My wife and I enjoy Broadway musicals. Alongside favorites like Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, we enjoy the musical story Wicked. This interesting prequel to the beloved Wizard of Oz puts a whole new twist on a well-known story. What if, as the musical Wicked suggests, the Wicked Witch was actually a good person who was trying to save Oz? And what if the fates that befell the Lion, the Tin Woodsman, and the Scarecrow were not curses by the Wicked Witch, but her attempt to keep them from being killed by a more sinister curse? And what if Glenda, the Good Witch, was actually a friend of the Wicked Witch and knew the wholesome truth about her but was not courageous enough to confront popular opinion? And what if the Wizard of Oz was actually a fraud, and the father of the Wicked Witch through an adulterous affair?
Ferguson, Breath, and Justice
When Derrick Rose wore a pre-game warm-up shirt that said, “I can’t breathe,” I sensed that a movement might be underway. When Nashville residents laid down in the middle of Interstate 24 on a busy Thanksgiving traffic night, I sensed that a movement might be underway. When Isaiah Fish, TNU Class of 2014 and M.Div. Candidate at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, wrote me about his social justice concerns, I sensed that a movement might be underway.
Is Ferguson and New York City a one-week news cycle or the beginning of a call for justice from a nation still sinning and healing?
What Would Jesus Say to Donald Sterling?
What would Jesus say to Donald Sterling about recent events in his life? I think Jesus might say something like this:
When I came to earth to do the work of my Father, I laid aside all power and took the form of a servant. I came not to do my own will, but his. The culture I was born into was Jewish. These people had a rich, storied past with traditions that formed generation after generation. They believed they were the chosen people of my Father—and they also believed, mistakenly, that their chosen-ness was about privilege rather than service.
I found myself deeply at odds with the people of my own race and culture. I knew that I was sent to seek and save the lost, the outcast, the neglected, the poor, the outsider—to make one people out of many. They preferred that I do miracles only among the chosen people and that I lead a political revolt to restore power to them over the occupying enemy. My refusal to adopt their agenda cost me my life. My crucifixion was their way of saying that I was cursed by God and an enemy of the people of God. They called my words blasphemy. Abandoned to the grave, I would have been a minor footnote in Jewish history – a deluded messianic figure who ran afoul with the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman rulers.
But my Father had other things in mind. He raised me from the grave and now I sit at his right hand interceding for those who need the grace available in me. Donald, my Father loves all peoples and redeems all wrong—even yours.”
Jesus
