I found myself listening to a guided meditation while walking along the track at Nicholas Ball Park early in the morning a few weeks ago when I realized something that I do not believe to be singular to myself. Part of the meditation was to awaken your senses by using them, and noticing God’s creation and the speaker urged me to reach out and touch my surroundings. Though my contemplative nature usually compels me to “stop and smell the roses,” it took me a moment to warm up to the idea of reaching out to brush my hands against the leaves of a nearby tree. I wanted to keep moving. I wanted to accomplish my goal of finding joy that morning, as it is hard to come by in our current cultural landscape.
Soon though, I realized that touch is a casualty from these last few months. I realized that I missed touching things beyond plastics and technology. I missed hugging my friends. I missed shaking the hand of a greeter at church. I missed the everyday interactions and not thinking about them so heavily. However, I began to reach out my hands and touch the different leaves, vines, and branches that hung overhead.
As this occurred, I realized the importance of touch, its ability to awaken other senses and bring about a heightened sensitivity to our immediate surroundings. Oh, how we need this awareness within the Church today. These last few months have indeed been a great reckoning of personal faith. I feel that I am not alone in this struggle. As we count salvations each Sunday similar to the ways we count the dead piling up around the country, I am struggling to see how disciples, sojourners, and grace dealers come alive within the power of Christ in our systematic individualistic American faith.
However, I am learning to love the Church as she is, just as Christ loves me.
I found myself disheartened at the idea of churches emboldened by their faith to fling open their doors and welcome the masses only to bring death and destruction upon the very members they are shepherding home. For years I have been told “be the Church” or “the Church is not the building, it is outside of these walls,” and I find it ironic that the moment we were forced outside the walls we cowered behind their sense of security away from the people we are called to serve.
Why the rush to run back from the fields of plenty?
Underneath the guise of faith, we seek normalcy, complacency found inside the walls of the American Church. While our faith compels us to worship together, and I long to be in the midst of a congregation again, are we not called to serve the sick, protect the vulnerable, and weep with the mourning? Look around, and these are not far from home.
Even still, I am learning to love the Church as she is, just as Christ loves me.
Why is everyone so angry?
I fear that division of anger blinds us to our humanity. Reconciling this anger with the values outlined in Scripture has made it hard to find a community in an overly politicized world. I don't see why so many Christians wave the banner of a donkey or elephant while shoving the cross's power deeper within the earth beneath our feet, lost in time.
An irony is anger oft-described as sin when dwelled on in our character, and right when it’s a piece of God’s character. It’s as if our emotions, whether used logically or not, fail to grasp the gravity of their power. We use Jesus’s clearance of the temple to justify our opinions rather than clearing our hearts through lament and repentance to draw near to God’s nature.
We find ourselves carrying the banner of conspiracy theories hoping to get it right or to have the right information as if life is a testament to our ability to get things right or wrong, rather than the outstretched arms of saving grace. Knowledge can breed anger and resentment; whereas, wisdom fosters hope and peace.
Anger is something that the Church continues to choose over grace; but, I am learning to love the Church as she is, just as Christ loves me.
We find ourselves lifting up the Gospel of John Wayne more than that of Jesus. Promoting false masculinity to support pushing women down. Finding manhood to be synonymous with power, strength, and stoicism over those of humility, vulnerability, and grace. If a cowboy, waring mentality is our goal, then how can we imitate Christ?
A community in Christ cannot come into place without a level of humility and the promotion of gifts found in the other. Servanthood is at the heart of the Gospel.
Christians continue to throw the word “sheep” around like an insult in the face of our calling. We are all sheep, blind in the dark, but only one knows the way home. We may feel that our individualism pulls us toward more autonomy, but we all follow something: an ideology, a set of beliefs, or a person.
How can we expect to share the Good News of Jesus if all we do is point out faults?
There must be grace.
How can we expect to love our neighbor when hate defines our actions?
We must be known by our love.
Focusing on Jesus’s return hinders us from seeing Him at work in our lives right now. He is teaching us to love the Church as she is, just as He does.