Who Is The One Who Loves? or The Story Of A Concert

I couldn’t help but laugh at the un-laughable. “Christians” were picketing a recent concert and the “you are going to hell message” was running rampant. It seems to be a popular message in some Christian circles after a generation of the rule of the Moral Majority in our evangelical church.

While the protestors targeted those going into the packed-out stadium to see and hear a powerful voice and message to a world-wide audience, on the inside was at least one pastor I knew who had decided to go and see who this woman was and what her message was. The one thing he will always remember about that night was the representation of angry Christianity on the outside while inside a woman lies down on the stage in the middle of her concert, looks heavenward and declares:

“Oh, Jesus, up there in heaven;
All those people outside
tell me that you don’t love me. But I know it’s not true;
I know you love me.
And, I know you love all these “Little Monsters.”

Lady Gaga is praying to my God, to my Jesus, to the One who has defined the ultimate love His followers are to demonstrate while “Christians” are ranting outside with hate and anger. For the tens of thousands who attended the concert I don’t have to guess who had the bigger impact. I dare say they wrote off those who, in the name of Jesus and with great condemnation, were declaring, “He hates you, go to hell!”

I do wonder if my Jesus was sitting next to His and my Father saying,

“Dad, doesn’t that look like the Good Samaritan parable all over again?
Do you think that our followers will figure out who is the true ambassador of Good News?
Will they decide it is those who are picketing and hating in our name,
or could they possibly choose the one on the inside who is telling the cast-offs
of their religious society that we are love and we love them?”

As all those kids left the arena that night, what would they remember as they bore the brunt of the message of hate and scorn by the religious societies? Like my pastor friend, I believe they will remember the greater message of Lady Gaga, already shunned and shamed in the name of Jesus. They will remember the one who, despite the protests, will not give up on a God who is love and holds out with a greater faith that He is who He says He is, not who He is represented to be.

Who had the greater impact to change a generation? Who was the more meaningful ambassador of a Kingdom that is relational and supernatural? Who was more the imitator of God? Was it those shouting hate and damnation and killing all with the Law, or the despised woman calling upon the love of Jesus on behalf of all those who could hear?

I will continue to be mystified by those protestors shaming others in the name of Jesus while a singer who had no apparent agenda, no hidden cause to promote, just makes a simple statement of Jesus is love. God is compassionate and gracious and slow to anger, merciful, truth and covenantally faithful, forgiving. He, too, is love.

That night I didn’t have to ponder long who I wanted as my neighbor and who Jesus might use in a contemporary retelling of the Good Samaritan story. Somehow Gaga knows that this God of ours loves most those that are despised by the world systems, especially the religious systems of the 21st Century.

There is no other answer than love because God is and always will be love. And all He asks of us is to love Him with all and love our neighbor as self. It is written.

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