Jesus Christ – Impolitic

“The world has never had a problem with Jesus.” This—from a professor of theology—commenced the closing remarks of a guest sermon streamed this past Sunday from the empty sanctuary of my (former) church. Polls, he summoned as proof, confirm Christ is the most admired man of history. Don’t be alarmed, the professor seemed to be implying, Christendom is impervious to the “long arms” of the governor, his mandates and a popular culture suspicious of—if not hostile to—the spiritual. We will be accommodated.

In fact the opposite is true—Jesus is “the stone that the builders rejected.” The world, from the moment King Herod learned of his impending arrival, has always had a problem with the Son of Man. It could even be argued that this contest is its distinguishing characteristic, its raison d’être.

“If the world hates you,” he posits in John 15:18, “know that it has hated me before it hated you.” The world (through Judas Iscariot) betrayed Christ for cash, rejected him (in Jerusalem) for the murderer Barabbas, mocked and flogged him and put nails through his hands and feet (at the order of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate). “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him,” John testifies. That was and remains his earthly mission, accomplished by his crucifixion and resurrection: to reveal the nature of the world—the dominion of death, because of The Fall—as one of corruption and error, and to overcome it. He has and is, ab aeterno.

The world has never had a problem with Jesus? This is, to me, catechistic malpractice of the highest order. He came with a sword to unseat its ruler, the Prince of Darkness, and divide humanity—the penitent from the shameless, the faithful from the treacherous, good from evil; to be followed, not applauded for his celebrity. (Prestige is irreconcilable with the law and logic of the Word.) His righteousness was not welcomed, and his disciples were hounded out of town after town. Just as, per Proverbs 29:27, “one whose way is upright is detestable to the wicked,” so is Christ to the world. He is its bête noire, the ne plus ultra of rivals, because his light illuminates the lies upon which the world is founded. He is incomprehensible, incompatible, a stranger.

And he is, wrote Pascal, “in agony until the end of the world,” because of this. It cannot be otherwise. That is his cross to bear, and ours: to be persecuted and suffer for the glory of God so that we might attain victory over the world—and ourselves—and gain eternal life in the enduring city that is to come. For there is no room for us in this inn.

Image: Vallejo, Francisco Antonio. Christ After the Flagellation. 1760-70, Art Museum of the Church of San Felipe Neri “La Profesa,” Mexico City.

There is something sinister about our sun. It appears sick, its wattage disconcertingly reduced, its glory redacted and smeared. It is, in its infirmity, not itself. And from its lofty perch it broadcasts a mien of exasperation that is mirrored in the faces below. We, too, are not well. Our lungs are pierced by twin maladies, our hearts unsettled by portentous events. The whole ordeal reeks of a cosmic coup.

Yesterday was Sunday, the last day of summer—school, in some strange incarnation, begins today for the city’s children—and our second on a Jovian moon. The atmosphere—experts tell us, and our noses confirm—is hazardous, and so we have submitted to house arrest. Our villain, of course, is the smoke of wildfires, a herculean dose of it, which has settled like boiling water into a bowl on top of us. It is a deluge. Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the “greate fyshe.” Perhaps tomorrow God will take pity on us.

The defiant few who venture out into it look miserable, their movements conservative and deliberate, koi at the bottom of a frigid pond. The rest of us, in our own climatized fishbowls, must elicit a similar impression—one of not only tousles and stubble, but resignation. We have made a meal of it this year, haven’t we? Still, through plague and terrorism, acts of God (or misfortune, stupidity, astrological prophecy, have your pick) and the dissolution of normalcy into an off-piste Huxleyan parody—next stop, the Church of Belial!—we do sit-ups, send flowers, make the bed. “This is not panache,” C. S. Lewis rightly observed. “It is our nature.” We are always on the threshold of Thermopolis—only of late do we seem to notice the glow.

Widespread haze (and havoc) is forecast for the rest of the week (and the Anthropocene); there will be no imminent escape from our Monstro, after all. I think of the songbirds, without air conditioning, baffled and shushed by this poisonous brown fog. I think of the gardeners who cannot find respite, even in the shade. Every leaf is still. I pray for a little wind.

And I think of Christ’s triumph on the cross, presaging ours, with the help of a sonnet by Malcolm Guite:

And now he comes to breathe beneath the pall
Of our pollutions, draw our injured air
To cleanse it and renew. His final breath
Breathes us, and bears us through the gates of death. (11-14)

Note: Please visit malcolmguite.wordpress.com for more information on the poet and his work.

Tag: Jesus Christ

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