Director’s Desk: Issue Three
When I was a little girl I often played “Cops and Robbers” or had a leading role as Princess Leia playing “Star Wars.” It was easy at that age to designate who was “good” and who was “bad,” a narrative which I carried into adulthood until I encountered a “criminal” in my life who flipped that understanding on its head: the criminal, Jesus.
While not every reader ascribes to Christianity, I share this to relay how a relationship with someone I cared about demonstrated that my understanding was not as cut-and-dry as I’d thought. In learning how Jesus - who I believed to be wholly innocent - could be condemned to death as a criminal, I recognized how humans can make wrong judgments.
Jesus’s executioners probably thought they were “right” to take His life because they were “following the law.” But laws, and their methods and penalties, or their interpretations, can be as unjust and wrong as those they judge. Jesus’s conviction humbled me to grasp that human “justice” was oftentimes blind to things it needed to see. I considered that the label of “criminal” didn’t necessarily make someone a criminal, but the system by which they were judged did. That “good” and “bad” weren’t categories people could be neatly packed into. And that systems need to be scrutinized for injustice as much as the individuals condemned by them.
What I found harder to swallow was a teaching of Jesus, about how God separated “the good and bad” (Matt. 25:31-40), describing “the good,'' not as those who were perfect, but as those who perfected caring. Jesus said God will call to Heaven those who cared, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” God was saying that what you did for another, you were actually doing to or for God.
Jesus wasn’t saying we would encounter God within ourselves or in the caring acts we performed but within the people we serve. This went beyond the innocent but convicted Jesus narrative; this was now talking about people who might actually be guilty! Wait a minute! Did this mean I now needed to scrutinize myself and how I had judged people and places deemed worthy of God?
There are few other places in scripture Jesus guaranteed one could encounter God on this earth. So, my quest to see God has led me into homeless camps to share meals, where I've learned about poverty, trauma, and addiction. And into hospitals, mental health facilities, and prisons. I sometimes wonder if the “visiting people in prison” part was last on the list because by the time I visited the imprisoned I had learned so much about what had happened to people that I was not surprised by where they ended up. Treading beyond my preconceived notions, I've learned about the injustices of poverty, racism, failed systems. In this heartbreak, it is where I have come to see and understand God, my personal faith, and the call to participate in my community in ways that help heal.
This is my new litmus test: “Good” is no longer assigned to who is or isn’t in handcuffs or by the color of the lightsaber, but to who is healing, helping, and creating a community where we are striving to be the best version of ourselves. For me, this criminal Jesus fellow has complicated my idea of what is “good.” There is much to learn. I have a strange feeling that we won’t fully understand without encountering each other, and there is a great opportunity for that in this issue of Mustard Seed Mountain.