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nderdog is because god himself has a heart for the disadvantaged scripture is replete with statements about what he does for the humble and how he treats the proud the fact that i am holding on to my pride reveals which side of the narrative i actually am standing on as a follower of jesus i get to lay aside anything in which i formerly found gain including the advantage of my whiteness i don t see color spoken to a person of color is a sure sign that i do but how can i help that perhaps a second cause for white angst comes from the sudden sense of helplessness in the face of finding ourselves on the wrong side of history i want to jump the fence to the other side distancing myself from the racism around me with claims of notmetoo i don t see color spoken to a person of color is a sure sign that i do therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with christ if any comfort from his love if any common sharing in the spirit if any tenderness and compassion then make my joy complete by being like minded having the same love being one in spirit and of one mind do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit rather in humility value others above yourselves not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others philippians 2 1 4 examining myself for areas of implicit bias while assuming that they are probably there is a good start where do my impulses betray an internal sense of being better than or perhaps deserving better than people of a different race these may surface in the respect i demand for myself or the treatment and opportunities i expect for my children am i equally incensed when these are not afforded to my neighbor from a different community or her children am i equally invested in looking out for her interests as i am my own what have i done or not done to change the systems that make it hard for them to flourish the samaritan woman said to him you are a jew and i am a samaritan woman how can you ask me for a drink for jews do not associate with samaritans woman jesus replied believe me a time is coming when you will worship the father neither on this mountain nor in jerusalem you samaritans worship what you do not know we worship what we do know for salvation is from the jews yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in the spirit and in truth for they are the kind of worshipers the father seeks john 4 9 21 23 confronting the areas of bias within myself not only benefits black lives it also helps me become more like the jesus i adore i adore him for his meekness with the samaritan woman absorbing her defensive reactivity over the way her people had been treated and extending to her a listening ear a willingness to consider her side and a friendship that broke all the social rules i adore him for going out of his way to seek out her company and sit with her on her turf neither lecturing her for making a mess of the opportunities that had been afforded her nor insisting that she adapt to his cultural ways in order to be accepted it can t have been easy to listen to his people being framed as the bad guys yet he acknowledged their privileged position in history while also considering her too valuable an asset to leave out of the new integrated community he was forming and perhaps it is in jesus example as a privileged jewish male that i find a way forward as a privileged white woman try as i might i can t stop being white and i can t undo the parts of my heritage that i am ashamed of but i can humble myself reach across the racial divide and use whatever advantage is mine though i may need help in being able to see it to my neighbor s advantage after all is this not what jesus did for me share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading assumptions christ likeness heritage humility implicit bias love race racial conflict reconciliation samaritan woman story white privilege kingdom coming lent suffering trauma beloved on friday persecuted but not forsaken april 19 2019 tiffany clark 1 comment something has shifted in how i experienced this good friday and i am still struggling to put it into words for many years now i have used this day to enter more fully into the sufferings our lord endured not because they were insufficient in and of themselves but because i want to know christ both in the fellowship of his sufferings and in the power of his resurrection keeping vigil with him through the hours of the night on thursday and then through the horrific series of events that culminated in his death on friday afternoon has been a labor of love motivated by my desire to feel the things he felt and therefore adore him more fully my experience of trauma and abuse several years ago radically heightened my sensitivity to our lord s experience of the same as i mentally replayed a blow by blow account of all jesus went through during his arrest trials breaking by the roman guards and finally crucifixion i would focus on the isaiah 53 and psalm 22 descriptions of his suffering focusing in especially on his sense of abandonment by the father the overwhelming horror of it all left me in anguish at the foot of the cross longing for it all to be over and for sunday to come set things right i love the lord for he heard my voice he heard my cry for mercy because he turned his ear to me i will call on him as long as i live return to your rest my soul for the lord has been good to you psalm 116 1 2 but last night s maundy thursday vigil framed my experience of today in an entirely different light bouncing back and forth between john 13 17 jesus final words to and prayers for his disciples and psalms 113 118 the psalms he and his disciples would have been singing as they finished up their passover meal and headed out to gethsemane the theme of god s victorious love kept ringing in my ears of course on passover night they would have been reflecting back on the progression of god s love in redeeming israel from slavery from the sea from the surrounding nations and their gods and from their own fears as they progressed from egypt to zion and this is the narrative as n t wright argues in the day the revolution began in which jesus chose to frame his own unfolding story how would jesus have been experiencing the victorious love of god in the midst of his own suffering but how would jesus have been experiencing the victorious love of god in the midst of his own suffering as he sang these lines about love and faithfulness trust and deliverance while grappling with his impending betrayal and death what was he thinking it is easy to see the love of god for us in the sufferings of jesus but where was the love of the father evident for him in these events now the son of man is glorified and god is glorified in him if god is glorified in him god will glorify the son in himself and will glorify him at once john 13 31 32 if you loved me you would be glad that i am going to the father for the father is greater than i the prince of this world is coming he has no hold over me but he comes so that the world may learn that i love the father and do exactly what my father has commanded me john 14 29 31 this is where jesus lengthy discourse with his disciples in john 13 17 opens my eyes apart from preparing his disciples for the trauma they would soon face jesus was processing his own thoughts on what was about to happen he did so in external dialogue both with his band of confused friends and with his very present heavenly father again and again he affirmed the goodness of what was about to happen not just for his disciples sake but also for his own as the father has loved me so have i loved you john 15 9a you will leave me all alone yet i am not alone for my father is with me john 16 32b far from the heresy commonly sung in some christian communities that the father turned his face away from jesus hanging on the cross jesus grounded himself in the sustaining faith that his father would never leave him nor forsake him those last few hours as he prepared for his fast approaching hour he couldn t say enough about the father s love for him while this was partially for the benefit of his disciples i m increasingly convinced that it was also for his own benefit just as the father s affirmation of his belovedness at his baptism had sustained him through the trial of the wilderness jesus repeated affirmation of his own belovedness to the father was preparatory to his ability to keep believing and living in it when everything around him would scream otherwise father the hour has come glorify your son that your son may glorify you and now father glorify me in your presence with the glory i had with you before the world began john 17 1 5 at this juncture jesus requests of the father were in line with the horrors that would soon befall him having just urged his disciples to ask the father for their heart s desire and promised that he would grant it jesus asked the father for his heart s deepest desire to be glorified both in the father s presence and along with his beloved friends the cross was the next crucial step towards the fulfillment of this prayer and both jesus and his father knew it he would be lifted up from the earth as a spectacle for all to see through one set of eyes a spectre of gore and shame but through another set of eyes a vision of victorious love father i want those you have given me to be with me where i am and to see my glory the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world john 17 24 the father was not only loving us though the cross he was also loving his precious son though jesus prayers for deliverance in gethsemane and his feeling of abandonment on the cross manifested the depths to which his sufferings took him the overarching narrative in which he consciously engaged was one of being profoundly loved he was living in his own exodus story paving the way to bring along the multitude of brothers and sisters he wanted to share in his glory no one took his life from him not even the father rather out of a profound sense of loving and being loved jesus willingly entered into the most agonizing labor love has known and the father and spirit endured it along with him out of a profound sense of loving and being loved jesus willingly entered into the most agonizing labor love has known and the father and spirit endured it along with him this transforms the way i walk with jesus both through this painfully victorious day and through the good fridays that will surely come in my own life because i am so profoundly loved by the father his son and their spirit i have the opportunity to join the family business of laboring over our shared inheritance the kingdom of heaven made tangible on earth in the dark hours that are part and parcel of that advancement i will not suffer for jesus but rather with jesus as his own story so beautifully manifests all believers experiences of trouble hardship and persecution only confirm how very held we are in the love of god we enter not into a family relationship where our father is opposed to his children or afflicts suffering on them from an aloof distance but where he is with us for us and at work through us by the power of his victorious love for your sake we face death all day long we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered no in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us for i am convinced that neither death nor life neither angels nor demons neither the present nor the future nor any powers neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of god that is in christ jesus our lord romans 8 36 39 share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share 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