After I read St. Junia UMC church planter Rev. Dave Barnhart’s article on enemies,
Check it out at : http://www.ministrymatters.com/preach/entry/8122/the-problems-with-loving-our-enemies?spMailingID=368365&spUserID=Mzk4NTc1NjQyS0&spJobID=280247210&spReportId=MjgwMjQ3MjEwS0
I moseyed over to his weblog that is bookmarked in my favorites now and found this poem. It made me chuckle. I can relate to this, She’s someone I would like, someone I’d entertain in my home and life, like Zacchaeus did Jesus. Someone who, like me, is an EGR for more than a few, but who, nevertheless, knows who she is and is okay with being who she is. Whether his clever poem is a reference to a female returned Messiah or an unorthodox female follower of the returned Messiah is not altogether clear until the end…. Then a sharp point is made. Perhaps it is the sassy “Church Militant” of Christ, a modern day representation of St. Joan of “The Ark”, defying polite conventions, riding forth, sword in hand and turning tables, against whom the gates of Hades will not prevail, that is this “sassy b**ch!”
We, as Christians, all look for the Jesus in one another, but when we find aspects of one another that do not fit our expectation of Jesus, personality attributes that shock or annoy us, we reject the person altogether, as if we are assuming that it cannot be Jesus we see. Maybe we expect the spiritual DNA of Jesus who is in the world today within his people to be something that not even Jesus Christ himself intended. He intended to be fully human….and he was, including having enemies who didn’t like him simply because he wasn’t what they expected.
The Return Posted on February 9, 2017
When messiah returned
she was a sassy bitch.
Worked retail and cleaned homes, like her mother before her.
She knew the value of a dollar,
and whose face was on each denomination
and the non-denominations.
She had heard the unbeliever’s Bible verses:
A penny saved is a penny earned.
The Lord helps those who help themselves.
Submit to authority.
Know your place.
But she had memorized the older texts.
And no one could match her wits,
When messiah returned.
…
When messiah returned,
they called her a glutton and a drunkard,
a whore and a slut,
because that’s how bullies and hypocrites talk.
And when they began to fear her they called her
a bully and a hypocrite.
Herod was nicer.
Said she had spunk.
“Actually,” he mansplained, “I agree with much of what she says,
but her tone is counterproductive.”
“You tell that weasel Herod,” she replied,
“To shove it.”
That’s just how she talked,
When messiah returned.
…
When messiah returned,
the megachurch preachers
and the political men
tried to sell her out for thirty pieces of silver.
But she did not let them get close enough
to betray her with a kiss.
And when they came for her
with clubs and torches, guns and chains,
She said one little word,
And they all fell to the ground,
Because those who had prayed for her return
Were simply not ready
for all of her,
When messiah returned.