The Luxury of Hindsight

The Luxury of Hindsight--September 28, 2018

[Jesus said:] "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets." [Matthew 23:29-31]

Everybody wants to believe they would have done the right thing, "if only I had lived back then..."

Everybody wants to believe, for example, that if they had lived in 1930s Germany that they would not have gone along with the rise of the Third Reich and would have had crystal clear moral certainty that they would not have given in to the pressure to sit idly by while Jewish families disappeared.

Everybody wants to believe that if they had lived during the first half of the 1800s, that they would have been a part of the abolitionist movement, or even helping slaves to escape on the Underground Railroad; everybody wants to believe they would have known not to accept the teaching in many churches that because slavery was "the law" it had to be obeyed and the law had to be enforced, and that supporting slavery was the "Christian" thing to do.

I want to believe, if I am honest with myself, that this white northern European American from a mild-mannered churchgoing family in a northern state would have stood with Dr. King and Rosa Parks and John Perkins and Bayard Rustin and risked the dogs and firehoses and going to jail with them in the cause of ending segregation and Jim Crow.  I want to believe that I would have had both the clarity and the courage to be on what we tend to call these days "the right side of history."

And it is always infinitely easier with the luxury of hindsight to look back, see where someone else blazed a trail at great personal cost, and to anachronistically imagine ourselves standing alongside them.... because we all want to believe we would have done the right thing, if only, if only, if only we had lived back then.

It is a clever deception we pull on ourselves--we look back at some brave, bold, heroic figure or movement, and now that it has become popular to agree with them (even if it was terribly unpopular or even dangerous to join their cause in the actual moment), we can cast ourselves as "on their side" now, retroactively, meanwhile never being forced to take a look at where, or with whom, we should be standing now, and never having to actually endure any risk or suffering for it.  It is a sneaky, chicken-hearted way of trying to have our cake and eat it, too.

It's just... it's a sham.  Because, honestly, a good way to tell if you would have been standing with the abolitionists against slavery… or the Confessing Church against the Nazis... or the Freedom Riders against the KKK and Jim Crow... is to look at where we stand now, and whether we are willing to lay our lives down, our reputations down, our comfort down, and our complacency down, for other people whose backs are against the wall today.

And similarly, a good way to tell if I would have really been on board with Jesus' movement two millennia ago is whether I am willing to let Jesus direct me, challenge me, stretch me, and re-orient me now in light of his values, rather than assuming he will adopt and bless mine.

Jesus says much the same to the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day.  They all insist they "would have been" on the right side of history when it came to the prophets of old.  Surely they wouldn't have run Amos out of town, or had Isaiah killed, or thrown Jeremiah in a well.  No, surely not--they would have listened!  They would have been faithful and loyal and true to their prophetic message!  But Jesus says the very fact that they cannot see how out of touch they were with the actual message of those prophets, while still wanting to ride on their coat-tails and claim their legacy, says that they are no different from the ones who actually killed the prophets generations before.  

Jesus, however, knows better.  Jesus knows that just paying lip service to the prophets of old is not the same as taking the same stand that the prophets did.  And, to be clear, the true prophets always took a stand that ran the risk of being unpopular, especially with the well-heeled and powerful.  When Amos went to the official government-approved worship center and told them that even though the markets were hitting all-time highs, that God was nauseated at their indifference to the needs of the poor and their greedy quests to just make more money, the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day ran him out of town.  When Isaiah said that God didn't care about fasting or festivals but wanted people to welcome the homeless poor into their homes and to invite foreigners to live among them, people started picking up rocks.  And when Micah said that God couldn't be bought off with sacrifices but just wanted justice, mercy, and humility, the official Union of Religious Professionals just about had a conniption.  The scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus' day were not willing to take such risks.  They were not willing to trade the comfortable positions they had brokered in order to speak such a bold message.  But they wanted to bask in the aura of the prophets who had come before them.  So they made shrines of their graves and built monuments to their memories... so they never actually had to do what the prophets had done, or take up their radical message, but could still borrow some of their street cred.

The temptation is the same for us, too.  We want to present ourselves as "pro-Jesus," as "religious," "pious" types, and we can get all the trappings right--wearing the cross necklaces, posting vaguely inspirational memes on Facebook and guilting others to forward them, talking about how much we love religious monuments and how much better things would be if we only had more of them carved in stone.  But that is rather different from actually taking seriously the message, the values, the love, and the actions of Jesus.  

We all want to insist that if we had been there, two thousand years ago, surely we wouldn't have been among the crowd crying out for Jesus' death--surely we would have come to his defense and been on the right side of history--right?  But here is the thing--the terrible, inescapable truth we need to own, if there is to be any good news--we wouldn't have.  We wouldn't have come to Jesus' rescue.  We wouldn't have spoken up.  We wouldn't have been faithful and loyal.  We wouldn't have risked our lives for Jesus or his mission.  We would have found a comfortable spot alongside the religious pretenders and cried out, "Crucify him!"

And yet... Jesus did not flake out on us.  Jesus did not bail out on us.  Jesus did not give up or give out, even though we are such utter chicken-hearted hypocrites.  Jesus lays his life down, even for people who are utter cowards like me... and he makes it possible for me to find a new courage in a new day, and to start over, looking for ways to follow him rather than to build a shrine to him.  Jesus, as Kierkegaard famously said, is not looking for admirers or fans--he calls disciples.  And disciples do not just "look" religious, but do what the rabbi does, value what the rabbi values, and stands with the people whom the rabbi loves.

Where is Jesus calling us to stand today... without the luxury and safety of hindsight?  With whom?  And can we dare to recognize that, despite all the ways we have failed to have the nerve to stand with Jesus and the prophets and all the outcast people they spoke up for, Jesus has not given up on us?  Could we dare to see that Jesus is still at our side, leading us to where he stands, and to all the other people he has been standing with all along.

Lord Jesus, we confess: we likely would not have been on the right side of history when you were before the angry crowds and Pilate.  We would not have been there to speak with the prophets, but would have stoned them, too.  We are struggling to learn where to stand today.  Teach us, dear Lord.  Teach us.  Lead us.  Move us.  Walk with us.  Without you we are lost.