Jul 04 | Resistance Lectionary Intro and Part 1

The Resistance Lectionary is a writing project I decided to start after reading a zillion awesome Twitter threads and, most important, having wonderful conversations with a new friend who is searching for how to embody her faith in a world where Christianity is struggling to figure out who it belongs to.

After many years of feeling completely at odds with the Bible, I encountered it in a far more intimate way in seminary and discovered an incredible story that was so much more than I was led to believe. As usual some stories are elevated and repeated over and over while others go unnoticed and unknown. After the 2016 election, it became more important to me than ever to be loud and proud about the kind of Christianity I grew up with – the Christianity that showed up and stood up for the lost and downtrodden and oppressed, the Christianity that wasn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe with the law and propose the unimaginable, the Christianity that made its home among the societal rejects and proclaimed them not just “children of God” but holy and beloved.

I’ve collected passages from the Bible that I believe demonstrate that kind of radical boundary-breaking scandalous faith through stories and characters that challenge every armchair theologian’s response to the text which has influenced so much of Western culture, and will post short reflections (200-500 words each week).

Here is my first.

 

PART 1: “WHAT DOES THE LORD REQUIRE?”

Citation: Micah 6:6-8

We’re at Ground Zero of the social justice passages with this gem. We quote it, we tweet it, we sing it. It’s one of those passages which seems unfamiliar to many who cry against the so-called culture wars, demanding personal purity ahead of solidarity. It lays many of our high-minded, privileged debates about appropriate and civilized behaviour to rest with a real mic-drop moment: Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God, simple as that.

It’s a prooftext those of us who hate prooftexting can get behind.

But how often do we look at the whole thing? The part we quote most comes at verse 8: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good…” But we don’t often look at the section before that, the original question of what one must do for the liberating, boundary-breaking God and the proposed responses of sacrifice and offerings.

We children of the twenty-first century West are far removed from temple-sanctioned blood sacrifice (although we could argue long into the night about whether we have truly evolved beyond the general idea of blood sacrifice). However, there are still pseudo-sacrificial performative acts that we seem to believe will make us “good” before God and yet may not be what God truly wants from us.

Knowing this, perhaps we can reimagine that first section thusly:

“With what shall I come before the Lord,

and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before God with repressed sexuality,

with religious patriotism?

Will God be pleased with thousands of Scripture quotations,

with tens of thousands of calls for civility?

Shall I exchange politics for faith,

anger at injustice for inner peace?

God has told you, O child of earth, what is good.”

 

That last verse, though, that can stay as is. Don’t you think?