"I see Christ as absolutely, painfully, and courageously human. I see Christ as the essence of humanity in all of us, which includes our confusion, agony, inebriation, abandonment, philandering, and lust. ...

                I see Christ as a man without shame, without remorse, and without self-denial. And perhaps that is why they lynched him, because he exposed how pathetically everyone else had limited their lives through guilt and cowardice, and so his life was a spit in their face, a living mirror of disgust, and a fearless act of contempt.

                For it was this same Christ who murdered me and who also saved me, this same Christ who demanded goodness of me and also demanded indifference, this same Christ who cared for me and also did not care, and this same Christ who spoke to me and who also was ever silent.

                Christ was a man repulsed by the futile ways mankind deceived themselves and others, and he was none too slow to let others know this. I see in everything he did, and did not do, his belligerent, and determined words- “I will do as I please. I will eat meat if and when I want. I will drink wine if and when I choose. I will love Mary whenever and however I desire. I will work on the Sabbath if I please. And I will lie around as much as I can in the meantime. Take your rules, your lies, your judgments, shames, fears, and your deaths, you can have them, because I care for none of them.”

                I feel Christ’s disgust burning holes in the hearts and egos of the citizens, belittling them, ostracizing them, and condemning them. And yet in his contempt and rejection of mankind’s ways, I see his love, and hear him saying, “I love you enough to turn away from your stupidities, conventions, repressions, and fear, for in the simony of your souls do you sin against the God within you, and I will have none of it.”

                I see Christ in all the sordid ecstasies which humanity both desires and denies. I see him dancing a mad dance, because the world is not enough for him, and because God is too much, and the cup will not be removed but that he has drunk it dry. And so he is unleashed in a wild and euphoric, desperate dance of acceptance and abandon, a tortured and uncultured, ignoble and redemptive dance of the flesh, because he is here and now, the maker and breaker of mankind, a son of mankind, a created God, gripped in the feverish passion of one who has nothing, is nothing, knows nothing but that to be alive is a mystery and a miracle worth enduring through no matter what, no matter where, be it in the harsh confines of all the cities on earth, in the lone sorrow of the endless wilds, in the arms and hearts of his brothers, sisters, and enemies, in the rain and sun and snow, in the hunger, the satiation, the awe and tribulations, in all that it is to be a man, to be on earth, to live, and love, and take up your song and sing for the glory of creation, even unto the cross."

(excerpted from ROOTS AND WINGS, by Jack Haas)

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