The Holy Reversal Jesus offers us NOW
Dictionary defines:
holy, adj. dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred
reversal, n. a change to an opposite direction, position or course of action
Let’s recap a few basic facts:
On Saturday, September 12, two Los Angeles police officers were shot
while sitting in their patrol car at the Metro Blue Line station in Compton.
The perpetrator opened fire through the open passenger side window. The
deputies (a 31-year-old mother of a 6-year-old son, and a 24-year old man)
suffered multiple wounds. They radioed for help and were rushed to a
nearby hospital.
Police and witnesses concur that protesters blocked the entrance to the
emergency room where the two officers were being treated. Among the
anti-police slogans shouted by the crowd were these four words: “We hope
they die!”
Hatred powerful enough to pull a trigger. Hatred powerful enough to affirm
that murderous impulse and broadcast the lethal desire of one’s hating
heart: “We hope they die.” Hatred as the motivator, the action, and the
outcome. Hatred rising! And death, hatred’s BFF and conjoined twin,
as the ultimate goal.
Los Angeles … and the world …
I guess one of the reasons the Los Angeles story has been weighing so heavily on my heart this week is that it’s not unique. Hatred is headline news pretty much every day right now, and the death-impulse hatred fosters makes the pandemic pale as a comparative threat.
Sometimes people point to that kind of hatred as proof that God does not exist.
Their logic runs like this: If God is love, and hatred prevails then God cannot exist.
Because a God who is truly love would not permit such hatred.
In a time like the one in which we live, such proclamations come from deep, painful places in our hearts. Surrounded by hatred, we doubt the possibility of love. Confronted by death, we mistrust claims that life triumphs. Our cynicism and despair, based on circumstances, are logical … even inevitable.
Life and Healing in Holy Reversals
But scripture is full of word pictures called “holy reversals.”
You probably recognize a few of them: every valley will be lifted up / every mountain will be brought low … streams in the desert … the lion napping alongside the lamb … swords beaten into plowshares … lepers, paupers, and orphans seated in honor while the rich and powerful are locked out of the feast altogether.
These word pictures find their pinnacle in Jesus, the Logos (Word) of God, the living Word.
In the person of Jesus, the sin-sick flesh of humanity is subsumed by the perfect holiness of divinity. Holy reversal, incarnate.
In Jesus, God acknowledged our human incapacity to deal with hatred on our own, and made Himself physically present with us, to remedy that incapacity. Holy reversal in Immanuel (“God with us”).
In Jesus, for our sake, God “made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Holy reversal – sin-sick-to fully righteous – through redemptive self-sacrifice.
In Jesus, God confronted hatred – all of it, for all time – and drained it of any ability to have the final word by conquering its BFF / conjoined twin, death – all of it, for all time. Holy reversal via resurrected Messiah.
The Greatest Story Ever Told is the Holiest Reversal of All
In fact, the trajectory of Jesus’s life-on-earth story is the ultimate narrative of holy reversals.
First, a reversal from high to low and omnipotence to fragility: almighty God, born as an infant to a refugee couple in a provincial backwater.
Then, a continuation of sovereignty choosing servitude, of glory disguised as humility…
Jesus, God in the flesh, lives to give.
Jesus heals, comforts, teaches, and consistently makes time for those nobody else notices – reversing the expectation of a kingly savior who would reign in splendor, wielding military might.
Jesus encourages His followers to copy his actions, calling them to leave behind their old lives and embrace the new life that is in Him alone – reversing traditions and upending hierarchies.
But Jesus also allows His followers to make up their own minds, to doubt and deny, to call him not just “Master” but “Friend.”
His mission was rescue and redemption, and every moment of every day of the three years allotted to Him, Jesus was on mission… but (a reversal here, less than holy) all that perfect focus and faithfulness was either despised or wholly misunderstood – even by those closest to Him.
The story of Jesus ends in the ultimate UN-holy reversal: false accusations meted out by jealous enemies, betrayals and desertions from beloved friends, a mob which chooses a convicted terrorist over Jesus, and an unspeakably painful death by torture.
Worse (unfathomably worse, literally, because no-one but Jesus is capable of this particular kind of agony), Jesus’s story ends with separation from the Father and personal appropriation of the weight of human sin – all human sin, the totality of it – dumped onto Jesus’s heart. The crushing ferocity of it, all, all on Him.
But that WASN’T the end of the story!
The gruesome, ghoulish expiring on the cross and hasty consignment to the tomb set up the Big One – the holy reversal to top them all and remake history in the mold of the Maker: after death, LIFE.
In Jesus’s resurrection, the unholy reversal itself has a holy reversal!
In Jesus’s resurrection, the Word triumphs over the world forever … and we receive LOVE – not just an alternative to hatred, but as an antidote – a cure!
Scripture explains it:
14 For by a single offering Christ has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds,”
17 he also adds,
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Hebrews 10:14 – 17
And scripture exhorts us:
5 Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:5 – 11
Jesus’s Love and the Holy Reversal for Los Angeles (and us)
The holy reversal of Jesus is the holy reversal we need for Los Angeles.
“We hope they die!” = “Crucify him!” = the hatred that Jesus came to crush with love.
In Jesus, God offers everyone in the Los Angeles story – the shooter, the victims, the screaming mob – healing, deliverance, and peace.
In Jesus, God makes a way for all of us. “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
The holy reversal of Jesus is also the holy reversal we need for ourselves. All of us – each of us. Every day. Every moment.
The world out there, global paroxysms of political chaos and natural disasters and injustices ad infinitum? Jesus.
The world in here, fearful and fickle and frail and always less than? Jesus.
Racism? Jesus. Cancer? Jesus. Divorce? Jesus. Addiction? Jesus.
The last word on love and life is the Logos
Hatred and the death impulse are powerful and visible, but they are weaker than the invisible power that has already defeated them both.
And love – the love that Jesus modelled, offered, and continues to breathe out – remains the cure for what threatens to kill us.
The holy reversal for “We hope they die!”?
Something like this:
“We hope they die… to sin, to self! We hope they live… in Jesus!”
“We hope!”
“We have hope!”
Because… Jesus.
