JESUS FOR PRESIDENT

High School musical & everyday faith

For hundreds of thousands of young Americans this month is all about October 24th: the opening day of the movie High School Musical 3. As school begins, homework flows and every day challenges are met, it’s something to dream about. In our household it’s spoken of with excitement, hope and joy, nearly as if it were a high holy day. As a country, we keep moving towards the presidential election of November 5th. Many speak of that day in a similar sacred way. In the middle of the chaos swarming around us it easily feels like the 11th hour. Banks fail every day. Repossessed houses populate our neighborhoods. Our purchasing power is decreasing. Our leaders seem unable to curtail, let alone concretely address the problems we face. We thirst for something different. As followers of Jesus, we dream of a sacred day when the policies of Jesus, war on terror and the Jesus Doctrine, spelled out in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) will become the reality of both our universe and our everyday life. But how do we get there? It seems like a pipe dream?

“They say that you should follow

and chase down what you dream.

But if you get lost and lose yourself

What does it really mean?

No matter where we’re going,

It starts with where we are.”

These are lyrics from a favorite song from HSM 2 is entitled “Everyday”. It speaks to the times we live in, inviting us to claim Jesus’ call for us to live as the salt of the earth and light of the world: putting his teachings of the Sermon on the Mount into action.

In the midst of the fears we’re facing we can’t help but ask if we are lost? According to the rhetoric of our election we’re looking for change & mavericks, for something bigger than what already is. We seem to be afraid of missing out on our once in a life-time opportunity. We hope for something better rather than celebrating who we already are. As a nation and as individual people, we often are looking for that secret ingredient, that unknown power, the Gnostic message of truth, that experience of God that will bring us samsara, enlightenment and peace. We look outside ourselves for salvation of our world, yet the testimonies of the Bible say that God looks to us. Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, teaching us not to sit passively under a lotus tree waiting for beatitude enlightenment, but rather to prayerfully participate in what God is doing in the world, not settling for organized religion but to dare to be a community of faith organizing the chaos or our world into something different, the realization of the Jesus Doctrine. Visible not just from Russia, but from our houses in the fats and flats of the East Bay, the kingdom that Jesus calls us to become and claim comes about through a nonviolent revolution of living out of our faith every day. Jesus challenges us to be salt, light, mustard, yeast: transformational elements that find their potency not in secret powers but in who and what they are, in living faithfully and full of faith everyday.