Easter Season (2) Fresh Mercy — Rev Anne Baxter Smith
Description
Love won’t stay hidden in abstraction. One way or another, love will show up in the particularities of time, space, words, and deeds.
In Jesus, love showed up so concretely and with such great specificity, that it seems to be his form of art.
When love showed up in Jesus, something broke open, something fresh emerged. That breaking open and fresh emergence through the power of love was the coming of the kingdom, which offered everyone a new way of being. A new way of seeing. A new way of acting. An alternative reality to the ways of Empire, with its protective social hierarchy, and the ways of Religion, with its protective spiritual hierarchy.
After Jesus died, love showed up among the early disciples, too. We see this in Acts 6. Violence was the greatest coercive power known to humankind. With violence you could build an empire, snuff out your enemies, subdue social unrest, punish lawbreakers, silence dissident voices, and control people with fear and intimidation. It was into this container of violence, as Stephen was about to be stoned, that love showed up again. Jesus, killed by violence yet very much alive, joined Stephen within the crucible of suffering.
And when love shows up, old patterns break open and new life emerges.
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