Girl on Fire

There's a fire within me, a passion that could light up a room,
or a force that could destroy the whole building.

There's a hurt within me that can build empathy for those in pain,
or that could break relationships with all those I love.

There's emotion that I call holy and righteous anger,
but I may just be yelling God's name in vain.

------------------------------------------------

As I sat through my pastor's last service at our church, my mind and heart were a mess of emotions: sadness, anger, confusion, bitterness, denial, hurt, fleeting hope...the whole spectrum of grief.  Perhaps the greatest testament of her gifts as pastor was exhibited in the way she left with grace and kindness, showing the gentle leadership that will be her legacy.  Each scripture, prayer, and hymn reminded us of the importance of coming together as a church led by God.  The sermon challenged us all to let go of our grudges and get to the work of caring for one another in this difficult time.

The words from Isaiah 58 hit home for me:

If you remove the yoke from among you,
   the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
   and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
   and your gloom be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you continually,
   and satisfy your needs in parched places,
   and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
   like a spring of water,
   whose waters never fail.
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
   you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
   the restorer of streets to live in. 

While I want to point the finger of blame, I know I'm accountable, too, and anger and judgment aren't what will heal our brokeness.  My instinct, though, is to burn bridges instead of building them.  But running away has gotten me to this point time and time again.  The old "fight or flight" response kicks in.  Fortunately, through my pastor and this church's love, a lot of wounds have begun healing, and I don't want to give up the fight this time.  I want to be known as a repairer of the breach, a restorer of this spiritual home.  I want to...but I still have a long way to go.

Old habits die hard, and I was reminded of it in all the emotions this transition has brought up.  I've been through church battles many times before, and it's like the scars are showing up once again (I think about how Harry Potter's scar burned every time Voldemort was near).  I don't want "church" to be a PTSD trigger for me.  I don't want to think about parched places, but to see it as an image of a spring of water bringing life.  I know it has been that for me more that it has been a source of hurt, but it's easier to hang on to the hurt more than the joy.  But perhaps there's no greater parable of redemption than the church, broken and beautiful, damaged yet hopeful.  It's there in the broken bread of communion we share, in the tears we shed together of grief and joy.  We are reminded that life is not easy, but the hard things grow our strength and faith.  These times remind us that we are not alone, and even when we feel like retreating, life is better (though harder) when it is shared.

This song, which I sobbed through during the service, is my hope...that we can be gathered together in this place centered on God's love and our shared calling.  My the fire within us be of love, a light that will shine in the darkness.

Wholly Holy

Do you ever strive to be holy, but end up feeling holey instead?  That's where I stand right now as I try to discern where God is leading us through this difficult church season (for more about this, read here and here).  I'm not so sure what I'm sure about anymore.  As I struggle to reconcile what I believe about the church to the reality I encounter, all that once was sacred now feels empty.

In the meantime, I've been working on a sermon for another church that addresses the Holiness Codes in Leviticus 19.  Leviticus is best known as the book that derails any attempt at reading straight through the Bible with all its attention to arcane laws: you shouldn't wear clothing of mixed fibers, don't boil a calf in its mother's milk, and the gory details of appropriate animal sacrifices.  The section I'm studying is a little more familiar as many of these rules compare to the more familiar and revered 10 commandments.  The part that most intrigues me is the very beginning: "Be holy as the LORD your God is holy."  It leaves me wondering what holiness really involves.

I grew up hearing that "holy" meant being set apart.  God's people were to be held to a higher standard, leading to the saying that we should be "in the world, not of it".  That never cleared up the confusion for me, but it did explain the growth of the Christian subculture, including the Christian music genre (where Jesus' name was inserted into sub-par pop love songs), and the prevalence of Jesus tchotchkes at the local Bible store.  Apparently, "the world" was evil, so we needed to retreat to the safety of a faith that provided a clean line between what was right and what was wrong.  It felt safer to feel like we had the answers and that we were on the right side of the battle.  Somewhere along the way, however, I became less sure.  The world, as I learned more about it, seemed less black and white and more technicolor.  The simple answers no longer brought comfort, but only prompted more unanswerable questions.  It could have been terrifying, but it felt like freedom.  I didn't lose my faith, but felt it expanding, growing, broadening.

Because of this openness within me, it didn't make sense to wall myself off and erect boundaries to keep others out.  It seemed that Jesus was always reaching out, getting in trouble for hanging out with the sinners and breaking all the rules.  But he did so with a spirit of hospitality and love, welcoming all to experience the freeing good news of grace.  It seemed hypocritical to judge who was of God and who wasn't as I believed we were all created in God's image and all were offered the gift of forgiveness.

But I still couldn't make sense of what it meant to be holy like God is holy.  The God I trust is not set apart, but is close with us (Emmanuel).  This God is not exclusive, but welcoming to all seekers.  The Holy One does not respect the boundaries of what is secular and what is sacred, but comes to meet us in the ordinary and extraordinary, wherever we are.  I stumbled across this article that talked about the Jewish understanding of the word holy ("kadosh" in Hebrew) which is more about being boundless, not able to be contained.  The image that comes to my mind in from Isaiah 6 in which God's holiness filled the temple.  God is not bound by our expectations or boundaries, but works in surprising and mysterious ways.

It makes more sense that holiness should be about reaching out and drawing others closer than pushing them away.  It is about joining over commonalities than dividing over differences.  We are to love our neighbors as ourselves...not just as we want to be loved, but sharing them honor and respect because they are people just like us.  In our worship, we should be able to connect others to the love and grace of God instead of the pain of judgment.  After all, we can only point the finger at others and demand their repentance when we are somehow able to forget that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  We can only deny admittance to others when we have convinced ourselves (falsely) of our righteousness.

It's not easy, and it goes against every human instinct within me.  I want to protect myself by walling myself off to any risk.  Connecting seems terrifying when I don't know who can be trusted.  Being open to the mystery of God also means admitting that I don't have the answers and can't be sure of anything.  But it opens my life to the fullness that I believe Jesus was pointing to.

It's interesting to me that holy has the homonym "wholly", and they share common roots that give us these synonyms: sacred, complete, unhurt, fully, focused, restored, total, healthy, unbroken, and perfect.  We are holy when we are whole, when we seek a healthy and full life unbounded by the world's restrictions.  We are wholly holy when we live life fully as God created us, using our passions, gifts, and calling in service of God and our neighbors.  We are holy and whole when we trust God to fill the holes in us and heal those hurts that would become reasons to further divide us from others.    We are not to remain distant out of some sense of righteousness, but to see that we are all connected by our deep need for God's love.

May we learn to seek and share that together, being holy as the LORD our God is holy.

For the next part of this series, click here.

Why we're not enough to fix the church (but God is)

The page lies open large and white as the snowy landscape outside the window.  I sit, waiting for words to come, wondering if there is anything left to say.  There's so much noise already, the background sounds of Panera, and the loud cell phone conversation of the mom arguing with her son over a phone bill.  Perhaps such a conversation would be more helpful (and less ironic) in person.

I write to process my feelings, and yet the numbness defies words.  I'm grieving the loss of the familiar and fearing changes that will come as our church adjusts and fills the hole of our resigning pastor.  It leaves me struggling again to find my place in the church and brings back former hurts.  My last blog post on leaving the church seemed to hit a chord with so many people, and I understand that church has been a cause of so many scars.  And yet, I still believe in it (Lord, I believe...help my unbelief).  I believe in the power of church when I see how my children connect with other adults like a second family.  I believe in the way we carry one another's burdens, checking up on those who are sick and taking meals to those who are down.  I believe in the way we can share our deepest sorrows and joys and have the freedom to be authentic and vulnerable.

I know that it's not always this way, of course.  We lose our focus on the community and seek out our own needs.  We feel hurt, betrayed, or ignored when we don't receive what we think we deserve.  We get tired of always being the one who says "yes" and resent the ones who say "no".  We forget the message of Jesus who was willing to die so that we might understand God's promise of love and life.  We neglect to offer that love to everyone and think we can be the judge of who is deserving (and who is not).

Sometimes I get sucked in by the lie of "not enough".  I'm not strong enough to hang on; I'm not skilled enough to make a difference.  I believe the church doesn't have enough to fix all that is broken.  And I guess that's true.  It's been proven time and time again through failure.  But my big mistake is believing that it's all about me, that it's all about anyone except for God.  As hard as I try, I'm not enough in myself.  As much potential as it has, our church is not enough with just the members.  As she is quick to remind us, a pastor (even one as fabulous as our departing one) cannot save a church.  It is only through God that we are enough; that we were created in God's image with gifts, passions, and love to use in healing a broken system and a fallen world.  It is only because of Jesus' sacrifice that we understand the sacrificial love that is necessary to die to ourselves and find our higher purpose in serving others.  It is only through the presence of the Spirit that we are reminded, again and again, that God is in this place with us, creating holy ground right beneath our feet.

I'm reminded that we don't have to be enough, because God is.  In fact, his very name that he shared with Moses was "I AM".  I was reading Rob Bell's Tumblr series about the Bible yesterday and he was sharing about the covenant that God makes with Abraham in Genesis 15.  Covenants were common in that period, and were signified by an animal sacrifice with the two parties walking through the animal that had been cut in two.  But in this covenant, God is the one who walks through, showing that God pledges to uphold the covenant, regardless of what Abraham does.  We see this again and again in the Bible: God reaches out to God's people and they obediently follow for a while, but inevitably fail and turn away from God.  But God reaches out over and over, giving them a new chance.  That is love, and that love is grace enough for us hang onto as we continue to make our messy way through life.

When we feel like we're not enough, when we believe that the church is not enough, it's okay.  We don't have to be, because God is, and with God dwelling within us, we are enough, too.  In fact, we become the very church that God calls us to be.

See the third part of this series here.

Why I Left the Church...and Why I Returned

photo credit: Tru Stevens Photography

It seems that for every happy, churchgoing Christian, there is another who has a painful story of how they've been wounded by the church.  As a college chaplain, I encounter more reasons for why my students don't go to church than reasons why they do.  Of the 58% of our students who self-profess the Christian faith, only a small percentage go to church regularly.  This seems to mirror a growing trend as many articles and studies point out, and it's not just among young people.  I received a message from someone who had left the church and found life to be surprisingly comfortable without the Sunday commitment.  She asked me, "Why do we need to go to church when it seems that churches only hurt people?"

I found myself an unlikely advocate for the church.  I've have my share of scars from churches behaving badly.  My beloved home church that I grew up in does not support women in ministry, and instead of celebrating my call to ministry, denied it.  My first church internship was in a "purpose-driven" church that seemed to be more about stage lights, catchy music, and attendance numbers than authentic faith (although, to be fair, I met wonderful people there that are still part of my life, and the church has grown to create some wonderful outreach ministries for the community).  I watched my fiancé (now husband) get battered by one church, then another, and the bitterness still rises whenever I see those self-righteous committee members that declared him unworthy, while the staff stood by silently, continuing to pat themselves on the back and rake in their big paychecks.  After 5 years of being in a much better place in terms of our careers, finances, family, and church, I still struggle with anger over how we were treated, and how common our painful experience really is.  

It took a lot of searching and a lot of healing (still in progress, obviously) to find a safe place for us to return to church, and that was only with the understanding that we would just be pew-sitters for a while.  The community of faith that we found was not what we expected.  From the surface, they looked like a dying congregation, their numbers decimated and aging in a large and mostly empty sanctuary that reflected better days.  There were few programs, and no Sunday School class for us; our kids and the pastor's children were almost the entirety of the children's department.  It did not look promising, but, oh, how they reached out to welcome us.  Against our initial impressions, we felt like we had found a home.  We knew things weren't perfect, but we were able to let our guard down.  As the first year wound down, we felt ready to get involved again.  When the cracks began to show, we were already committed.  Our kids had been dedicated, one had been baptized, and we had made friends as more young families began to join.  Our pastor was a wonderful preacher, a compassionate leader, and a friend and mentor to me.  We spoke up in strained business meetings, we stepped up to fill leadership roles, and we prayed that the ugliness of the past would not repeat itself.  At least this time, we weren't in paid staff positions.

But now, the brokenness is undeniable, and I wonder if it's irreparable.  We are saying goodbye to our beloved pastor who is resigning after doing her best to hold things together for the past 18 years.  There is grief with all its stages: sadness, denial, anger, bargaining...I want to run away one minute and fight the next.  So the question, posed the day before the straw that broke the camel's back, becomes even more relevant and personal: "Why do we need to go to church when it seems that church only hurts people?"

My answer would be a little more hesitant and uncertain than it was just a few days ago, but deep in my heart I believe in the power of a church community.  We are there to support, encourage, and keep one another accountable.  We join together to seek God's vision as a group so that it doesn't just become all about "me".  We are stronger together, so that we can reach beyond the church walls and minister to our hurting community as the Body of Christ, a real and tangible reminder of God's presence, concern, and love with us.  Just like the first disciples, we won't always "get it".  We will hurt each other, intentionally or not, and we will betray the very Jesus we claim to follow.  We will get more wrapped up in business than ministry.  We will point fingers of blame and give in to fear instead of faith.  But, with God's help, we will heal together and learn to trust God and each other again.  We will fight the temptation to isolate ourselves and will do the hard work of breaking down our walls of protection, softening ourselves to the risks and rewards of authenticity, honesty, and vulnerability.  We will share our stories with one another and learn that even those that seem so different are connected to us by the bonds of family.

We will take our inspiration from the bread we break, remembering the body of Christ, broken as we are, and yet is the source of healing and hope for us all.

Read my follow-up post on "Why We're Not Enough to Fix the Church (but God is)" here.

Church Sanctuary (#31 days to Sanctuary day 22)

Last night, I sat with a group of friends who have been part of my ministry journey.  One is a seminary friend who is working outside of the church, and the others (besides myself) are serving in local churches.  We talked about the reasons people give for not attending church these days, along with the reasons why we haven't always been a part of the church (or sometimes wish we weren't).  So many people are busy, and often Sundays are filled with sports, errands, or sleeping in.  There's an entire generation that is becoming more removed and doesn't understand the value of an hour (or more) sitting in pews passively listening to a sermon.  Others have been hurt or excluded by things said and done in the name of God. A lot is said these days about how the church is either dying or being reborn into something new.  There are statistics about fewer people in the pews, and also inspirational stories about how "church" is being done in new ways, outside the walls of a building.  We all have dreams of what it could look like, and hurts from times it hasn't lived up to the ideal.

Something keeps drawing me back, though, time after time.  I may grumble and complain, and I've been known to bad-mouth particular congregations due to bad experiences, but Sunday usually finds me in church.  For me, church has truly been about sanctuary.  My dad died when I was young, and it was the church that gathered around and supported us.  Church people brought casseroles and sat with me during the funeral.  Church men filled that missing male role in my life.  I gained leadership experience through opportunities within my congregation, and it was the church who sent me off to college and sent me notes to let me know I was missed.

Yes, it is broken, as any human institution.  Community is always messy, but the things that involve the most hard work are usually the things that earn our pride.  I've learned about grief and joy standing beside others as we share our concerns and celebrations with God and one another.  I've been reminded that it's not all about me as we work together to help others in our community.  It has been a safe place for my children to find other loving adults, ones who have publicly pledged to help raise them in faith.  When we are worn down by the stresses of parenting, we take advantage of our church's Parents Night Out program and thank God for a break.  When there is good news, there is a place where it will be shared and affirmed.

Church is not the only place in which we find community, but for me, it has been a sanctuary in which I find my place in the larger story of God's work in the world.  I am reminded of my calling to share the good news and to continue the work of restoring a broken creation through love.  Through the inevitable failures and frustrations, I try to rely on grace, understanding that it has been extended to me so many times.  I focus inward as I move outward, always seeking sanctuary wherever the journey takes me.

Church: a big, messy, dysfunctional (beloved) family

I love church, really I do.  But sometimes I forget that in the business of it.  Sometimes I put it on a pedestal and watch with horror as it all comes crashing down, forgetting that church is really people, and flawed people at that.  Much like those biblical characters we esteem.  I have my share of church scars, of being kicked hard in the heart before being completely kicked out, battered and bruised.  And sometimes I walked away before they could have the opportunity to truly hurt me.  Regardless, I keep coming back.  Maybe it's a naive hope; maybe I just don't know any better as I was raised in the church.  But truly, I think it's the Holy Spirit reminding me that the Church is a family, the family of God.  Families are messy and dysfunctional, but they need each other.  As Augustine famously said, "The church is a whore, but she is my mother."

My current church has been such a healing place for my husband and me, and for many families like us that have found themselves cast out of churches for whatever reason (does it surprise you that many of us are ministers?).  We are not a perfect bunch; in fact, we've recently shown some of our ugliness.  My adrenaline kicks in as it senses conflict, and there's a bit of a PTSD response that makes me want to run run runnnnnnnn or SCREAM at the ridiculousness of it all.  But deep within, there's a calmer voice reminding me that fear can look a lot like anger, and can motivate us to do and say regrettable things because we care so very much.  Our responses are an attempt at protection and come (way down deep) from a place of love.

My kids remind me on a daily basis that while we show our good sides to the world, we reserve the bad parts of ourselves for those we really love, those who have vowed to love us no matter what.  We can be the angry children ranting at our parents when the fear makes us feel unloved.  We can pick the same fight again and again with our husband, knowing that amends will be made.  We threaten and stomp around in our full (if immature) humanity, begging to be accepted, just as we are, hurts and all.

And isn't this what the Church is all about?  A place to experience God's full and redeeming love, even in our  brokenness.  Love can be messy, and it's not easy.  It's full of a hundred choices each day to choose reconciliation over conflict, and forgiveness over grudges.  It's about trusting in the mystery and having faith that it will all work out.  It's about sharing our gifts for God's greater purpose and knowing that sometimes we will fail, and that's okay, too.

Church has been home for me for my entire life, and that is a gift (and a challenge) that's too valuable to surrender.

Have you been hurt by a church experience?  I encourage you to check out Kathy Escobar's blog post, "Whatever you do, don't let them take your faith".