Today’s Scripture
Reading (December 1, 2017): Mark 16
Since his death in prison
last month (November 2017), we seem to be obsessed with Charles Manson. Newly
released pictures of the cult-leader, little vignettes into his life, and stories
of his association with various celebrities and would be stars grace our screens, along with an
impassioned cry asking us to understand the evil that lurked inside of this man.
For most, he is nothing more than a relic of
a bygone era. I was only eight or nine when his “family” of idealistic
supporters went on their murderous rampage in Los Angeles. But the truth is
that even then, Manson was an enigma, a mystery,
to most.
For most of us, we know
him for his involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders. His murder of actress
Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant at the time, shocked the world. But
the stories that grace my computer screen also remind me that Manson didn’t actually kill anyone. He let his adoring family
do the murdering under his direction. Which
leads us to a truth that most of us have long forgotten – or at least suppressed
- Charles Manson was evil, but he was also a charismatic personality who preyed
on the disenfranchised. All of the authors, emphatically stressing the
evil of Manson, are afraid that now that he is dead, we will get lost in the charismatic side of the man. Too
often with people like Manson, we see what we expect. Most of us have no
problem seeing the evil because we have come to expect it, but in our world, there are still people, and Manson
family members, who expect to see and therefore see, in Manson, the charismatic savior of the world.
And most of those who see the charismatic savior are on the outside of prison. (It often seems to me that the wrong
family members are locked up, away from where they can be a danger to the
public.) But the critical question when
you look into the eyes of Charles Manson has always been – what do you expect
to see?
It is also the critical question when we look into the eyes of
Jesus. Jesus was a charismatic leader. No, he
did not ask his followers to kill for him. His message was the opposite of
Charles Manson’s, based on a message of love for all people, but we can’t
forget that his enemies feared that one day he could ask them to take up arms
against the society and that his followers would gladly oblige. For most
who gathered around the cross, his death was the end of an illegitimate
personality cult that had threatened the world. But for his few followers, he
was the Messiah, the Savior of the World.
It is apparent that his
followers were confused by his death. On this Sunday morning, the first day
that is was legally possible to visit the grave of their leader and do the work
necessary to prepare the body for the grave;
they expected to find Jesus lying dead in the tomb. There was no giddy
wonder if the tomb just might be empty. There
was no expectation of a risen Christ. The Messiah was dead, and he would remain
that way. They had come to the tomb to deal with a dead body. Except that he
wasn’t dead, a fact that would confuse the Jesus followers even further.
Slowly, the followers of Jesus
saw what they had been blind to previously, that Jesus was the Messiah, the
Savior of the World. Our hope for today is that the followers of Charles Manson
will come to see him for who he was, not the Christ (which some still claim him
to be) but more of a little antichrist who has now been left to the pages of
history, never to be heard from again.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 24
Personal Note:
Happy Birthday to my favorite (and only) nephew Kieran. Have a great day!
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