Dear Christian,

Driving down 101 the other day, I noticed a bumper sticker I’ve seen for years. Attempting to seem relevant, written in an edgy font circa 2002 is NOTW: Not Of This World. We Christians love to say our home isn’t here on earth. We say things like, “Our citizenship is in heaven.” We’ve taken ancient texts written thousands of years ago to a culturally specific people and place and arrogantly assume it is written to us. To Americans. To our time and our place and our whiteness and privilege and religious constructs. And that, because our time on earth is meaningless beyond “saving souls for heaven,” there’s a mentality that earth is simply a waiting room for the sweet bye and bye because it’s all gonna burn anyway. 

Many of us have witnessed two opposite, but still damaging, Christian realities: NOTW and 7 Mountain Mandate, or Christian Nationalism. One says hunker down and wait it out. The other says to claim dominating Christian authority in every place of power. Both are heresy and neither was modeled by Jesus.

If either of these realities were the case, why did Jesus heal those who were suffering? Why did Jesus ask people to live at peace with each other? Why did Jesus implore his followers to take care of the most marginalized and vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the incarcerated, the poor? Why did he insist we forgive each other and love our enemies and pray for those who cause us harm? Why didn’t Jesus seek positions of political or religious power to shift the cultural climate of the day? Jesus seemed to model and suggest, instead, that the love God has for a person could transform their response to themselves and everyone else into a greater capacity to love here on earth as it is in heaven.

Monday is full of mixed emotions. It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a new president will be inaugurated. On one hand, it’s a celebration of a continued longing for justice and the work of seeking liberation. It’s the collective naming of past sins and a hopeful, bright future. It’s a declaration to never go back to days of racism and fear. On the other hand, we’ll be gaining a new president who, for many people, represents the opposite of Martin Luther King Jr.. Depending on many different variables (ethnicity, gender, sexuality, race, faith, etc.), you might feel grief and anger or you might feel hope and pride.

Most of us feel the darkness surrounding us. We have school shootings, debilitating medical debt, the fear of deportation for some neighbors, mass incarceration, climate change denial, fires burning LA, wars and rumors of wars, and your own personal relationship / health / family / financial difficulties. So do we hunker and numb through these next four years or do we name it and claim it in White Christian superiority? Do we need to post the Ten Commandments on school walls and cross our fingers in the hope it will help our kids not kill each other? 

Maybe if we started living out the ways of Jesus instead of enforcing our religious beliefs upon others, we might just be doing what we pray for most weeks: May Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. On earth. Today. This prayer demands we stay connected to those who suffer. It demands we never stop working for justice and liberation for the oppressed. It demands we stop clutching our pearls saying, “How did this happen? How did we get here again?” It demands, like Martin Luther King Jr., though we might not get to see the poor fed, the houseless housed, the immigrant wanted, the families not torn apart, the earth healed, the sick cared for, the incarcerated humanized in our time, we never stop seeking and working and healing and hoping.

We just celebrated Epiphany in the Christian Church calendar. This is the Biblical story of the Magi, or Wise Men, who follow a star to seek a foreign savior in a foreign place. It’s a story of light breaking forth in darkness, where oppressive government powers didn’t have the final word. 

The Magi were, most likely, Zoroastrian priests from Persia who could interpret dreams, read the stars, and write horoscopes. They were wealthy and well respected people who sought the gods, recognizing that spirituality could not be contained within one path. The Magi were pagan people who didn’t know the Jewish God in the ways one would think they would need to know. They don’t seem to believe the right things or worship the right way or say the right prayers according to our good doctrine. They worshipped all kinds of gods and would be, as I’ve heard, the tarot-card reading, dream interpreting, incense burning, pachouli-smelling, new age yoga instructors of today stating that you are your own goddess. These are people who live open-heartedly towards spirituality in many forms and this softness of heart led them to follow a star in search of a savior.  

This all seems a little offensive to the political and religious boxes I was handed and then expected to perpetuate.

It seems like God isn’t only interested in the Republican or Democrat minivan driving, shirt-tucked-in people with nice marriages and nice kids and a nice 401Ks that indicates a nice life and a nice Christianity. God shines a star above the one overlooked and excluded beckoning them to come a little closer to the beauty of Jesus. God turns the lights on for the Muslim and the Christian, for the trans youth and Southern Baptist, for the addict and the abstainer, for the far left and far right, for the houseless, refugee, immigrant, widow, orphan and for the wealthy in Beverly Hills. Whoever you think of as “the other,” that’s who God is for and invites us to always move with compassion and justice. We are not to get distracted by political leaders claiming you must be afraid of “the other.” 

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” King once announced. For some of us, it might feel like we’re taking a big step back on Monday, but maybe enough of us can slowly push forward once again to get even more ahead. Maybe this is the time we look honestly at who “the other” is and instead of being afraid, we start working alongside them for liberation and justice, trusting God is with us in this work. Isn’t love a verb anyway? 

On earth as it is in heaven.

The power of the people. The power of a crucified and risen Christ. The power of justice. 

May it be so. 

With (hope, love, and justice),
Pastor Bethany

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Bethany Cseh is a pastor at Arcata United Methodist Church and Catalyst Church. Follow her on Instagram.