The Divine Scoundrel

When we think of Biblical villains, scoundrels, vixens…questionable people,

Our knee jerk reflexes are often

Judas, Pilate, Pharaoh, Delilah…

 

You know, all the people we were taught were really sinful and bad in Sunday School.

 

However…what about GOD…YHWH…Elohim?

 

Perhaps a bit sacrilegious…escandaloso…profane.

 

As we read the stories of our faith,

We encounter a GOD who has done

some very “mysteriously holy good” things such as:

Destroying cities…wiping out whole communities of people…

smiting two boys for offering the wrong smoke…

sending plagues…hardening hearts…

giving leprosy to a woman who complained…

allowing the chosen people to be enslaved, tortured, and exiled.

 

It is this messiness and not so pretty face of GOD that

invites us to appreciate the divine humanity, confusion, and “amazingness”

within the one called  “I am.”  

 

The Almighty is complicated, quirky, and screwed up…

 

Just like me. 

 

Afterall, we are all made in GOD’s image.

 

Perfection is not the absence of flaw,

but the willingness to find and reflect GOD in the snarky and faithful.

 

It is this Divine Scoundrel who invites us and challenges us

into the trenches to wrestle with counter-narratives that go against hegemony and the status quo of

abelism, heteronormativity, whiteness, thin-ness and all the other isnesses;

to risk the scandal of widening the circle of celebratory acceptance and radical inclusivity by sitting at

the table to share with  the person living with AIDS, a person addicted to drugs …

a person who disagrees with us in our

theology, sexual ethic, political stances, or cultural practice. 

The scandalous divinity that created us, made us in HER image not to be comfortable

but to be just, to be prophetic …

to stand in sacred, sassy, social solidarity advocating for those who are raped by

society, our churches, our schools, our legal system, and by us. 

 

For despite all the power, wrath, and vastness,

GOD took the time to create me, stick with me, abrazarme, carry me, drag me…

 

Gave me a voice and the ability to create scandal not for mere shock value

But to be a partner and lover in creating justice and sanctuary.

 

Mi DIOS risked scandal by loving me and loving through me; and SHE would have it no other way!!!

 

Amen!!!