Reflection for Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent
JER 18:18-20
PS 31:5-6, 14, 15-16
MT 20:17-28

"Must good be repaid with evil
that they should dig a pit to take my life?" (Jer 18:20)
Hard to read those lines from Jeremiah, written some 2600 years ago, without thinking of how we engage with differences of political, theological, or social controversy, particularly in an era of unfiltered content on social media. While Jeremiah's enemies dug a literal pit and literally threw him in it to die, how much better is it for people who challenge the status quo today and are bombarded by endless threats to themselves, their children, their spouses, never knowing what is trolling and what is credible? After the school shooting in Florida last week, we once again saw conspiracy theories from one of the scarier corners of the Twittersphere that the survivors who spoke out were actually paid actors. Students who had lost teachers and friends, whose own lives had only days before been in the balance, were now having their experiences falsified in the name of political expediency. Easy enough to simply repost what might sound like a credible argument, but what a moral responsibility we bear when casually and innocently reposting something that, if inaccurate, could do such harm to people. This denial of the very existence of such traumatic events is nothing new - think decades of Holocaust denials or the massive culture of silencing around sexual assault in this country - but apart from the retraumatizing impact on survivors, consider the silencing effect on others who have to weigh the risk of threats to self and loved ones against the imperative to stand for their convictions.

Jesus certainly understood what he was getting himself into, even if his disciples did not. Today's gospel is the third of three times that Jesus predicts his death, and the third of three times that the disciples misunderstand. The irony of James and John's mother asking that they be at Jesus' right and left - thinking that when he overthrew the Roman occupation and became king, they would be his secretary of state and his secretary of war. When he asks if they can drink from his cup, I can imagine them getting all excited - to be that close to the king! We the readers know who would actually be at his right and his left - the other criminals who were crucified with him. But as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." There is more to the story than just being beaten down by people who would do just about anything to silence voices of challenge - hope and resurrection.