The son of Man, the son of God gives us a sign that, once more, he is not only at odds with but opposed to the structures that administer (a certain kind of) life and death.
In this passage in John, light is associated with Jesus and with the love of God for the entire world. Light is explicitly linked with a capacious love that was present from the beginning of creation and includes all of creation. It is therefore opposed to racism of any kind.
In a world of increasing anti-Jewish sentiments, we do well to note at whom Jesus points a finger. It’s not at Judaism, it’s at Rome.
Yet this “good news” – profoundly strange, even apparently morbid – promises that, in relinquishing our supereminent concern for the self, pursuing instead the way of peace and justice, we become so free that even a violent end may be an expression of an ultimately joyful reception of the gift of life – that is, it may be the way to save a life.
Lent can become a season of personal and societal transformation as people of faith respond to the counter-cultural call from Jesus’ baptism. It challenges us to examine our own attitudes and behaviours, encouraging a shift towards a more compassionate and just way of living.
A political theology of the transfiguration of Jesus has to expose and transgress the elevation of whiteness as divine, as a norm and as something superior to multi-coloured local expressions of faith. It also calls us to celebrate the mystery of transfiguration as trans-figuration of the body ethic of Jesus and of all humanity.
If Christians believe in a God of the oppressed, it is incumbent upon them to similarly locate themselves on the side of the oppressed.
Jesus does not need others to define who he is because he rests in the knowledge that he is called and beloved by God. Jesus does not need the man with the unclean spirit to proclaim that he is the “Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24) in order to own and live this identity for himself.
As we enter a new election season with our polarized political communities occupying different epistemologies and worlds, it remains an open question what it will look like for us to cultivate a better politics. We are caught in a riptide, being pulled further apart with few resources at our disposal for anything other than the zero-sum game we’ve inherited. The Jonah story, however, offers a different kind of political imagination, where God confronts and offers grace to enemies by putting them into contact with one another. This multi-layered grace introduces moral complexity and political uncertainty, but it also opens the door to a world not entirely determined by scarcity and competition.
Listening and responding is a blueprint for us all: it’s amazing and wise to discern God’s leading in the context of community.
Our reception of Genesis 1:3 emphasizes the inherent power of God’s word, not only to improve lives but also to change (and create!) new structures. Just as God once brought order from chaos, God can do so again.
Those who read Paul’s propertied incarnation in Galatians should not run away from its horrors or theologize them. We should find truth in them (though perhaps not the truth Paul intended). We should tell truth from them.