WHEN I MET the 93-year-old woman during Eugene Faith Center’s meet-and-greet time last Sunday, I told her of two connections we had.
“I’m a friend of your daughter and son-in-law,” I said.
“Oh?” said Joyce Hansen.
“Yes, and long ago I had the privilege of writing a column involving your late husband. About the wheelchair incident at Autzen Stadium.”
“Oh, I remember,” she said, eyes twinkling. “I was there. Wasn’t that something?”
“It was.”
The sermon that morning, preached by A.J. Swoboda, was from 1 John 2:9-11.
“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.”
A.J. is a first-rate speaker with a subtle sense of humor; his new Substack column refers to him as a “low-level theologian.”
I appreciated A.J.’s point that, as Christians, the best way we can love one another is to love God, the first necessarily leading to the second. When we are rightly connected to Him, we will be rightly connected to those around us.
Alas, I lament an increasing number of believers who—how else can I say it?—don’t love others well, particularly those outside their comfort zones, people of neighboring tribes. And sometimes, that’s me.
“Don’t look at feelings or culture,” reminded A.J. “Look at God.”
By now, you know I’m an optimist, but we live in dark times—as long-winter Oregonians and as citizens of a world where hate can cast dark shadows. War. Political grenade-lobbing. Mass shootings at Super Bowl celebrations. You’re tempted to say “Where will it end?” But you know the answer: It won’t. It’s the nature of the human beast. In some ways, we live on a planet where it’s perpetual winter.
On Wednesday morning, over hot chocolate and coffee, a friend told me about his struggles with Oregon winters. The rain. The clouds. The darkness.
I appreciated his vulnerability—and his wisdom on some matters I was struggling with, one of which was the online reaction—the dark reaction—of many Christians following Sunday’s controversial Super Bowl commercial. Among the scenes depicted in the 60-second spot by international fine arts photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten: A woman washing the feet of a younger woman in front of a family planning clinic. A white woman washing the feet of a Middle-Eastern-looking woman wearing a hijab. And a priest washing the feet of a skater who’s presumably gay.
(The early Christian church introduced the custom of feet washing to imitate the humility and selfless love of Jesus, who washed the feet of the Twelve Apostles the night before his crucifixion.)
The tagline to the commercial was: “Jesus Didn’t Teach Hate. Jesus Washed Feet. He Gets Us. All of Us.”
Most people online—on Christian sites—hated the commercial with a passion.
It’s an example of “the soft woke evangellyfish church lacking spiritual vertebrae,” tweeted Mark Driscoll, pastor of Trinity Church in Scottsdale, Ariz.—and formerly drummed out of the Seattle-based Mars Hills Church for his authoritarian overreach.
“Jesus told sinners not to sin,” wrote conservative influencer Seb Gorka, President Donald Trump’s former deputy assistant and strategist. “He didn’t wash their feet to endorse their sinfulness.”
“This heresy needs to be stopped, opposed and rejected,” wrote Andy Thomas, senior pastor at Hopewell Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.
Sigh.
I PROCEEDED TO WRITE a column that said how disappointing it is to see so many Christians hyperventilate at the idea of loving people not like them, the very thing Scripture calls us to do.
“Love as I have loved you,” says 2 Peter 1:7.