We spent a big part of yesterday in the city of Trapani and enjoyed our time there in a city that seems open and holding life. As we were leaving we walked past this burnt out car that has been preserved as a marker.
Carlo Palermo replaced his friend that the Mafia (Cosa Nostra as they term themselves:’Our Thing’) had killed. He carried on the work and was immediately a target. The car above was set up. Palermo himself was injured but survived and carried on the work of investigation and justice, The bomb however killed a mother and her twin sons – hence the three ‘flowers’ growing up out of the shell.
So very sobering when encountering people, or their memory, in the public arena who have stood at cost for a different future. Maybe some of them have lived with mixed motives but I am aware (moving now a little in a theological direction) that God honours what is good. From the generic piece of observable wisdom that ‘righteousness exalts a nation’ to the parable of the ‘good’ Samaritan – Samaritan of all people! There is no need to go down the line of ‘good works saves a person’ but neither should we dismiss what is genuinely good. It is a belief that my ‘religious’ activity gets me favour before God that is critiqued and critiqued strongly – your righteousness is as filthy rags.
Two aspects challenge me in this. One a humility that I am not the one who says who makes it into the age to come; and that I have to find a different narrative to the simple one that ‘born again = go to heaven’. There is no Scripture that talks of ‘going to heaven’ in such a clear manner so I need to find a different / bigger reason for knowing the Lord (or as Paul corrects himself ‘being known by the Lord’). That bigger picture for me is of the body of Christ taking responsibility for our world. We can create space where those come along who ‘do good to all’ and our world mirrors a tiny bit of heaven’s reality, and I think push back so that less innocent people are damaged by the fallenness of our world.
Don’t blame the world… As I once said to a group of people in the USA who were concerned about abortion and changes to the marriage laws in their country. I said that the WH had never legislated on such matters (they had at one level, but not at the level that counts)… I said people like you present in this room did. When you walk up the aisle making promises and then walk down saying I have found someone better you legislated about marriage (thank God there is wonderful grace re. divorse / remarriage, but an ‘opting out at first opportunity’ is not what Scripture talks about). And secondly when you tithe and raise your hands in church to worship but support the killing of ‘those bloody Iraquis’ (that was the era) you legislate who can and can not be killed. If you are blasé about human life that can be seen and interacted with we should not be too surprised that society becomes blasś about life that cannot be seen.
The Pauline gospel.
Yes there is the intimacy with the Living Lord that we enjoy… but there is a reason for the body of Christ on the earth. Praying for and rejoicing when there is any manifestation of the kingdom.