Editor’s Note; I commend to you Tom’s comments to the
last two “Letters to Tom.” You can find them by going to www.thehubbellpew.com and going to the
comments section. Today’s meditation is in partial response to Tom’s comments.
“Looking in the dark means a journey into our
depths. Where is the place that we find
least lovable? It may prove to be the
key to our greatest power and joy.” Sufi Book of Life
Dear Tom:
You wrote the above as I was reading passage about how
why in “polite society” we don’t use the word “Jesus.” We might use the word Christ,
but to call him by his name makes us uncomfortable. The author surmises that the
reason we are embarrassed is because Jesus himself makes us uncomfortable. That
underneath it all, we are bothered by what he did and what he had to say. If he
were here today, he probably wouldn’t be invited in our homes for fear he might
embarrass our other guests.
I thought about this overnight, as well as your Sufi
wisdom above. What part of Jesus’s message bothers me the most? Is it the eye
of the needle part, the leave your family part, or the forgive your enemies part?
Jesus’s message run so counter to conventional wisdom we would give it short
shrift absent the source. So what do we do? A political strategy for disliking
the message is to discount the messenger, so subconsciously if we refuse to
call Jesus by name, we are minimizing the message.
Jack Nicholson in a Few
Good Men said, “You don’t
want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you
want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.” In the same way, we know that
Jesus spoke the truth, and deep down his counter-conventional message is the
path we must follow. So borrowing from your Sufi wisdom we are challenged to
explore where Jesus’s message makes us uncomfortable in the pews of our
existence. It is called calling out his name – Jesus. “Getting it out there on
the table so we can get at it.”
Your Friend, Webb
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