Pink

 It's wild when you see it.

When I was in school, we didn't have Pink Shirt day, now they do.  It's a day that was started in Canada, one of our gifts to the world, where students saw that a fellow student was being bullied for wearing a pink shirt, and so they decided to bring 50 pink shirts in order to show solidarity with the bullied student.  They were also making a statement: 'you'll have to bully us all.'  Well, that initial show of good faith expanded into a movement that broadened across the nation, and eventually internationally, where people would wear pink on a particular day, to stand up against bullying.  

Good initiative.

But there's one fatal flaw, which is that when you observe the school assemblies on that day, you'll see something happening - pink shirt wearing has pretty well universal adoption, and almost everyone wears one.  Even the bullies. 

And that's self defeating, isn't it? What's the point of an anti-bullying initiative in which even the bullies say that bullying is bad but do nothing to change their behavior?  Obviously, everyone is going to agree with the sentiment that bullying is bad, and shouldn't be done, but the real risk and danger is that people would be completely incapable of seeing their own activity as bullying.  They view themselves as good people, nice people, who just happen to have given someone a good natured ribbing once in a while.  They don't see themselves as bullies, you know.  Bullies are bad people.  They're nice guys.  Who isn't?

This kind of dialogue seems to be at least partially related to the Old Testament reading, where there are fat sheep and lean sheep. Fat sheep, lean sheep, and the fat sheep keep on kicking the lean sheep out of the way.  They keep on bullying them aside, thrusting at them with horn, and pushing at them with side and shoulder.  But the fat sheep don't think that they're fat sheep.  They just think that they're sheep.  And when it says in that Old Testament reading that God is going to serve them in justice, we tend to want that to happen, but it's just like the bullies putting on pink shirts.  Of course we want justice, who doesn't?  But the justice that we want likely won't work out in our favor.

That's because we are convinced that we do the right thing.  And we can do that because we tend to view our actions as good, primarily because they benefit us.  The actions that we do are good because we do them.  If something benefits us, it is good.  If it doesn't, it is bad.  By definition, pretty much.  And we can justify all kinds of bad decisions based on how something affects us.  All our actions, good or ill, we can dismiss as being things that we just had to do.  And given that bullies genuinely believe that they are against bullying, how can we possibly make any kind of moral inroads with a group of people who legitimately believe that they have nothing whatsoever to change?

Well, Jesus' division of the sheep and the goats helps with that.  A lot.  The division that Christ makes between the sheep and the goats is done not how we would expect.  We would expect him to divide the sheep on one side, the goats on the other, and to say to the sheep 'you did good things,' and to the goats 'you did bad things.'  And if he had done that, then everyone would universally believe that they are on the side with the sheep. Because modern humanity believes that they have nothing to change, and their actions were good.  People, when they are thinking about themselves as moral agents, think of themselves as people who have done good things by and large.  We took care of our families, we helped our friends, we were good to those who were good to us, and so on.  But the division that Christ makes is something that goes a bit deeper.  One the one side, the sheep, are those who served Christ without knowing, feeding him, visiting him, clothing him, tending to him, that kind of thing.  But the ones on the left, those are people not who did bad things, but who didn't do good things.

That really should convict us.  It should convict us because there's no way out, you know.  We all believe that the naked should be clothed, that the sick should be cared for, that the hungry should be fed, that kind of thing.  But those things aren't being universally done.  And Jesus doesn't let you off with the idea that this is someone else's responsibility.  It's yours.  Through and through.  When you see the needy, how you approach them is how you serve Christ.  If there is still hunger in the world, still homelessness, still misery and illness, then I guess you haven't done enough.  Which is true.

When we look forward to the end of all things, we're looking forward to a world in which every tear is wiped from every eye, where there is no more hunger nor thirst, nor illness nor death.  All those problems have been solved.  That's what we look forward to, and we all acknowledge that such a thing would be good!  We want it to happen.  Amen, come Lord Jesus!  And for that to take place, Jesus Christ had to empty himself completely, had to suffer and die, had to shed his blood for the sins of the world in order to bring about the perfection that we're looking for.  In reality, we're looking towards salvation, paradise, in a way that recognizes that these conclusions are good, and we are also recognizing that we are incapable of doing them well. What it comes down to, then, is for us to realize that it's not our job to change right and wrong, but instead to understand who it is who fulfills right and wrong himself.  

That changes the conversation fundamentally. Ordinarily we say that these things are too hard, so Christ can't have meant them.  But that falls flat when we see that these are things that Christ himself did.  Look through the Gospels, and witness the times that Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, ministered to the prisoners, and clothed the naked.  Realize that it cost him everything, far more than we are willing to do.  We want these things to be within reason. Christ is, by definition unreasonable, and will behave accordingly.  He loves you with a desperate love that cannot be restrained, where he embraces us with wild abandon, willing to give it all up for us.  Which he does.

At this time of year, we can feel our need for the savior pressing in on us.  Not just all the cruel, petty things we did, but all the chances to be good and righteous that we didn't take.  But thanks to Christ that he did all of that, emptying himself a little at a time until there was nothing left.  Exhausted, worn to nothing, giving it all for us, so that we can be spared.  It's not that he made the law easier to follow, it has always been too enormous for self-interested people to properly pursue.  But what he did do was to fulfill that law. Every jot and tittle, not one jot, not one iota would be gone from the law, but would rather be fulfilled perfectly by Christ.  And for those of us who don't and can't do enough to alleviate suffering here on earth can rejoice that Christ has set the precondition for a world in which suffering is not there.  Confess your sins, therefore, and get past the idea that you still have to change the morals of God to fit what you are able to do.  Instead, rely on the grace of God in Christ who overcomes.