Cancelling Jesus

During Lent, I am leaning into the good news that, according to the Gospels, the only folks who Jesus comes close to canceling are those who use their power to cancel others. He calls King Herod a fox. He turns over the tables of the Temple bankers. He demands that the rich young ruler give away all his possessions. The text says that Jesus loved the rich man—so much so that he put up a boundary to his destructive behavior. Jesus wouldn’t allow him to join the movement until he stopped making his money off excluding and exploiting and evicting those Jesus called blessed: the meek, mourning, poor, persecuted and pure in heart. The very ones that many American churches are hell-bent on canceling. 

In candid conversations with his disciples, Jesus accurately predicted that a coalition of religious and political elites would use their power to cancel him on a cross. He also predicted that the powermongers would not have the final word, that his cancellation would only last three days, that he would rise up in the bodies of the unhoused, uninsured, unfed, unclothed, immigrant and imprisoned people of the world—and that whoever uses their power to cancel these precious people are actually canceling him. Hallelujah! Here’s to extending grace and mercy to the marginalized and to those in a process of healing. And here’s to keeping the real cancelers accountable. Apologies are good. Making amends is even better.