free

Saturday March 30^th, Luke 23: ¹ Then they all took Jesus to Pilate ² and began to bring up charges against him. They said, "We found this man undermining our law and order, forbidding taxes to be paid to Caesar, setting himself up as Messiah-King." ³ Pilate asked him, "Is this true that you're "King of the Jews’?” Those are your words, not mine," Jesus replied. ⁴ Pilate told the high priests and the accompanying crowd, "I find nothing wrong here. He seems harmless enough to me." ⁵ But they were vehement. "He's stirring up unrest among the people with his teaching, disturbing the peace everywhere, starting in Galilee and now all through Judea. He's a dangerous man, endangering the peace."  Jesus IS a threat to our power and all the evil it manages to condone.  As the powers strove to maintain their control and with it the money, all for very good and religiously justified reasons, Jesus was the one who pointed out the fallacy of what they were doing.  As we strive for control and with it all the power and money it will bring, Jesus does the same.  We have heard words of fear for the last year.  Piled up debt, watch out, big government is taking away all your freedom and guns, fear.  Fear is the opposite of faith, and faith calls us to love one another, care for the least, lost and lonely and look to the future with hope.  The old saying goes that when I gave a man a fish, they praised me as a saint, when I asked why the man had no fish they called me a communists.  The modern version would be, when I gave someone free health care, I was called a saint.  When I worked for health care for all, I was called the “N” word and the “F” word and spat upon.  The more things change, the more they remain the same.  Jesus died so that we could be free.  Not free from, but free for the task of not only caring for the least lost and lonely, but putting systems in place so that in the world there are fewer least lost and lonely that fall through the cracks and need to be cared for.