Whitewashed Tombs

I lost my faith well before I started seminary.

Ya know, now that I think about it, I’m not sure if I lost my faith so much as I just suppressed my faith.

It’s not that I didn’t believe in God anymore, it was that I wanted nothing to do with this Christian God anymore. I don’t think I necessarily wandered away from the pack so much as I decided to up and leave the pack. I was that “lost sheep” in which did not want to be found. I was alone because I wanted to be alone.

Looking back at it, I was lost, definitely lost, but at least I was free.

Free from the status quo.

Free from this lie.

Free from the guilt and shame.

I could finally breathe…

I was invited into other “packs of sheep.” Invited to this church or that church and promised that their church was not like any other church… but they were, they were all the same.

They meant well, most of them at least, but do good intentions justify a destructive ignorance?

I was reading this pericope in Matthew, where it’s nearing the end of Jesus’ time. At this point He has his 12 disciples – large crowds are following Him, and Jesus stops and turns to the crowd and seemingly goes on this rant against the Pharisees and scribes. He calls them hypocrites, blinded guided fools, greedy-self-indulgent-whitewashed-tombs…

As if this was not enough, to get His point across He acknowledges that they tithe, and abide by the Deuteronomic law but yet neglect “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness [Matthew 23:23]…” and He, Jesus, drives it home by telling them they are responsible for the prophets murders, that their righteous blood is on their dirty hands.

Reading this one would assume Jesus was drunk. I don’t think He was, but who knows… [someone reading this just thought, “God knows!” #smh]

Either way, I think it’s stuff like this that got Jesus crucified.

You know, holding up a mirror to the privileged and verbally describing to them how horrid they look. The hardest part of hearing a critique is when the critique, at its very core, couldn’t be truer.

I felt like this is who I was turning into, “a greedy-self-indulgent-whitewashed tomb.” I feel like this is what the majority of Church pulpits are filled with, greedy-self-indulgent-whitewashed tombs.

The thing is – when Jesus said these things we have to remember He had poured His life into spending time with these Pharisees and scribes in the temple since he was just a child, eating meals with them as an adult, and continually interacting with these supposed teachers-of-the-law.

This might sound weird but I think that this was the most loving thing Jesus could have said to them. It was possibly His last-ditch effort in which He knew would lead to His death. In other words, Jesus was not only willing to risk but actually to give up His life in order that these men can see later on through his death and imminent resurrection, just as the centurion did at the Cross that, “Surely He was the Son of God!” 

I really don’t like religion. 

I honestly don’t think I’ll ever return to what we know as “the Church.” 

I’m okay with that though. 

I don’t think I’m lost anymore so much as I’m just wandering through life. I don’t know where I’m going, but at least now I know who I’m following.