Post-Christian and the Issue of Blood

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples. Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, for she said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well. When Jesus came to the leader’s house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion, he said, “Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up. And the report of this spread throughout that district.

(Matthew 9.9-13, 18-26 NRSV)

I didn’t leave Christianity because I stopped believing.

I needed a truer God, a redemption that matters, a love that gives a shit. I believed too deeply in the truth of the Jesus story to let it simply be something spiritual, something moral, something contained in church. I became post-Christian because I couldn’t hold on to Christianity and keep Jesus in the room.

And I know I’m not the only one.

There are so many of us who never really lost faith, never lost the hunger for divinity, never gave up on hope. But we did give up on the version of God we were handed, the prescribed ways to worship and please him—it was always a him—the demands that people put on us in this false God’s name.

So many of us still hold on to Jesus but refuse to be a part of the harm done (to ourselves and others) in his name.

We left Christianity because we were following Jesus out the door, even as we were bleeding out, hemorrhaging from the wounds inflicted by the very people who were supposed to heal us .

Those of us who left Christianity behind have been accused of so much, but the truth is every one of the accusations  are an indictment against the accusers. We didn’t fail you by refusing to be a part of a corrupt religion.

And you didn’t fail us. But you did wound us. You harmed us, hurt us, and left us bleeding out for years and years, all because you demanded a purity code, a morality, a delineation between those who justified themselves for not being like those unclean sinners and those in society who were sick and in need of a physician.

But Jesus met us where you could not. Jesus met us in the hurt, in the wound, in the bleeding. Jesus was there when we needed a friend, a companion, arms to hold us and feet to walk with us.

As we were there for each other, Jesus was in our midst. Jesus is the one who came for the weak and wounded, the sick and those whom society calls sinners. Jesus came, and remains, into the hurt, harm, and hope of those of us who had to leave Christianity behind.

We left our identities behind and found ourselves. We found community and a calling. Jesus came and ate with us, sat with us, reclined with us. He’s always offering the bread and the wine like that. Jesus came to us with a startling truth, a charge, a revelation.

“God doesn’t want your sacrifices. God wants your mercy.”

Turns out that the God we were told about, the one who want’s us to give up everything, who wants us to find meaning in the suffering he sends us, who has made us bleed, this God is nothing more than a false idol, set up by people who needed to believe that God wanted blood, wanted sacrifice.

We believed in this God until we couldn’t. This is why we had to leave. God was someone who demanded blood and pain in order to be appeased, and it was too great an ask for us.

But that God is no god at all. It is a figment of the imagination of a people that need a scapegoat, that need someone to take the blame, something to stand in their place. Instead of embracing who we are, this God tells us that we need to conform, we need to be righteous, that we need to not be like those sinners over there.

When societal positions are based on rejection so that others can feel acceptance, we are left with a hierarchy of worth.

But the real God, the one Jesus came to show us, this God wants mercy, not sacrifice.

The true God wants compassion from us, not bloody gifts given to cover over the pain we cause others and ourselves. No, God wants relational healing and physical care among the people God chooses to eat with.

When people who are hemorrhaging from the wounds of church and Christianity approach this God, hoping to a morsel of grace if only they can touch the edge of his robe, it is Jesus who turn to them, declaring their health and healing not because Jesus Dus Ex Machina this miracle, but because our faith has made us well.

Our belief. Our trust. Our faith. This is what makes us well. It’s not faith in our worthiness of God’s finger touching us. It’s not faith that we finally got the spiritual formula right. It’s not even faith that our sacrifice and pain haven’t been in vain.

It’s the faith that mercy is the nature of God.

That mercy Jesus asks of us, that mercy and not sacrifice—Jesus asks mercy from us because Jesus is a person of mercy.

When we, who are bleeding out come to him, he turns to us.

When we, who are outcasts from the halls of religious propriety, look to him, he calls to us.

When we who are labeled sinners by the social and familial institutions reach for the edge of his robe, he takes us by the hand and raises us up.

Jesus is the God of mercy, of compassion, of love.

We followed this love out of the halls of the church, past the altar calls and the praise songs because not only did we want to experience this mercy, but we wanted to take part in it, to embody it, to share it.

We grew up being told to be like Jesus.

Now we choose to follow him as he calls us to be a people of mercy, a community of compassion.

Instead of labeling people sinners, we call them friends.

We don’t leave people bleeding out for years, unattended and alone.

We are the ones carrying the love of God, the essence of God, the nature and being of God to each other, sharing that divine love in embodied dinners and resurrections.

This is what it means for me to be post-Christian. I will no longer serve the false god of blood and sacrifice. Instead, I will sit in solidarity with Jesus as he extends the table for the sick who need the healing I can offer.

I no longer believe in a church that is nothing more than a drawer full of knives waiting to slaughter us all in the name of righteousness and purity.

I’m past that. Jesus and I walked away from that life and instead chose to dance where healing and resurrection happen because mercy triumphs over judgment.

Jesus doesn’t heal me as some god would, placing himself in a hierarchy over me. Jesus invites us all into the healing meal where we bring forth mercy to each other and let that mercy make us well.

“Take heart,” Jesus tells us. “Your trust in mercy and compassion has made you well.”

Come, follow me.