ROBERT : I have long thought . . . .

I have long thought that we Christians were pretty good folks. At least for the most part.

We do our fair share of helping people in need and teaching our children the faith and offering up our prayers. Though whether we do that more often than or better than or with more fervor than people who are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist is open to discussion, I suppose.

I have long believed that we were pretty good folks and might even be better folks if we actually believed the Good News that Jesus came to tell us. Which begins with actually listening to it.

We spend most of our time wrestling with the Gospel stories rather than listening to what was said by the One Who came, the One Who came to announce the Good News in the first place. It is hard to blame us — it is way more fun to argue over the historical accuracy of the accounts we have received from the Evangelists, or wander our way through a discussion of the social mores of the time in which He lived, or have these theological quilting bees where we connect the old scriptures to the new. Who wants to listen to Someone Who says we should give everything to the poor, love our enemies, live in the kingdom that has already come, love all of our neighbors, and otherwise completely change the way we live and move and have our being in the world? Let there be flannelgraphs, I say, I liked studying the Gospels that way.

We who claim to be the Body of Christ would do well to spend more of our time listening to the Christ than we do talking about the Christ.

I wonder sometimes what might happen to us and among us and within us if we spent a year only reading the red letters.
Perhaps we would grow up to be pretty good folks. Or maybe something even better.