Most of us recognize NO when we see or hear it. Most of us recall seeing a wee one in a high chair, bibbed and ready to slurp and slop up whatever is on the spoon‚ until that something is liver, which gets spit out vociferously. Or the toddler who, after a little discernment, hurls unwanted food items from the high chair tray. We recognize NO when we see or hear it.
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Bible stories really should not be read as intellectual treatises or abstract academic texts. They are best read as sentient stories or bits of stories to swallow whole, like a poem—so profound and so everyday at once.
What does it mean to you that the putative savior of the world, according to Christian faith, wraps his hands around a self-made whip of cords (ouch) and kicks butt in the sacred place of worship, the Temple in Jerusalem, and drives people screaming from the premises?
Read the story. (John 2:13) Notice your initial thoughts or feelings. Now envision the Temple scenario. Where would you be? I see myself in the women’s court standing aside—an investigative reporter taking copious notes. I feel secure hiding my nose in my precious notes. But my gut is churning. I can smell the heat of the marketplace, hear many voices in a babble. I watch Jesus approach. I see his keen eyes gleam as they sweep the scene. He’s calm, his stride purposeful, his hands twirl and braid a whip out of strips of leather scraps. I used to ride horses and I know the smooth feel of a riding crop. I’m tense, taut, tight—riveted. I feel sucker-punched.
It’s a meaty scene, remembered well enough through hundreds of years of oral tradition. Think traveling minstrels strolling the ancient Eastern world, singing and strumming stories that drew crowds. These “street corner” prophets attracted crowds. They brought not just entertainment, not only simple propaganda, not even flat-out good news. They transmitted, through lyric and story-song, the invisible and indispensable gift of Hope.
Hope isn’t something you can go out and get, and you can’t give it to anyone else. Hope has to be caught, invisibly in the air, like a virus.You suddenly have it for no sensible reason, and you know it. You also know you can’t possess or re-create Hope it, yet it is yours right now. The Scottish have a word for this phenomenon: glist. Glist means sun streaming through a break in the clouds.
Eventually, all this Hope was written down, printed, translated, and bound into one huge book called Holy Bible. Thousands of years later, we still place a right hand on this book, and swear to tell the truth or to fulfill a high office with integrity and honor. This book, ironically, counts, even in an age in which many people do not believe in its God and scorn religion.
To return to our story, which—notably—is remembered and written into all four gospels. Jesus, whose entire message was about loving God whole-heartedly enough to treat yourself and your neighbor with respect, is saying NO.
NO to false gods!
NO to murder!
NO to adultery!
NO to stealing!
NO to false testimony/lying!
NO to inequity!
NO to injustice!
NO to worship in holy spaces, Temple and Church, that does not induce practices of Justice, Mercy, and Sabbath Peace in all living things.
Was Jesus angry? Of course! There has been much resistance among biblical scholars and Christians, especially of the evangelical bent, to let the human Jesus have human emotions. I do not take the Bible literally; I do take it seriously. Bible stories are spiritually compelling precisely because they are emotionally intelligent.
My Hope? Well, if my biblical ancestors in sacred tradition can be angry, so can I. If the star of my religious faith can be angry, so can I. And with clarity and punch, I can say NO.
NO to systemic and individual domestic violence.
NO to violence against women.
NO to global domestic violence.
NO to murder as a strategy for maintaining peace or justice.
NO to being forced to praise a white male supremacist image of Divinity/God.
NO to CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) and to the idol they prop up as “savior.”
NO to lying to children generation to generation.
NO to churches who proffer a false God, preach sedition.
NO to unexamined white privilege I cannot help but recognize in myself.
NO to being a wimp!
