Deliver me from this body of death

Give counsel; grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; shelter the outcasts; do not reveal the fugitive; let the outcasts of Moab sojourn among you; be a shelter to them from the destroyer.  Isaiah 16: 3-4

John O’Hair’s teaching pierced something in my soul.  Or.  Now that I have answered Fred’s question about soul and spirit; spirit is more accurate.  Soul is the animal part of me.  According to google, animals have souls, humans have souls and spirits.  The part of me that relates to God.  My spirit was pierced.  

Christ is our peace.  He came to tear down the barriers which so easily divide.  And, I, like so many of my brethren, secretly smirk over my lack of prejudices, unlike the “Those” out there.  And there you have it.  Another barbed wire fence strung up by the Pharisee in my soul, the material human part of me.  I always pooh-poohed my children who bewailed the myriad prejudices that I passed on to them unaware.  ASU said with a sneer.  Texas.  White bread.  Television.  Even Colgate toothpaste.  Somehow, somewhere, I picked up that people who used Colgate toothpaste rather than Crest were Them.  Us. Them. 

I wandered around ASU campus last Monday afternoon marveling at the tree-shaded pathways winding through quirky buildings and bustling students.  For the first time in forty years of living in Arizona. This is a perfectly lovely place.  And another mental and emotional wall came crashing down.  Ali graduates from UT Austin in June and I only look forward to him and Buffy finding some honky tonk joint to hunker down in, kick back and listen.  A huge glass bowl topped by Andrea’s kindergarten picture plate waits for tonight’s dinner, bubbling up with a mass of white bread dough.  Yum.  Watching television on TV trays while eating dinner?  Jack and Mary Anne have turned this most grievous cultural faux pas into a ritual of prayerful worship, clicking off the NBC nightly news with Brian Williams, they offer up the horrors and angst to the LORD God Almighty.  And Colgate toothpaste was on sale this week at Fry’s, one dollar for a 6.0 oz Colgate Max Fresh with mini breath strips, and neat stacks of boxes line my bathroom cupboard.  Yes, Andrea, there are even Cocoa Puffs under the counter for Igor.  Horrors.  Is nothing sacred?

Biologist E. O. Wilson says that our drive to join a group- and to fight for it- is what makes us human.  To quote extensively verbatim from a recent Newsweekarticle by James Mollison, Wilson says that everyone, no exception, must have a tribe, an alliance with which to jockey for power and territory, to demonize the enemy, to organize rallies and raise flags.  And so it has ever been.  In ancient times and prehistory, tribes gave visceral comfort and pride from familiar fellowship, and a way to defend the group enthusiastically against rival groups.  It gave people a name in addition to their own and social meaning in a chaotic world.  

So that is our soul part.  Our natural, animal tendencies.  Something that is built into the system that is broken by sin.  When Paul was trying to describe “Christ is our Peace,” he used the most dramatic division he could think of: Jew and Greek. Since before he could walk or talk, he had been instructed that he was “set apart” and different from Them.  But if we didn’t get it ... he went on ... neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.  None of us are set apart.  We are not Us.  

Jesus understood that this was a difficult Truth that sliced through the core of who we are as fallen humans. So He repeated Himself.   Across different teaching modalities and learning styles.  This is important.  Actually it is difficult to think of a theological point that He underscored more heavily. He told stories about Samaritans demonstrating neighborliness, and disrespectful children who should be disowned but were welcomed home with roasted pig, and ungrateful servants who grabbed fellow servants by the throat and demanded payment, and the Pharisee thanking God that he was not like one of Them, a grubbing sneaky tax collector aligned with the Oppressor. Yes.  He was trying to be shockingly clear.   He modeled it, lived it day after day, eating and drinking with those same tax collectors, chatting with That woman drawing water at high noon, allowing one of Those women to wash His feet with expensive perfume and then honoring her for it.  If this was still muddled, he articulated it in short, concise statements: do not strain at a gnat; be merciful; do not judge.  And then, with his almost last breath, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

At what point do I begin to take Jesus seriously?  This is not a question of “discernment.”  This is out and out vile sin.  My animal self desperately wants to believe differently.  That I somehow merit a little more attention and grace from the Holy One.  Nope.  If, oh, oops, since I might have at least sinned one tiny white inconsequential sin, I am guilty of them all.  Nothing I am or do has earned His love and mercy.  Nothing.  So every line I draw around me denies His holiness.  And His work on the cross.  He Himself is our peace. We need to scrape off every single bumper sticker.  National Rifle Association.  Raul Grijalva. Five Finger Death Punch.  Even Statement of Faith contracts with a space for my signature.  We all have them. Lines. And every line is sin.  Oh wretched man that I am.  

Here in Isaiah, the people of God are commanded to welcome in the evil Moabites.  Even when they were in the midst of their well-deserved consequences, wisdom and justice included erasing the lines.  Dramatically.  Let my shade be as night in the noonday sun.  Let me be a shelter.  An inclusive shelter.  To lift up my arms and welcome them in.  Just as He did.  For He so loved the World.  With a capital W, not the little, with all of the ugly connotation that word can muster, lowercase world in which I so wretchedly want to live.