What did ya learn? (Part 3)

 I grew up going to church. That is not the experience of everyone. I have also learned that growing up going to church doesn’t make me better than anyone. Yet growing up there was never a question about where my family would be and what we would be doing on Sunday mornings. Unless I had a fever you would find me at church.

Growing up in and around church I have been to plenty of VBS programs, youth conferences and Sunday morning services. I have enjoyed my fair share of church potluck dinners, Christmas eve services and listened to some wonder messages from the Bible.

While I believe that the church is the continuation of Jesus’ ministry the church also involves human beings. Anything that involves human beings has the sad tendency to do harm while thinking they are doing good. I was told as a kid/teen that the church/Christians were supposed to be different then the world/culture. What I have come to discover is that often the church and Christians are truly not that different from the world/culture. Regrettably, the year 2020 highlighted this disparity. So I had to ask myself, “What did ya learn?” when it comes to church.

1. I learned that Christians seem to be a bit confused about how to do/be the church outside of four walls. We Christians have come to believe that all the spiritual stuff happens at certain times, places and spaces. We just aren’t sure, outside of Sunday, just what we are supposed to be or do.  

What if everything is spiritual? What if who we are and how we are where we are really matters? Jesus said “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37 NIV) There are many good theologians and Biblical scholars that have already offered rich insights into the context of this passage as well as implications. All I would like to point out is that when Jesus says heart, soul and mind he is not referring to our modern notions of three separate areas of our bodies or lives.

 In short what Jesus is communicating to his followers is that they are to love God with everything that makes them . . . them. There is no spiritual world that is separated from our physical world. There is no such thing as having a prayer life (spiritual) and a work life (mental/physical) that are kept separate from one another. That is something we made up. Kind of like the famous quote from the movie Full Metal Jacket. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman informs the new Marine cadets that since it is Christmas Day, they will be going to a chapel service on base. And then the Sergeant says, “So you can give your heart to Jesus, but you’re a$$ belongs to the Corps! Do you ladies understand?” I think that sums up the dictum that many Christians live by and it creates confusion. We can give our hearts to Jesus (spiritual) but we aren’t sure how that connects to other areas of our life like work, relationships, parenting and finances.

It is the fallout from the Reformation and the Enlightenment project of the sixteenth century. There is no such thing as a spiritual life that is separated from our minds, hearts and physical world. Everything that we say and do is just as spiritual as it is physical. Cooking dinner, going to work, watching a movie with your family and mowing the grass are all spiritual. Prayer, communion, and reading the Bible involve our hearts, minds and physical bodies as much as it is something spiritual.

If we followers of Jesus are going to reclaim what it means to be the church, we are going to need to become whole. A whole person that doesn’t have a spiritual life separated from other areas of life. This sounds simple enough. It is something that we could mentally agree with. However, merging our spiritual world with other areas of our life (habits, political opinions, prejudices, finances) is easier thought than done.

2. “Get off my lawn”, became popularized again in 2008 with Clint Eastwood’s movie Gran Torino. In the movie Eastwood portrays a grumpy, middle class, older white man who gets angry when any “punk” steps near or onto his lawn. The phase has become a popular way to communicate a person’s age, comment on older verse younger generations and a general expression of grumpy irritation.

What I witnessed in 2020, when it came to issues such as race and politics, was a lot of Christians saying “get off my lawn.” Anything that questioned political views, racial concerns/prejudices got a grumpy, mostly older white, response of quit your whining and “get off my lawn.” George Floyd said “I can’t breathe” around twenty times before he died in front of our eyes. In the days after his death there were all kinds of responses. Black Lives Matter protests began to erupt across the nation and world. Then came the responses to the protests - All lives matter and just stop talking about it. Christians were told that communists and Critical Race Theory were taking over churches, colleges and the culture at large. Various church leaders expressed on social media that Christians needed to stand their ground against what was happening. Much of this reaction came mostly from white Christians. It sounded, to me, a lot like “get off my lawn.” Stop your whining and get on with your life.  

This reaction reminded me of a quote from the book Unarmed Empire by Sean Palmer. In the book Palmer presents a vision of the church, as found in the New Testament, as an alternative community of welcome, harmony, and peace. Palmer, who grew up going to church with his family, suggests that he was told as a kid that the church was supposed to be an alternative to the world. As he grew up, he discovered, like I did, that this was not the case.

"At this moment in history, the church I love, the church that supported and nurtured me and my faith is in critical condition. Our supposed caretakers lost their concern for God’s priorities and turned their attention to constructing their own pyramids of power. We let a few vocal leaders agitate the rest of the church into a frenzy of behaviors antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. For a long time, we’ve unwittingly played along.

We’ve played along when we were told that to be moral we should join a majority of the angry who believed in upholding an extremely narrow view of what Christianity was and who could be Christian. We kept silent for years as it was suggested to us that faith-commitments were limited to a set of ballot propositions and an approved list of candidates. As the church, we have allowed ourselves to be lulled to sleep by the siren song of winning some kind of 'culture war,' and in the process we’ve lost both the culture and the church.”

Last summer, during a Black Lives Matter protest, the mayor of Oklahoma City did something that gained my respect. Mayor Holt, on June 2, 2020, told the protestors that he would meet them and listen to them. He didn’t take an entourage of staff or security. He showed up and sat in a chair for over three hours. For three hours he sat and just listened. He showed respect. He didn’t lose his cool. He didn’t make a bunch of promises. He didn’t debate. He listened and asked only a few questions.

Listening is hard work. Listening requires empathy, patience, and a willingness not to be the center of attention. The best listening occurs when you are curious and interested in learning. One of the best gifts that anyone can give someone is to listen to them. When was the last time that you could say someone really heard you? Those rare moments of being heard are such a gift. When was the last time that you gave someone the gift of being heard?

In all of the “get off my lawn” reactions nobody was really listening. Everyone was reacting. In John chapter five we read a story of Jesus healing a man who is unable to walk. It is one of the seven signs of Jesus in the book of John. John 5:6 tells us. “When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?””

Note that before Jesus asks if he wants to get well, he learned about his condition. Jesus listened to this guy’s story. Imagine God in the flesh seated next to you just listening. Jesus was curious and interested in learning about who this guy was and what had happened to him. Jesus, not only gave the man the gift of legs that worked, he gave him the gift of being heard. 

Nobody really wanted to listen to the misfits that gathered at the the pool of Bethesda. They were uncouth, unclean, unwashed and disgusting. Yet, Jesus visited them and listened to them. I think that is something we Christians can learn from our Master. I certainly don’t believe that I have all the answers when it comes to the complex issues of race and politics. Yet, I can offer the gift of listening and learning just like Jesus did. Does that fix everything? We know that it doesn't. But it is way better then being known as the grumpy white Christian guy yelling “get off my lawn.”