The past week Disney+ released its new movie Encanto. Lets just say that I was super excited to watch it, and if you haven’t watched it, this may spoil it for you. In the movie Encanto there is a message that we as Christians, we as people need to hear – we see a family become so willing to sacrifice the individual in order to better or maintain the whole. Yet in so doing, we see that they are actually causing the whole to weaken and fall apart. At the end though, we see that one person, outcast by the rest, is able to see just how broken the whole is and that in order to fix the whole they have to be willing to except the individual. No matter if doing so challenges the whole.
This results in some backwards thinking. It is unhuman for us to be willing to sacrifice the whole for one individual, yet that it was we are called to do. Jesus, during his ministry never sacrificed one for the whole. Rather, Jesus sought out the one, in order to better the whole. He looked for the ones cast out by the whole in order to show them just how important the one truly is. Yet the very people that Jesus was came to save, were the very people that sacrifice the individual in order to save the whole. Not truly understand that the individual was the one to save that whole.
We today still sacrifice the individual in order to keep and maintain the whole. Rather then helping an individual so that they can better help the whole. We sacrifice them. We cast them out as if they are the problem, when really, maybe, the problem is the whole. Maybe by seeing the individual, welcoming them with everything that they are, is the only way the we as Christians can better the whole.
~ Pastor Jillian