One of my favorite authors is Barbar Brown Taylor. She was named one of the top 20 preachers in America. A few years ago she wrote a very honest memoir of her decision to leave her role as pastor called Leaving Church. She is a person who was willing to ask the hard questions and see where the path would take her. I resonate with her conclusion:
“I thought that being faithful was about becoming somone other than who I was, in other words, and it was not until this project failed that I began to wonder if my human wholeness might be more useful to God than my exhausting goodness.”
This deeply reflective author bring to us some wonderful questions to consider about our communities of faith and self. This weeks installment of Walking with Questions calls us to stop and ponder the type of communities and relationships that we are a part of and are creating:
“What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are suppose to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?”
What if we could listen more? What if we had the courage of Barbara to unlearn what we think we know rather than continuing to look for things that confirm what we already think?
Some time ago, I was reading through the announcements at my church. Something stood out to me. If I participated with everything that applied to me, I would have come to eight to ten meetings to talk about God and the Bible. It seems that we have come to spend much of our time in our communities of faith talking about faith. There is a world of difference between hearing a truth and experiencing a truth.
There is a passage in John’s first letter that calls us to reach beyond talking about our faith and actually experience it as we love others. But to do so, we must begin in a very paradoxical place.
“My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves. And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing our condemning ourselves, we’re gold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive… (I John 3:18-22, The Message).
The place we must begin to live in our faith is being honest with ourselves. John reminds us that what limits us most is our own doubt and insecurity about ourselves. Our fear keeps us from reaching out, from fully engaging those around us, from really experiencing the grace that has been extended to us.
Too often we come to our churches wrestling with our own shortcomings. We worry they will be revealed. We worry that we do not measure up. We too often come thinking we are here to prove something. I wonder if John, as he was writing this passage, thought of another scene many years before when Jesus was on bended knee beginning to wash the feet of his friend Peter. Peter struggled with believing the mystery of grace. He did not want to be served. He did not feel worthy. And that is the point. When we are worried about our worth we cannot receive the love and acceptance that Jesus freely extends to us and we cannot pass that love on to those around us.
We are asked to come and trust what cannot possibly be true. We are asked to trust that eating a little piece of bread and drinking a small sip of wine brings life to our spirit. We are asked to believe that no matter what we bring in terms of our state of faith, God has already seen and known this. It does not stop him from loving us.
So as you reach out and consider the people around you, consider that reaching as a reminder that all has been made right for us with God and if we trust it, with each other. There is more going on than we can understand. Our job is not to explain it only to trust it. As we receive what we can see, bread and wine, trust that we are also receiving what we cannot see – unconditional acceptance. When we truly trust this we will no longer live separated and divided. We will live at ease with God and our neighbor and that will change the world.
I hope to this point I have gotten many of you to think about service and generosity to the point where you feel overwhelmed. To ask the tough questions like: “How do I do all of this?” “How do I keep my eyes open to see the needs around me and respond?” “Why am I so selfish?” Let me bring some guidance along the way.
The is no doubt each and everyday there are hurts, social injustices, and pain all around us. So how do we really help? We also see catastrophes like Katrina, Haiti, 9/11, and so on. How do we help? Do we get so overwhelmed we don’t do anything? This past Sunday we had a couple of families leaving for Thailand to work with young women in the sex trade industry. There is something that Kelly said that has stuck with me. “What do you burn for?” She said, “find what you burn for and do it…”
Let me ask you! Do you burn for anything? Something so strong that you would leave everything behind to pursue it? If not, why not? Do our neighborhoods burn for anything? Do our churches burn for anything? The lost, the poor, the sick, the naked, the hungry? I have a feeling that we all have no idea what we burn for so therefore we throw money at things that come our way, go on mission trips, serve in soup kitchens so that we feel better about ourselves as people and sadly enough as Christians. So instead of serving out of our God given passion and gifts we serve out of duty. So how is that working for you?
If you feel lost in the area of engaging or struggling with your identity and purpose than I ask, “what do you burn for?” If you know than focus on it. Andy Stanley in many of his books says, “do less for more”. If you focus the impact will be greater. Reality is we have so many organizations and ministries that have no clue what God wants them to do so they throw the kitchen sink at it and hope something sticks. Then we sit back and wonder why we are not being effective. I know strongly enough that people don’t want to be involved in something that doesn’t make a difference or is stagnant. If you don’t know what you burn for go out and serve and educate yourself. Find something you believe in and want to impact and go for it.
Martin Luther King Day is one of my favorite holidays. My family has a long standing tradition of gathering early in the morning, lighting candles, and walking through the neighborhood singing “We Shall Overcome”, and then we make an effort to work as a family to do our little part to eradicate various injustices.
Part of that statement is true. It is one of my favorite holidays. You probably wouldn’t know that, however, unless you asked me about it- because I like most families, just try to enjoy an extra day off. It is important, though, because it keeps the story of the value of people in front of me. This day keeps the story alive, of the struggle of people who see themselves as being made in God’s image- and the people who see them as less than that- and will do whatever it takes to repress that vision.
My family had the opportunity to go to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis last year on our way to Florida, and the experience was powerful for me to say the least. After an hour or two of reading of the struggle, watching video clips, and sitting in the bus where Rosa Park’s said “I am tired.” and refused to move; I found myself standing next to the place where King lost his life on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. I stood looking through a plexiglass window at King’s room to my right and straight ahead was the balcony. The building across the street from which the shots came was in my line of sight as well. Something caught my eye when looking down at the balcony deck- there was a square in the concrete which had been cut out and new concrete poured in it. The square was approximately 18 inches long and wide, to my recollection. Not sure where I got the information, if it was someone there, or a sign through our self guided tour, but I became aware that the square was the clean up work by the owner of the motel. This square of concrete was where MLK’s blood was, and it was stained, and not able to be cleaned. So, the owner, cut the blood stained concrete out, and poured new cement in its place.
This kind of clean up happens every day where there is violent crime, and also where there are tragic accidents. The clean up helps the rest of us not think about, or even know about, what happened at that spot in the past. This is helpful for our communities. In this case, though, it reminded me that with this murder- the life cut short led a struggle affirming God’s image in all men. His was an imperfect life, full of contradictions, and yet not afraid to speak of justice and the peaceful way of Jesus. People joining in grabbed hold of their identity as image bearers and had the revelation that jail time, pain, or even death could not stop them from taking that identity on to themselves as individuals. There was unspeakable freedom in understanding this, and true community as African Americans and any other people who had experienced a generational repression started to own their place in America with diginty. There was a consistency starting to happen between people’s inner lives and how they hoped to express themselves in the outside world. Even more importantly for all of us- there was a collective assumption of identity that created a wave of change and courage, and for that matter- conflict.
And, while MLK the man is not by any means solely responsible for Civil Rights progress; he was a life that was a part of creating hope and helping people live with courage. He helped people believe that they had value. He challenged people who worked so hard to preserve their own power and deny worth in others. So while this man was a larger than life character, his blood got cleaned up and the square on the balcony spoke to the enormity of this life, and the value of every man. I stared at the square and started to cry. My children got uncomfortable as Dad was all emotional and weird. I couldn’t stop, as I was broken- so sad that this life of great value created such a story, was cut down so quickly, and the evidence of his murder got removed by a concrete cutter.
As I walked away from the museum, and drove with my family for our vacation to Florida, I was struck with the knowledge of the value of every person. Every person as being made in God’s image is made to be a creator and contributor, and some take this idea to heart and live it out in ways that make the world a better place. They live it out in ways that personify the prayer of Jesus when he prayed “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” I was also stuck with how true power that creates sustainable change comes from the bottom up, from stables outside of Bethlehem, from streets in Selma, where people live every day. When people choose to believe that they have a unique role to play in this big story- things change for the better. God help those who fight to deny this identity in people, and God help us when we are asleep to this identity and choose to orient ourselves toward consumption.
The balcony square can remind us that: every life has value, every life ends on earth, while our lives may intersect with tragedy- we can leave an impact that can go on for generations. truth lives.
What unique role will you, will I, have in helping the world become a better place?
Martin Luther King Day is one of my favorite holidays. My family has a long standing tradition of gathering early in the morning, lighting candles, and walking through the neighborhood singing “We Shall Overcome”, and then we make an effort to work as a family to do our little part to eradicate various injustices.