Offended in Christ

“Blessed is he,” says our Lord in today’s Gospel, “whosoever shall not be offended in me.”  That doesn’t seem like too much to ask, does it?  Our Lord is ready to rain down his blessings upon anyone, so long as they’re not offended in him.  But what exactly does it mean, to be offended in Christ?  It’s a concept that probably has not occurred to you or me.  Why on earth would we be offended in our loving Saviour?  But if our Lord provides blessings to those who are not offended, then it means, surely, that there are people who are indeed offended in Christ.

There’s plenty of things going on in today’s world to justify being offended.  We’re only too familiar with all the usual suspects, and our purpose today is not to revisit the reasons why we have every right to be upset about so many things.  Instead, let’s take a look at the notion of being offended from the enemy’s perspective.  What is there about our blessed Lord that offends so many?

We should start by pointing out that for many, if not most of these people, being offended is not just a passing emotion, but a way of life.  There is no end to what offends them, and they find reasons constantly to take umbrage at the most innocent of things.  The sad part is that the rest of the world, the “decent folks”, cater to their conjured-up sense of injury and hurt.  Without lifting a finger to object, we meekly accept their punishments for not being sufficiently “woke”.  Say a word out of turn, and it’s twisted by the perpetually affronted who then seek to have us “cancelled.”  People lose their jobs, their friends, their social standing—they’re even booted off Twitter!  Sometimes, no one even needs to say anything, but that doesn’t stop the woke crowd of lefties from seeking out for destruction long-standing traditions that have suddenly become offensive to them.  The Washington Redskins have had to change their name, the confederate flag has been removed from state flags, statues of Christopher Columbus have been vandalized… where will it end?

The hypocrisy of the left is ever before us.  They don’t care that we Christians might be scandalized or offended by the things they do!  They push for drag queens to perform for our schoolchildren, they allow Satanists to erect their statue of Bahomet next to our nativity scenes, they push their gender and race theories down our throat at every opportunity—all in the name of a “free speech” that they deny to anyone who disagrees with their own diabolical agenda.

And then of course, there’s God himself.  As their agenda is truly diabolical, it should come as no surprise that they want to cancel God too.  Our divine Creator is their highest priority for removal from their woke society, and we may legitimately wonder how long it will be before they ban the preaching of the Gospel and the true morality they so spitefully flaunt. Already, they are demanding the removal of crosses from the public square, the prosecution of “anti-gay hate speech”, the acceptance of all manner of morally repugnant behavior, and on the list goes, with no apparent end in sight. 

So there it is—there are indeed many who are offended in Christ.  Let’s just remember—they are not blessed.