When Do We Begin?

I read in Reader’s Digest this morning of a three year old boy who started to become antsy his first time attending church, asking “What time does Jesus get here?” From the mouths of babes… It wouldn’t hurt some of us adults to be asking the same question, even if it is couched in figurative abstraction. I continue to be perplexed by what is passing for Christianity these days. I’d hate to think of what might happen if the actual Jesus of Nazareth somehow showed up to a Tea Party rally or the “peaceful” rally in Washington, D.C. to support possession of firearms. With two millennia between us and the event, with a dash of fundamentalism thrown in for good measure, we can actually let ourselves believe that Jesus died on the cross because that is what God ordained. Let’s be honest. Jesus was crucified because he pissed off the conservatives of his time and would just as surely be dismissed by the religious and political Right of our own times. I have no qualms about declaring Barack Obama the American messiah, and I’m sure he has no delusions about what fate some of his opponents would like to impose. Two thousand long years and we don’t seem to have learned a damned thing.