So well articulated by my friend, Faisal.
— Molly
The Gospel You Left Behind
To many of you who call yourselves Christians in the West this Easter weekend, before you walk through those church doors, I need you to sit with something uncomfortable.
Jesus was a brown Palestinian. Born under occupation. Born into poverty. He did not look like your stained glass windows. He did not speak your language. He would not recognize the theology you have built in his name.
He spent his life with the poor, the outcast, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner, the despised. He touched lepers. He elevated women when his entire world told him not to. He rebuked empire. He overturned the tables of those who made religion into profit and power.
And yet so much of Western Christianity today turns away refugees at the border while quoting scripture. Supports the bombing of the very lands where Jesus walked. Remain silent while hospitals, schools, churches and masjids are destroyed. Waves the flag of holy war while ignoring the desperate faces of the very people Jesus looked like, the very people he would have sat and broken bread with.
The Crusades were not the Gospel. Manifest destiny was not the Gospel. Christian nationalism is not the Gospel. Empire dressed in a cross is still empire.
You cannot claim the teachings of a man who said love your neighbor, welcome the stranger, blessed are the peacemakers, and then advocate for the destruction of Muslim countries, the deportation of immigrants, the abandonment of the orphan and the refugee. That is not a contradiction. That is a betrayal.
This weekend, as you celebrate resurrection, ask yourself honestly, what has been buried inside your faith? What truth have you rolled a stone in front of?
Jesus did not die so that Western civilization could be defended. He lived so that the most vulnerable among us could be seen.
And do not mistake silence for peace. Jesus was not a quiet man who retreated into prayer while the world burned around him. He walked directly into the narrow streets of power. He named injustice out loud. He rebuked the Romans. He challenged the religious establishment to their face.
He spoke for those who had no voice and he did all of it without raising a sword. Peacemaking is not disappearing. It is not softening your voice until the truth becomes unrecognizable. If you are sitting in your comfort and calling it peace while Muslim and Arab countries are bombed, while brown and black refugees drown at borders, while children are orphaned by wars you support, you are not following Jesus. You are hiding. And your silence is not holy. It is a betrayal of the very man you claim was resurrected this weekend.
And to those sitting in those pews, if your church is silent while atrocities are committed in the name of your faith, while your scriptures are twisted to justify holy war against innocent civilians, it is incumbent upon you to stand up and speak out. And if your pastor, your priest, your preacher stands at that pulpit and teaches hatred, division and bigotry, understand this clearly. They are not preaching Jesus. They are not preaching God. They have wandered far from the most basic tenets of everything Jesus stood for and everything he commanded.
Reflect. Return. Come back to the root. Because the tree you are standing under has grown very far from where it was planted.
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