Dionysus on a Bike

Matthew 9:27-34 – 6/6/2026

Today’s passage shakes me. Jesus is setting people free from their demons, giving people new life, offering them hope, healing their disabilities. That’s what Jesus came to do. These are the kinds of things human beings in their frailty and pain yearn for, the hope of healing, the joy of restoration. The Pharisees’ response is to question whether these healing moments are even good at all. They wonder if Jesus is not removing evil because he is evil himself. I am not so concerned with the Pharisee’s motivation, though that motivation probably stems from a desire to maintain power and privilege. I am concerned with the effects that this attitude has, especially when it is held by people in power.

Calling what is good evil, and calling the person who does good evil too. This is a strategy of power to keep the weak, needy, oppressed, and downtrodden down. Perhaps more importantly, this moral reversal keeps those who would offer real help to those in need from gaining power. How often do we see this same dynamic in our own society? Libraries offer books, other media, and a public place to everyone for free, which are clearly good things. Yet librarians are vilified at every turn. Books are banned and librarians called communists and corrupters of the youth. The same thing happens with public schools. Schools can provide young people, especially those in need, with immense good. Education is a clear good. And yet teachers are vilified at every turns.

My experience of becoming an adult just before 9/11 and then entering the professional world just after the 2008 financial crisis is that virtually everything I believe is a public good has been under attack and then defunded and called evil. Humanities education, my first profession, has been gutted and called a waste of money. The state grant for low-income students that got me through undergrad has been cut and no longer exists, called a handout. Bike lanes, universal healthcare, food stamps, subsidized housing, teacher pay… I could go on and on and on.

It is one thing to see others in need and not lift a finger. We all fail to act for good when it is demanded of us from time to time. It’s another thing to see another or a whole community coming together to help others and make their lives better and the world better and to say of that “Stop, that’s evil.” When something brings another joy, liberation, or some social good that they lacked before, we should pause and consider at length before we object to it. There is no easier way to keep the oppressed in chains than to call their liberation a sin. The political implications for this in our time are obvious. Reactionary political power continually calls the liberation of the workers and the oppressed an evil to be eradicated. In Jesus’s own time, his declaring good news for the poor and freedom for the captives got him killed on a cross. The struggle against evil is not just against that which actively harms, but also against that which insidiously condemns our healing and our liberation.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.