An Action of Mercy

"Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven - for she loved much. But who is forgiven little, loves little." And with that he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." - The Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 7

I am not other people so I cannot speak for them. But I am myself, and on better days I am someone a little less myself, so I can speak for me. And for me, I can tell you that I scarcely knew what it meant to be a Christ follower before I knew what it meant to receive mercy. And before mercy I never knew love.

Becoming a Christian seemed like an end in and of itself, like one becomes a millionaire. The balance of life is for lavishing yourself with the rewards of riches. I walked with a sense of entitlement, albeit garnished with sincerity and humble thanks. After all, salvation was mine because I asked, much like ordering a pound of bologna at the deli counter. So then was wisdom. And grace was given to me, receiving what I didn't earn, like boxes wrapped in colorful paper complete with ribbon on top and toy inside all for me on my birthday. And such was my Christianity. It carried me to the pulpit where I now know that I was more comfortable with the power of influence and gratitude people expressed to me for it. It all came natural to the flesh and ego: esteem, attention, authority, the conductor of an orchestra. As my baton went, so went the ibids in the cushioned, high back chairs.

I was in no position to warrant forgiveness because my sins were seemingly so few and immaterial. Confessions of those became a badge of false piety and a display of the righteousness I had achieved. Mercy? It was for those who were beyond mere confession.

Until.

Until I was plunged into vileness so that I hold my breath when the specter of it arises. I don't speak of it, but in generalities, and never unsolicited. I found myself undone and having lost all the prestige that I had once held proudly atop the mantle. Beyond confession, postured face first in the stye I awaited the only thing that I could possibly expect: God's swift justice. And harsh at that.

I find the above account of the words of Jesus so dear to me because of what the story surrounding them tells. A woman, who all we know about her is that she is a "sinner" and can do nothing but expect God's swift justice, does the worst possible thing. She enters the house of Pharisees, the self-proclaimed executors of God's righteous justice. They were quite likely to drag her out into the gutter by her hair before prying up chunks of asphalt with their pristine fingers and hurl them at her breaking skin, bruising flesh, breaking bone, until her breath left her body.

Instead she finds an action. An action of withholding the justice she is due. An action of mercy. A mercy so ferocious that it chases down and consumes her sin before it can draw another breath. An action of mercy that has satiated wrath and lulled it back into slumber. Mercy. A mercy I have felt and for that I am forever changed. I will carry it to the throne room of the Almighty one day and lay it as his feet, much of it, in fact. I shall return it to him as an offering for carrying that mercy with me has allowed me to know what it is to follow him and what it is to love. And I suppose now that I reflect on it, those mercies that are nothing short of Lucullan are all that I might carry with me to glory.

You see, I am still a bad Christ follower. I am a liar and a cheat. Selfish and gluttonous. I am sloth and vanity, a coward, a pig, a failure, a self-saboteur. But I know this now. And I carry those, shackled to my ankle, down the searing skillet of the asphalt avenue to where this Jesus reclines. I limp, with my throat collapsing on itself and tears in my eyes, through the courtyard of the home of my executioner, interrupt his meal, and collapse at Mercy's feet. My neck shivers with the expectation of cold, swift steel taking my head and am unaware that my tears have chased the dust from Mercy's feet. Mercy, sweet Mercy. Be mine. And I will hold fast to you and you shall be my song. New, new, new, every morning you are to me. Sweet is his name on my lips and his name shall be called Mercy.

I'm not a C. I'm not a C-H.

About 8 years ago, I dropped out of college, and joined a Christian metalcore band. I was super involved in my church and campus ministry. I was super in love with Jesus. But at the same time there was something going on inside of me, something that seemed liberating at the same time that it seemed terrifying.

I was done being a Christian.

Let me rephrase that. I was done being CALLED a Christian. I was not done with loving the way of Christ. I was not done living out God's story of ultimate grace and love through the resurrection of His son. But as far as the title goes? No way.

“I don't want to be associated with THOSE people,” I often said, “they don't represent the Jesus I know.” Then over the next few years, I've had a series of ups and downs with this very subject.

I know that this is an issue that many Christians like me struggle with. We grew up in a traditional conservative Christian church, then came of thinking or reasoning age, and (in my case) got liberal, or postmodern, or whatever you want to call it, and then just got plain disgusted.

One thing I've been learning over the past year or so is that that disgust easily leads to a rebellious and sinful attitude towards the bride of Christ. I'm really happy that in one of Bryan's initial posts he mentioned that the point of this is not to tear down the church. Too many times in our "we just want to be real" circles, we end up with a major "screw you" attitude towards the church. It runs rampant in our 21st century churches (and contrary to popular belief, its not just in "emerging" churches).

The emotion is not unwarranted though. Although I think a lot of the action that is taken is rebellious and unhealthy, I'm not letting the church off the hook here. We have done a lot of disservice to our neighbors. And we've done a lot of disservice to ourselves in the process. Galatians 5:15 says "if you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other." Or you have the whole passage in 1 Corinthians 12, talking about how we are dysfunctional parts of the body when we don't work together as one. And in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul talks about how we have been given the Ministry of Reconciliation. How are we going to reconcile the world to Christ if we can't even reconcile our internal differences?

There's a popular saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I guess that's the attitude I want to have towards the church. My pastor was saying something yesterday about focusing on what IS working, which really resonated with me. Why do we always focus on the negative side of things? We are fixers. We see things that are broken, and we (try to) fix them. The way I see it, if we keep on pushing forward the things that ARE working in our communities, then Christ will help us fix the broken things along the way, and I guarantee He'll fix them in a lot more constructive way.

Our center is—or should be—Christ. Everything else, all of our theology, all of our stupid arguments, all of our humanity, it all pales in comparison to the glory and mystery of Christ. Let's keep it that way.

Honesty in Community

From my experience with the church here is a typical Sunday morning church foyer:

You: Good morning Brother Smith, how are you?
Brother Smith: I am doing wonderful, thanks. And you?
You: Oh great! The wife/kids/parents/friends/work/hobbies have really been keeping me busy but I wouldn't have it any other way.
BS: Haha oh don't I know it! Things get pretty crazy but life's greatest stresses are the greatest joys as well.
You: That is very true. Well I better go get my spot before someone new sits there. haha.
BS: haha, okay talk to you later.

If church was done through the computer you could pretty much copy and paste this conversation for every Sunday morning, and even Monday-Friday with your co-workers. "hi, how are you" "good thanks, and you?" It's almost like Pavlov's law, we hear the bell, our mouth begins to water and we spit out the answer before even thinking about it. But how often are you really "good" and how often do you really care how the other person is doing?

This is the thing, sometimes life sucks.

Sometimes our car breaks down. Sometimes we get in fights with our spouses/parents/coworkers. Sometimes we don't know how we are going to pay our next bill. Sometimes we can't get pregnant. Sometimes we fail. Sometimes life sucks!

We can all sit here and say "oh that' so true" but then we rarely admit it to anyone else. When was the last time you took more than 2 seconds to answer the question "how are you?" Recently I have been trying to give more time in answering and people get nervous. "Oh, are you sure? It took you a while to answer". Can you imagine what they might be thinking "crap Dan is having a horrible week and doesn't want to talk about it!" or even "crap Dan is having a horrible week and I need to get into my seat before someone new takes it!"

Or even when was the last time that you honestly cared how that person was doing? You are heading into a meeting, do you really have time to listen to someone give you an answer other than "good"? Do you really want to hear anything other than "good"? If we are being honest we will have to admit this is not something unique to Christians. This is apart of our western culture and we have brought it into the church without a second thought.

Here is my hope for the Christian community, that we create a safe space for honesty, that we encourage honesty, and that we display honesty.

Shane Claiborne wrote "the church is a place where we can stand up and say we are wretched, and everyone will nod and agree and also remind us we are beautiful." This I believe is a great picture of honesty in community. We are being honest with those around us that we are imperfect, we fail, and sometimes we suck. The community does not sit there and try to feed us a lie, that we don't fail or that we don't sometimes suck. The community responds to our honesty with honesty and agrees with us. They know us and see us and realize that sometimes we are wretched but being a Christian community they don't stop there. They remind us we are beautiful, that we are children of God, and that they love us. Where else can people go and find that kind of love and honesty? If they cannot find it in the church then we have failed somewhere.

So my encouragement to you is this. Take a few seconds and give an honest answer. Share your life with someone else and in return be honestly concerned for them and their life. Christ has called us to love those around us and it is almost impossible to do that if all we know about them is that they are "good".

Why do we do Church?

After moving out of a position of leadership in the church I've found it extremely difficult to find a reason or desire to go back to church. I can't say that I've been burned out on or burnt by the church, but I do feel like church has ran it's course. I grew up in the church, I decided that I wanted to become a Christian at the early age of 7, I was a (youth) pastor's kid, I've heard all the stories, I've sang all the worship songs, I've been baptized, I've had communion, I served on a youth council for my church district, I went to a Christian college and I served as an assistant youth leader. Been there, done that (I hate that saying, but it's fitting here). I've seriously had my fill of Church.

So why do we do Church? Is it to make a check list so we can show God when we go to Heaven "Look how many hours I've logged in the church building"? Do we do church because we need to fill an emotional void? Do we do church because that's what we've always done? Do we do church because we want an authentic relationship/encounter with God?

Maybe we do it for all of these reasons, maybe none of them. I have a big problem with Church though. We as Christians are called to go out into all the world and spread the teachings of Christ. Jesus says that we are the Church if He resides in us. (What in the heck does that mean anyway? Why do we have to have our own language?) How are we supposed to spread the teachings of Christ if we are meeting one morning a week in a corporate setting with other believers?

Why is it that (almost) every Church is the same? First is sunday school, then a little bit of time to socialize before service starts, everyone goes to the sanctuary, sing a few songs, hear a few announcements, sing a couple more songs, give tithe, maybe sing one more song, then the pastor talks for 45 minutes about something that you'll probably forget about when you're out to eat for lunch with the people who sat in the same pew as you. How does that help us go and make disciples? I understand that we need to all be on the same page and it's good to have a time set aside to learn. But why do we have to do it this way? Why can't church be a place where we go and discuss? The model of church right now leaves no room for discussion. How are you supposed to make your faith your own if you can't logically come to a conclusion about it? One could argue that we have small groups for that reason, but if we are doing that what is the point of having church on sunday morning the way we've always done it? Why can't we use that time to go out and spread the news?

Why do we do church? Is it for the believer or for the non-believer? Most non-Christians that I know say that they hate going to church. They feel rejected. They feel like they don't belong. They feel like the pastor is holier-than-thou and condescending towards them. They don't feel welcomed. They feel like everyone is being fake. I don't think that most Christians realize this. I know some Churches do try to go out of their way to make non-believers / visitors feel welcome but it is usually not the case.

I have another post that I will be making about my observations of the amount of people being saved within the church (4 walls corporate congregation) as opposed to outside of the church (one on one discipleship/relationships/etc). It ties in with this post but is definitely another conversation.

This is probably way too long and to broad but these are some questions that have been on my mind. Sorry if I wasn't even coherent. I do plan on breaking some of these questions down in another post, but I wanted to get some of this out there right away.

About This Blog

A REVELATION REBIRTHED

I am not very good at communicating. I'm not that great of a writer. So I'm probably not the best person to be running a blog but I have felt the need to do this for quite some time now. I am seeking out why the church functions the way it does and is it the correct way a church should function. I am trying to figure out if we, as Christians, are really being Christ-like. I am trying to figure out why we learn certian stories in the Bible as children, but as adults we learn that many of those stories have been falsified and certian parts of the Bible have been ommitted to fit agendas and beliefs. I want to know why we need so many denominations if we serve a single God with a single path to Him, through Jesus Christ. Why do we worship on Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday nights, is this Biblical? Does it have to be? I am hoping to have my friends that I grew up with in the Church, went to Christian College with, went to Chuch Camps went, fellow christians, non-christians, church leaders/staff, former church leaders/staff etc to contribute to this blog and offer up their ideas from their own life experiences. I don't know if this is a good summary of what this blog will cover, but there's always the edit button right?

My purpose is not to tear down the church, but to figure out if we, as Christians, are really serving and growing the way we should be. And if we aren't then figure out a way to make the change we need to. My purpose is to figure out what we need to do and collective go and do it. A Revelation Rebirthed has come from my frustrations of not being able to share with a corporate collective of Christians what I feel has been weighing heavy on my heart. I am not saying that I have all the answers or that I have it all figured out but I don't think modern Christianity (especially in America) has it figured out and I want a way to discuss with Christians AND non-Christians about their thoughts/beliefs on Church and Christianity.

Like I said, I'm an awful writer but I will try my best to communicate as effectively as possible. Please keep in mind also that this is not a place to gossip or be hateful. It is meant to be a positive place where we can lift each other up and allow for positive growth.