness to the world. They had closed their doors to those who should have drawn close to the light that Israel was created to be. They had divorced themselves from their very destiny.

I worry about this. Protestants emerged a few hundred years ago as ones seeking to reform a broken church. Evangelicals emerged later to give their lives to bearing witness to the good news of Jesus Christ.

Now we’re seen by others as more about what we’re against than what we’re for. And I think that Jesus might be weeping.

Our so-called studies in apologetics (the tradition of defending the faith) is more combative than clarifying. Our relationships with people of other religious traditions involves much more accusation than it does mutual understanding. Our response to the surrounding culture, when it seems to offend us, is too often to hunker down and heighten our walls rather than to engage and try to see what God is doing.

I think I would rather have Jesus weeping over a holy city far, far away rather than weeping on me. But I suspect that we are drenched in his tears and don’t even know it. As painful as it might be, maybe Jesus will come along and clear out the rubbish and the drama from our Temple courts and remind us who we were meant to be as the people of God—a people who exist, not for themselves, but for the sake of the world.

If Jesus does that, will we repent and respond? Or will we haul him up on charges of heresy and nail him to a cross again? I don’t want to think too long on the answer to that question.

Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on us.

A Scout is . . .

I am troubled about the recent news stories surrounding the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) organization’s ruling to allow openly gay boys to become scouts, in effect overturning a ban on gay membership. There are two things that trouble me.

First, BSA is open to boys as young as seven years old (Cub Scouts). A boy can enter the ranks of the Boy Scouts at age eleven (that’s when I joined up). The levels of cognitive, social, moral, physical, and sexual development are all over the map when you get boys (girls also, but boys are my topic today) of varying ages together.

I get concerned when developmental labels are put on children while they are still in the process of developing. My guess is that most boys join the Boy Scouts (or move from the Cub program) at the younger ages of eligibility. I wonder how many 11-13 year olds have sufficiently moved through their developmental stages so that a label of sexual orientation can be placed on them?

I do not object, however, to the lifting of the ban. Young boys (and adolescents) are working through many complex developmental issues all at once. It seems appropriate to me to open membership to boys in general rather than attempting to encourage categorizations about sexual orientation that may be premature.

If there is a concern about sexual behavior among scouts, it would be a mistake to assume that having a ban on homosexual membership would stop that from happening in the first place. In his book Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis talks about the sexual domination of younger boys by the older boys in the boarding school where he lived. Boys get into these kinds of shenanigans all the time. It’s not a good thing, but it’s also not a new thing.

My other concern is about the very loud and vocal exodus out of the BSA by very conservative Christian groups. I am troubled when Christians extract themselves from the world and create competing organizations. I recognize that there are times when extraction may be appropriate, but I’m not convinced that this is one of those times.

The subtle message that leaks through the reaction to the BSA’s ruling is that there are certain kinds of people that are outside the scope of Christian ministry and care. Perhaps there is even the implication that there are people out there who stand outside the possibility of God’s redemptive love (unless, of course, that they get their acts together—can I please hear my Reformed friends reminding us, “By faith alone!”?) This is, in my view, a problematic message that is being given to the world.

Not all things that happen in our culture should be embraced—I get that. But there needs to be deeper reflection taking place than simply drawing a hasty line in the sand and creating competing subcultures that make Christians appear both irrelevant and ineffective.

[a personal note: I was only in the Boy Scouts for a year. But, to this day, I can quote the BSA oath and the 12-points of the Scout Law. I can’t remember where I left my car keys, but I remember all of that. I guess it’s an okay trade-off]