The Elephant in the Room

Jesus does not come to add weight to the weary. He comes to carry sinners who are already broken.

When something is obvious, awkward, unavoidable and yet somehow still unnamed, we call it “the elephant in the room.” Everyone sees it, steps around it and pretends the furniture is arranged this way on purpose.

Churches, families and communities know this elephant. We learn how to step around things. We teach our children how to smile politely. We say “everything is fine” in a tone that means nothing is fine. Keeping the peace around the elephant often means staying quiet and avoiding certain topics to avoid making people uncomfortable. It’s a skill the church is quite good at because we want people to be comfortable in church. If someone is uncomfortable, then everyone is uncomfortable.

But then Jesus walks into the room, and he is rarely interested in maintaining institutional politeness. He points to the elephant and says, “There it is!”

In Matthew 23, Jesus finally says out loud what everyone has been thinking, but no one with a title...