Another awful shooting.

And another round of partisan pronouncements from politicians and the press.

Is it possible for someone, anyone, to reflect on what’s really going on?

One politician I heard this week came closer than most. The problem was anger, he said.

Yes. But how do we root out anger?        

This Sunday we remember how Jesus rode into Jerusalem to the adoration of the crowd on what we now call Palm Sunday. But by the end of the week, the adoration had turned to anger. The crowd became angry enough to kill Jesus, and that’s what it did.

If there had been social media back then, Jesus wouldn’t have lasted the week.

Jesus made pretty much everyone angry.

He threatened the establishment and the revolutionaries.

Jesus was overthrowing every power structure that was not of him. He’s still at it.  

Jesus came to root out anger…along with hate and envy and bitterness and sadness and all the rest.

He did it by rooting out the ultimate problem, sin.

And he didn’t do it in a way anyone ever imagined.

He took all the sin and anger of the world into his being.

He let the crowd kill him, so all the sin and anger would die with him.

It really happened.

God put us here to let the world know.