The more I read the Gospels the more I am convinced of their social, political and economic edges. Social, because these pieces of rhetoric address the way society is constructed, how we live together. The vertical social order is challenged by a new radical mutuality. Economic, because these gospels speak of wealth being shared and not horded. Political, because they challenge the power structure of their day favoring a new order that empowers all with agency. The Gospels speak of lives lived in dignity. The raised Jesus is a consummate metaphor for lives raised into the light of dignity, escaping the shame of life on the margins…Jesus tortured and shamed, and then raised into this new life.
Psychologists teach us that to bear shame is debilitating and often life threatening. Resurrection life is that which sets us free from shame, and that is what salvation is about…the ability to live life with dignity…and that is why our faith is not for us only but for the world…that we are to bring saving dignity into the shame filled lost corners of the world…that we are to raise others as Christ was raised until shame is no more…shame because one is poor…shame because one is hungry or thirsty…shame because one is imprisoned…shamed because one has no place to live…shame because one is an addict…shame because one is abused…shamed because one is unhealthy….social, political, economic. Resurrection requires us…we the raised body of the Christ given to the shamed of our world.
Resurrection is to stand with dignity, and not a distant singular event in history…but the life force that wakes us up to bear it each moment to the world so desperate for it…A world debilitated and life-threatened. Alleluia, Christ is risen, and we as well, and others yet to be, until all is utterly without shame, and all stand together as one raised body and live a common life of unceasing praise.
