On Easter, MAGA Christians Will Tell You They Love God and That Jesus is Risen. They Will Be Lying.

This Easter, the MAGA God lovers will be everywhere.Your social media feed, your street, and perhaps even your dinner table may be filled with people who loudly claim adoration for both Jesus Christ and this President. Their profiles will be adorned with effusive soliloquies about their steadfast faith.They will share memes proudly declaring that Jesus is Risen.They will publicly pledge their fierce and undying love for God.And they will be lying… at least, according to Jesus.In the Gospel of Matthew, he tells a crowd of his students and strangers a parable about the coming judgement of God, in which the imagined righteous people will be split into two groups. One will have eternal and joyful fellowship with him, the other will be forever separated and suffering.And the evaluation will have nothing to do with a magic, momentary prayer they uttered, or the money they gave, or the religious services they attended, or how boldly they announced their faith—and certainly not their political affiliations. Their spiritual convictions and their hearts will be judged solely on how they treated people.Jesus tells those listening that the way they cared for the least of these: the poor, the hungry, the imprisoned, the stranger, will be the way they cared for him; that as they injured or ignored the vulnerable here, they injured or ignored him.In other words, to those who imagine themselves right with God, Jesus is incarnated in the humanity in their path. He is the disparate neighbor they are called to love.Given this, these MAGA Christians who will make grand displays of piety and devotion need to reckon with the gravity of Jesus’ words, and the implications for their perceived righteousness:Who and where is Jesus on this Easter?Jesus is permanently entombed in a bombed-out basement in Gaza.Jesus was slain on a Minneapolis sidewalk by the masked thugs.Jesus lies lifeless beneath the jagged rubble of an Iranian girl’s school.Jesus is the veteran whose house was foreclosed on after his aid was canceled.Jesus died from exposure in the squalor of a scalding Florida concentration camp.Jesus is the Latino man weathering the taunts and threats of emboldened bigots in the very restaurant he built.Jesus is the Muslim grandfather, cleaning profane slurs from the walls of his mosque.Jesus was violated on an island by grotesque monsters whose power and privilege keep their names concealed.Jesus is the trans teenager trying to hold her bladder for the entire school day to avoid the bathroom bullies and their predatory parents.Jesus is the toddler whose brain was permanently damaged by a virus that we long ago eradicated.Jesus bled out alone in an overturned car on a Beirut street.Jesus is the pregnant mother of three who will die in a crowded emergency room because doctors were not allowed to save her life.Jesus is the radiant young American soldier killed in Tehran for a wasteful war of distraction for a pedophile. Jesus is the 11-year-old girl who took her life when her classmates told her ICE would come for her family.Jesus is the grandfather who slowly suffocated without treatments that kept his lungs working.Jesus is the exhausted Ukrainian father whose sleep and rest never come. Jesus is a black college student whose body was found hanging from a campus tree.This is who Jesus says he is right now. This is where Jesus says he is in these moments.And if this is indeed true, then the prolific hatred and unrepentant cruelty of his professed followers toward so many hungry, scared, and cast-aside human beings here are going to judge them.So, this Easter, MAGA Christians can engage in all manner of performative religiosity and feigned faith. They can sing and preach and post and pontificate about their joy at the Resurrection.They can tell us they love God.They can say that Jesus is risen.And Jesus and we will both know they’re lying.The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe