A Scandalous Gospel - Ash Wednesday

There’s an image I cannot get out of my head this Ash Wednesday. It’s the image of 21 Egyptians … 21 Coptic Christians kneeling in orange jumpsuits on a beach in Libya in front of their executioners – ISIS terrorists in black jumpsuits with their faces covered. 21 men martyred because they were Christians and, as the ringleader of the ISIS executioners said, “They have the cross of Christ in their heads.” They were beheaded because they had the cross of Christ in their heads.

Zack Hunt wrote a blog post that I ran across today where he shares his feelings about this. He spoke of his sense of helplessness, sadness, but most of all rage: pure unmitigated rage. He writes:

"And yet, in my just wrath, I struggle to understand how I’m supposed to respond to the evil that is consuming the Middle East because every urge I have to see those barbaric executioners wiped off the face off the earth is met with a still small voice. It’s a voice I confess I don’t want to hear right now. I want to beat the drums of war and lead the charge to rid the world of these monsters. But as hard as I try to ignore it and no matter how much my heart fills with rage, that still small voice continues to haunt me with words like 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' 'Love your enemies,' 'Turn the other cheek' and “Pray for those who persecute you.'"

This, he confesses, is his greatest struggle with the gospel and I share this too. Because the gospel is hard and it is scandalous in its claim that Jesus didn't just show up to extend grace and mercy to me or even to the oppressed … but also to the oppressors. I won't lie to you … I hate that! The idea that Jesus Christ died not just for the 21 martyrs on that beach but also for their executioners is scandalous and sounds completely insane. And yet, as Jürgen Moltmann so powerfully states:

"The message of the new righteousness which eschatological faith brings into the world says that in fact the executioners will not finally triumph over their victims. It also says that in the end the victims will not triumph over their executioners. The one will triumph who first died for the victims and then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through the vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind with a new humanity. Only where righteousness becomes creative and creates right both for the lawless and for those outside the law, only where creative love changes what is hateful and deserving of hate, only where the new man is born who is neither oppressed nor oppresses others, can one speak of the true revolution of righteousness and of the righteousness of God." – The Crucified God, pg. 178

Like Zack Hunt, there are days when this is so much easier to claim and proclaim – but right now, this is where the gospel just burns me and I suspect it may burn you too. It’s one thing to pray for those who gossip about you or stab you in the back figuratively, but what about praying for those who murdered your family? It’s easy to love “enemies” whose “crimes” against you are taking your parking space or disagreeing with your politics … but what about loving someone who would kill you if only they could? Everything in me doesn't want to love people like that. But if grace and mercy can extend to me, who am I to withhold the possibility of it extending to them?

Don't get me wrong. This isn't about letting these criminals off the hook. But it is to say that accountability and justice have to simultaneously coexist with the possibility of repentance and forgiveness for all. I don’t understand it and it isn't up to me … and on days like today, I confess I don’t even like it! But it isn't up to me, or you, is it? The response of the families of these men who were killed for their faith makes me ask myself if somehow grace showed up on that beach in a way I cannot fathom … and likely never will. Can I trust God’s grace can hold out the possibility of transformational conversion for the executioner as well as the executed?

As we come forward this night, we will be marked with the cross of Christ on our heads and remember this cross is in our heads too. While none of us will likely ever be executed because we are Christian, the cross of Christ in our heads will draw us to die to our ways of living and part of that dying is to the idea that Christ only died for some of us and not all of us. It is a scandalous God who can absorb all of this violence and, in some way I cannot understand, redeem it all.