The Beautiful Wretched

What is a Christian? Is a Christian a person who has got their stuff together?

Are they one who has things figured out?  In Romans 7 Paul makes it pretty clear that a Christian doesn’t have it all together.

“14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Does that sound like Paul had it all together?  No.  It is an odd thing about the gospel.  It gives us two messages at the same time.   Always two messages.  One message?  We are wretched!  The other message?  We are wonderful and beautiful.

I like the way one writer put it.  “The gospel is good news for sick people and is disturbing for those who think they’ve got it all together.  Some of us have been told our whole lives that we are wretched, but the gospel reminds us that we are beautiful.  Others of us have been told our whole lives that we are beautiful, but he gospel reminds us that we are also wretched.   THE CHURCH IS A PLACE WHERE WE CAN STAND UP AND SAY WE ARE WRETCHED, AND EVERYONE WILL NOD AND AGREE AND REMIND US THAT WE ARE ALSO BEAUTIFUL.”

What a paradox! 

This is part of why faith is so interesting, so challenging.  Wretched, beautiful.  Beautiful, wretched. 

We are constantly fighting this dichotomy   Constantly.  We are good.  We are not so good.  We are the empowered people of God.  We are powerless over so many things that make us wretched.  It is the way it is.  And because it is the way it is, we have to join Paul in his lament  “wretched person that I am”

And we have to join Paul in his celebration  “Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

This is not something we do well in the church.  We don’t know what to do with weakness.  With failure.  With the dark side of our souls.  And so our tendency is do one of two things.  We either try to deny that this dark side even exists, or we allow it to define us, we allow it to control us, we let it beat us up!

What happens when we can’t accept, so to speak, this side of ourselves?  What happens is that we have to pretend and hide.  We sit in the pews and pray.  Pray that no one sees as we really are!  Pray that no one really can see the ooze and slime and old decay at the center of our being.  We sit, oh so carefully.  And we talk, oh so carefully.  And we act, oh so carefully.  And somewhere in the process we get lost.  We become unreal… We hope we are fooling people.  Perhaps we are fooling each other.  But we aren’t fooling the world around us.  This is why people so frequently look at Christians and call them hypocrites. 

Paul points us to another way.  He says we need to build our community around a common sense of wretchedness.  But a common sense of wretchedness that is framed by a common sense of how much we are loved and valued by God.  Make no mistake about it, they both have to be there!

I’ve met a lot of Christians who say “If people knew about all of my struggles and weaknesses they would never want to be a Christian.  I think the opposite is true.  If people really knew what idiots we are, in all our brokenness and vulnerability, they would know that this thing called Christianity is for them too.  Remember Jesus’ words?  It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:12-13).

Would being real hurt the church?  I suspect it would not.  I think the world would be willing to listen to a church on its knees, a church that doesn’t pretend to be perfect or to have all the answers.  When we are always trying to be perfect,  be strong, when we are constantly fighting for respect, we are isolated, perhaps alone.  It is lonely because people can’t be real with masks.  They can’t love a façade.

The church should not be a place full of lonely people.  t should be a place where very real people sit next to very real people.  And we can dare to be that way!  Why?  Remember Paul’s words?  Who will rescue me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!

We can dare to be real, because of Christ, who rescues us from ourselves.  Who sets us free to be who we are!  Who we are, with all our imperfections.  Who sets us free to be seen…. And – to see!

We are back again to grace.  There is, that word again.  Grace…. the transforming, scandalous, amazing, forgiving love of God. 

When we accept who we are, and do so in the context of grace, the context of God’s love and acceptance, that allows us to be free -  free to be our whole selves.   The good, the bad and the ugly.  We can be ourselves knowing that God accepts that whole person, and loves that whole person, and wants to move that very real person forward with his power and his love.

Shane Claiborne talks about a talk he once had with an old hippie friend who, he says “loves Jesus and smokes a lot of weed”.  He and the friends often end up in friendly debates about faith and the Bible.  One day he said to Shane, “Jesus never talked to a prostitute”  Shane immediately went on the offensive.  “Sure he did” and got ready to spar.  But then his friend looked him in the eye and said “Listen, Jesus never talked to a prostitute because he didn’t see a prostitute.  He just saw a child of God he was madly in love with.”

When we see ourselves a new way, we can see others a new way.  When we love ourselves as we are, we can love others as they are, and know that they, like we, are a project   A person under construction.  A person loved and forgiven by God. 

And then - we can truly be the church

We can be the place where people can stand up and say

I am wretched,

I need help

I am hurting

I am lost

And where everyone will nod, and agree, knowing they are in the same condition, and then remind the other, and themselves, that they are also wonderful - that they are loved and forgiven.  And then . . we will all be free, and we will be able to say with Paul:  What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!

This shall be sign

God has a message for us that he doesn’t want us to miss.  That message, simply put is “I love you.”  Now God has a problem.  He doesn’t normally actually speak, but God still has a way of being very direct and congruent.  Now, I myself have never heard the voice of the Lord  -  but I have seen the love of God displayed in many ways.  One of my favorite Palms is Psalm 136.  Over and over again the Palmist affirms the love of God, with that repetitive phrase, “His love endures forever!”  Why can the Psalmist say this?  Because of what God has done, in history.  In the world that surrounds us.   God has made creation.  God has acted in history.  God has provided for the people.  God’s love is there for all to see.  It has been fleshed out!

But the most powerful way God ever expressed his love, ever “fleshed out” his love was in the child in the manger..  As the angels pronounced the birth of Jesus to the Shepherds they uttered this very important phrase.  “And this will be a sign. . . “ A sign is something which points the way.  It is something which identifies and defines.  This baby, was a sign!  To think about it another way, this baby was the body language of God.  What was God trying to say?

Some have said that, since one of the names for Jesus was “Immanuel”, which means “God with us”, that this was the message of Jesus birth.  “I am with you.”  Not a bad start.  We might call the ministry of Jesus “Project Immanuel.”

But there is more to it than that.  For there is more contained in the baby than just the message that God is with us, although that is an absolutely core message.  There is also the message of HOW God is with us.  God could have staged his arrival any way he wanted.  God could have come as a warrior King, emphasizing power.  God  could have come as an apparition in the clouds, emphasizing glory and majesty.  But God came as a little baby – emphasizing love.  Not just love, but agape, God’s unique kind of love.

Agape love is unique because it is giving not seeking.  It does not demand value, it creates value.  It does not look back, at what has been, but looks forward to what might be.  If we look at the Christmas birth, all that becomes clear.

Here we have a baby.  A little defenseless one.  One born in poverty.  Visited by the shepherds, the poorest of the poor.  One who was, at least at his birth, homeless, basically a street person.  In this odd choice of an arrival God shows that he came to be with people.  I mean really with them.  Not with them in a condescending manner, not in superficial way, but with them – in all the pain, hunger, frustration and despair of human existence.

God’s arrival, in that wee baby, was a sign.  It pointed to something deep and wonderful.  In the baby God said, “I love you.  I love you so much that I am willing to come and live, and hunger, and thirst, I am willing to come and hurt and suffer, and yes even die, that you might know and received my love.”

Every time I read the Christmas story I am overwhelmed.  I am awestruck by the audacity of God.  To choose to immerse himself in the world.  The  infinite becoming finite.  Power taking on weakness.  Life taking on death.  To choose to reach out to us in this way.  To choose to be a baby in  cave, surrounded by the outcasts of the world.  Incredible.

God was born in a cave.  In the midst of the dirt and smells, the poverty and hurt of this world.  He came to be with and for the world.  He came as a real person, not be a person apart, but to be a person with.  He came to be with the ragged old men.  The addicted young mother.  The person suffering from hallucinations who mumbles to himself as he walks down the street.  The workaholic business person.  The harried mother.  The confused youth.  He came to be with and not apart.  To be with, in love!  In hope.

And still God  comes.  God still arrives in the midst of the hurt, the frustration and pain.  God is still with “with us”.  And God is still saying, “I love you!”

How?  Through the Spirit – of course.  But think about how God chooses to embody himself in this place and this time.  It’s the church.  The Immanuel Project is continued through gathered believers.  Through us.  For we are the body of Christ in this time and this place.  We are not the one’s through whom God puts flesh and bones on his love.  It is through us that God is present and active in the world.  It is through us that God loves and heals, helps and cares.  We are Project Immanuel, Part II.  Through us God is to be born and is to be offered to all the world.  To the attractive, and educated, to the alien and outcast alike.

To be with,  in the form of people who care, who heal, who help, in practical, down to earth ways

To be with, as people who offer help as a gift, not expecting anything  back

To be with, as people who are without judgment or condescension.

That is what it means to be part of the Immanuel Project

To be Christ’s people, the people of the child

I like the way civil rights leader Howard Thurman once put it.  “When the song of the angels is stilled. When the star of the sky is gone. When kings and princes are home. When the shepherds are back with their flocks. The work begins… to find the lost. To heal the broken. To feed the hungry. To rebuild the nations. To bring peace among people. To make music in the heart”

Being Light

This last week a very bright, articulate and sensitive man killed himself.  Two days before he took this action he sat in the our little church sanctuary and was part of our fellowship.  And yet he walked out, and ultimately felt so empty, so sad, so hopeless, that he took his life.

We try to preach good news.  We try to give people hope.  We try to be the “light”.  But how does that work?  What would it have meant to be light for this hurting man?

In the church we talk a  lot  about  light.  Jesus is the light!  We are the light.  We as Christians are to be people who make a difference in the world - who share the love of God  - who make the sacred present in a very secular world.

But there is a problem.  The first problem is that for all its “talk” about being light, sharing the good news, being a presence in the world, the church does a lousy job of it.   About 10 years ago a sociologist did a survey where he asked people about their behaviors and attitudes.  In the demographic component he determined whether people classified themselves as Christian or non-Christian, and then compared the results.  His findings were interesting.  Let’s look for example at behaviors.  There were 25 behaviors explored.  For example, "Gave money to a homeless person or poor person, in past year"   Of the Christians, 24% had done so.  Among the non-Christians?  34%   "Attended a community meeting on local issue, in past year"  Christians - 37%; Non-Christians - 42%.  The behavior of Christians often cannot be differentiate for that of non- Christians.  Where’s the light?

The other problem is that even though Christians are supposedly working hard to “be light” they aren’t making a very good impression.  In another study done in 2007 young people ranked the attributes of Christians as they perceived them.   Nine of the 12 most common attributes they named were negative ones. According to the study, "Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%)."  And this wasn't just ignorance talking. The youth interviewed had significant contact with Christians.  They had attended churches, were connected with Christians.  So this is the “image” of the sacred we project?

How do we function as light in this world?  In part it is how we act.  We must be kind.  We must listen.  We must act in caring ways.  But the reality is that it is probably more about who we are as people.  Our acts come from deep inside.  In Luke, after telling us to put the “lamp” (Jesus) where people can see it, Jesus says these words (Luke 11:34-41).  “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are bad, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted, as when the light of a lamp shines on you…  Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But give what is inside [the dish] to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.   

We cannot put on a mask of piety, and think we are being the light of the world.

We cannot be pious and judgmental, and think we are being the light

We cannot hide behind words, behind engagement in the church, and think we are being the light

No,  being a lamp, being light is a matter of letting people see us… No pretense!  No hypocrisy…  It is letting people look into the center of who we are. 

And it is being clear, that this person (me) - who is good and bad, strong and weak, hopeful and hopeless – that this person is Christ’s person.  Loved by God.  Forgiven by God.  Empowered by God.  A flawed vessel bearing the beauty of the creator. 

Dallas Willard once wrote  “The positive characterization of the kingdom attitude is agape love… Jesus calls us to him to impart himself to us.  He does not call us to do what he did, but to be who he was, permeated with love.  Then the doing of what he said and did becomes the natural expression of who we are in him.”  We are to be people permeated by God’s love.  That is what our whole self is to be about.  It does not make us perfect, or without flaw.  But it makes us people who have an impact.

And when people can look at us, and see this authentic self, permeated with love…. Well there is an important message here isn’t there?  If Christ can love us – as we are ???  The real us? Well then there can be no doubt, God also loves them.

So lets get back to that original idea of being light

We now know for sure what it is it not….It is not mere words… sharing formulas, standard phrases

It putting forth a “holy exterior”

It is interfacing with others in a unique way.  It is seeing people with the eyes of grace

It is helping them to see themselves through the eyes of grace.

It is also allowing people to see us

It is ultimately connecting with them at the level of the soul

It is building a  bridge of love

A relational bridge

Across which the love, the grace, the forgiveness of God can cross. . .   To heal, to empower

It is letting the real Christ

Who exists, who lives, who is present,  in the real us…

Shine into the real world, the real darkness

Corey my friend.  Rest in peace

Trust

In the book Crime and Punishment there is a character name Marmeladov.  He is a drunk and a disgrace.  At one point, in an argument with a young rationalist, Marmeladov insists that he is not to be pitied   He says. . .”He will have pity on me who has pity on all men… He will summon us.  “You too come forth” he will say.  He will say “come forth you drunkards, come forth ye weak ones, come forth ye children of shame!”  And the wise and those of understanding will say:  “Oh Lord why dost thou receive these men?  And he will say, “This is why I receive them ye wise.  This is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding.  That not one of them believe himself to be worthy of this.  And he will hold out his hands to us… and we shall weep.”

Our faith walk starts when we decide to trust God.  When we realize we will never measure up to God’s expectations, but that God loves us anyway. 

When we trust in that love, that trust is the key that unlocks our heart.  So that we can be open to the sacred - open to our own place as a child of God, as one created in God’s image -  AND - so we can be open to others.   The most urgent need in our lives is to trust what we have received.

Christ in Others

I have always considered myself a relatively caring person.  I mean really! I have been a minister, an EMT, a disaster relief worker, a counselor.  Almost everything I have ever done has been service oriented.

I come by this honestly.  Service to others, often costly service, has been a hallmark of my family of origin.  My grandfather and grandmother were Mennonite missionaries to the Cheyenne tribe in Montana and served them with humility and compassion.  Aunts and Uncles served as doctors and minister, caring for others, serving their communities in many ways.  Cousins have worked tirelessly for non-profits, seeking to better the lives of those whom God has placed in their path.  It is the Kliewer way.

But recently while reading Brennan Manning's book The Wisdom of Tenderness I was challenged to look at myself again.  Manning points out how, in many places, the Bible sends us a message that is somewhat different from what we might expect.  In John 13 (love on another as I have loved you), I John 4:11 (Since God loved us so much, we should love one another), and Matthew 22 (love God and love your neighbor), we are challenged, as our response to God's love, to love those around us. 

We might expect to be  told to respond to God's love by loving God in return.  Not to mention worship God and obey God.  But no, we are told to love those around us.  No, not just to love those around us, but to love everyone around us.  In the parable of the great judgement in Matthew 25 we have that incredible story where people are judged based upon whether they responded in love to the hungry, thirsty, naked Jesus.  When the people questioned when they had ever seen Jesus in need, and responded to him, Jesus answer, "when you did this for the least of these, you did it to me."

This reminds us of a powerful fact.  God, is all those we  meet.  All.  Sometimes, Manning reminds us, "he's buried there, sometimes he's bound hand and foot there, but he's there."  That means that when we love "the least of these" we love God.  Perhaps the words of the Bible aren't as strange as we think.  

The point is clear.  We are surrounded by people who are hungry, thirsty and naked, literally.  Those who are homeless, in poverty, afflicted by mental illness and more.  We are also surrounded by people who are hungry, thirsty and naked in other ways as well.  Hungry for love and understanding, thirsty for affirmation and respect, naked in their loneliness, in the harsh light of bad decisions.

We are to love all these.  Not just the one's who are easy to love.  Not just the one's who are rewarding to love.  But also those who are hard to  love.   Those who don't respond.  Those who hurt and wound us.  Those who ignore us.  Those whom society judges and reject.  We are too love them all.

I have come to realize that all too often my love is selective.  I love those who are lovable.  I love those I am "paid" to love.  I love people when others notice, and give me credit.  But there are too many I don't love.  

May God give  me grace.  May I so let God love me that I am permeated with God's love, filled to such a degree that all I say and do will be an expression of who I am in Christ.  I am a long way from being  in  that place. May the journey begin.

In the Plan!

I was talking to a friend the other day about a Sunday School experience.  I asked what they topic was, and the response was that they had talked about the difference God makes in difficult times.  "When we have God then something good can come out of the most difficult times.  It is all part of God's plan."  OK, don't quote me, but it was something like that.  I remember thinking after the first part of the phrase  "YES! - GRACE!"

I remember being less then thrilled about the second part of the sentence.  I really struggle with comments such as that. I know, there is this thing a lot of us have about the power of God, and about the fact that for God to be God, all things must be under God's control.  If we push this to the logical conclusion, then all things must somehow be part of God's plan, even the horrible things that happen.

And frankly, I don't buy that!  I don't believe God "gives" people cancer as part of a plan.  Or that children are molested, or young father's killed as a part of some "plan" that exists in the mind of the sacred.  If I believed that ?  Well I would end up echoing the thoughts of C.S. Lewis after his great love died of cancer stated -  that it was not so much that he was in danger of not believing in God, but that he might come to believe "horrible things" about God.

I do not believe God "causes" bad things.  I guess the most I can affirm is that somehow God allows bad to exist.  Why?  Lots of theories on that one.  Free will.  The cost of letting us be children and not slaves.  But the point is that bad things happen, and God is NOT the author.  But there is one thing I can affirm.  That if God is alive and well at the core of our being, good things can emerge from even the worst the world can offer.  Forgiveness, hope, survival, love. . .

These can come out of even the darkest of times.  As Paul affirms, "all things work together for good (not all things are good) for those who love God."  Even oil spills.  Even betrayal.  Hatred.  Out of the worst can come the best.

I struggle with that sometimes.  I can't watch the TV news these days, or shows like Rachael Maddox.  Can't even come close to FOX - scary stuff.  It is just to frustrating.  There is just so much fear, hatred, blindness, greed.  BUT, but, when God is alive and well, good can, will, does, emerge.

Now that is a matter of faith.  Lord give me faith