The pandemic pushed him into his home. As a spouse, he was asked to reacquaint himself with his lover. As a parent, he was asked to discover how to teach his children. As an employee, he was asked to meet the demands of business without compartmentalizing the responsibilities of family and work. He realized that he relied heavily on outsourcing. He outsourced his relationship with Netflix and screen time. He outsourced his parenting with school during the day and extra curricular activities at night. Then suddenly he realized that he himself could be outsourced, his boss melding his role with that of a colleagues, and he became a percentage uptick in the rising unemployment rate.
The only sense of normalcy he felt was in the thumb scroll over a sea of posts, friends sharing rants and random moments, as had been the case before, until even that was flooded with overwhelming sorrow and outrage upon yet another unjust death. Yet this media flurry was different. It came with a weight that he hadn’t experienced before, and his already burdened heart became unbearably heavy with an awareness of racial injustice that he had not before realized.
Suddenly going back to normal – all that he longed so desperately to return to – he knew wasn’t possible. His eyes were opened to shortcomings in his home, and to apathy outside of it. Going back to normal wasn’t an option, without denying all that had just come to pass. And he felt helpless in the midst of it all.
You may read this narrative and find your name to be fully interchangeable with our unnamed character. Unnamed, but not unknown. In fact I believe the story, or at the very least segments of it, have found their way into all of our stories. And in only a matter of weeks, or even hours, you found yourself exposed.
I keep coming back to the story of an unnamed woman. She was pulled out onto the street upon being caught in the act of adultery. In the act… which means we can assume she was physically naked. All eyes were staring at her, enraged, meanwhile her counterpart somehow absent so that she could assume the full weight of her moral failure. They shouted threats in response to her overwhelming shortcomings. Threats to kill her with stones. Agony upon agony.
Then here comes Jesus. Brilliantly convincing the angry mob with only one sentence to drop their stones and leave. They do so. He kneels by this woman. Her nakedness is only the physical expression of her internal burden. Exposed. Convinced she is perhaps worthy of no more than a beating.
Only Jesus and the woman were left.
“‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’
‘No one, sir,’ she said.
Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.’”
Exposed and yet acquitted. The burden of her failure made way for the freedom of change. He did not ask her to wallow in her guilt. He did not remind her of her shortcomings. He simply told her what the protesting men could not. That she did not need his condemnation, but his forgiveness. And by that truth, she could anxiously, even joyfully, return to a different kind of life. She would not want to go back to normal. Her eyes were opened, and she rejoiced that she could see.
EXPOSITION: In what areas do you feel exposed? What part of the narrative can you place yourself?
RISE: Do not be satisfied with going back to normal. And certainly do not let guilt be the reason that you rush to cover up your nakedness, scurrying to the nearest covering of familiarity for the sake of being clothed. Instead live like one who has seen.
DENOUEMENT: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” -God