What have you to show us?

It's when the worst suddenly happens that we show how deep our following of Jesus goes, though not everyone who calls themselves a Christian has even the slightest intention of following Him: believing, yes, following, maybe when it's convenient. To some degree this is true of all of us.

So a church building gets lightly graffiti'd. Someone spray paints an inverted cross and places a numeral six beside three of the cross ends. This is a childish prank and uncalled for. People are up in arms, some blaming the perpetrators of such blasphemy, others sanctimoniously quoting 'pray for them.'

Graffiti happens every day, much of it far worse than what was scrawled on the wall of a church. I have helped neighbors who were Lesbians remove homophobic graffiti from their cedar fence. I've had to repaint the dark blue fence around my garden when some sidewalk tripper decorated it with delight.

What is at issue here is respect, respect for property, to be sure, but there are things even more worthy of respect than religious buildings. Of course, desecration by any means of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and graveyards, cuts more deeply, or at least it feels that way, but it's not what, but who, is being dissed.

Who is being dissed? Who disrespected? Is it really God? Tell me, in what way can He be injured by such mistaken actions? Isn't it really ourselves who are angered, because we had something 'nice' and someone has come and spoiled it? I know that's how I feel when things like that happen to me. It's not blasphemy, just stupidity.

Face it, our society is very screwed up, but whose isn't? When was human society ever perfect? People can pave over their sins all they want, but in time, what's been covered comes popping up through cracks that we're powerless to keep closed. Kids graffiti buildings, adults graffiti their bodies, and yes, their souls.

Made in the Divine image, we can't stand to look at ourselves, because we're not what we want to be, and even our best efforts to deceive others don't always work. What we want to be is rarely what God wants us to be, but most of us don't have the time or inclination to ask Him to find out. From our shadows we snipe at others.

Back to the graffiti'd church wall, I wonder not who marked it up, but who lives outside that wall. Is that temple the heart of a community that believes, or is it an island of Orthodoxy plopped down at the corner of Fifth and Vine, in a neighborhood inhabited by people indifferent to God, who don't know there is a message?

There is the rub. Can anyone apply graffiti to the wall of the City of God or disrespect its gates? Only those who do not know what they are looking at. And how are they to know, if we do not show them? The graffiti is only their attempt to attract our notice, as if to say, 'We're here! What have you to show us?'