#RevThread # 134
Our Moment
1/Partly to get away from our tedious President, I’ve been pondering chapters 18 and 19 of John’s Gospel, which cover Pilate’s treatment of Jesus on the day he executed Jesus.
Our Moment
1/Partly to get away from our tedious President, I’ve been pondering chapters 18 and 19 of John’s Gospel, which cover Pilate’s treatment of Jesus on the day he executed Jesus.
2/I’ve been noticing how skillfully the leaders of church and state cooperated to make Jesus their scapegoat. Pilate used great cunning in the moment.
3/As I track with our increasingly tedious President, I also remember that Jesus identified with the poor and with other scapegoating victims.
4/A couple of remarkable similarities between our moment and the events surrounding Christ’s crucifixion stand out to me: The first is the governor’s purpose. Pilate wants to advance his own power and wealth by pleasing his distant controller, Caesar.
5/ The second is that the depraved local leader, Pilate, found a ready partner in the clergy of that day.
6/Assuming we have any future at all, when history has a chance to clarify the fog of Trumpism, among the most hideous of all the villains will be the White Evangelical leaders who championed this tediously evil man.
7/Pilate sent those clergy of the day into the crowd to demand the death of Jesus. Pilate derisively called Jesus “The King of the Jews.” He asked the crowd, “Shall I crucify your king?” ...
8/..In response they roared, “We have no King but Caesar!” Pilate no doubt gleefully reported to Caesar that Israel now, at last, was a great fan of the Emperor.
9/Out in the Texas August heat, babies were caged. Young girls, having trudged 2000 miles seeking safety, seeking asylum, as they ran from gangs who would rape & kill them...
10/.. are locked into concentration camps and denied more than one sanitary napkin a day, humiliating and embarrassing them, as well as endangering their health as they bleed into their clothing.
11/The nation watched as ICE coldly removed a migrant worker from his eleven year old daughter and heard her sobs of fear and grief at losing the father who loves her.
12/And the all-white crowds at the rallies roar their adoring approval.
13/Desperately ill children being treated for cystic fibrosis and cancer in our hospitals receive official letters from our government saying that they must leave the country in 33 days and be returned to die in countries where there is no treatment.
14/And the crowds at the all-white rallies continue to scream, “Send them back!” “Shoot them!” What God hears, once again, is “Crucify them! Crucify them!”
15/All of these victims are innocent.
16/Having aroused hatred against non-whites, Trump and his villainous cohort are now slaking the bloodlust of their crowd by ordering the deaths of immigrant children. These children are the very image of Christ.
17/What we are witnessing is the Good Friday of American History.
18/Our little Pilate is a punk. He must be removed from office.
19/The children must be saved.
20/In the midst of his wanton cruelty, Trump said, “I am The Chosen One.” Really? Chosen by whom?
21/Trump is the Chosen of Mammon, the god of greed. This is where Mammon leads us.
22/Had their preachers given them any genuinely Biblical teaching whatsoever, these White Evangelicals would not be scapegoating children. Instead the poor fools were fed the slop of the Prosperity Gospel.
23/Everyone: For the love of God, turn away from this monster. Do not follow Trump.
24/Where Trump is headed is where you do not want to go.
