This week, I’m learning with pastors from Tacoma, Washington to Long Island, New York, along with a fair share from North Dakota and Minnesota (still quite a few Lutherans out there, after all) at Camp Lutherlyn, one of our ELCA-supported camps, just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Because, as much as we know the landscape on the organized religion (and many other) front is being slightly altered, to say the least, we also know that just sitting in a room in front of lecturer isn’t going to help enough: we need relationships. We need conversations. We need humility and honesty. We need a willingness to try and a grace to pick us up when it doesn’t work. We need people who can very well say, “I know exactly what you’re going through. It reminds me of…” but will hold back and simply listen.
One of those from North Dakota reminded us of this quote from perhaps our most famous ELCA pastor in recent memory, The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber (who now fulfills her calling as a speaker and writer). It serves as a reminder that every community of faith is meant to be an embodiment of God’s love and hope and new life, and yet every community of faith is occupied by humanity: a humanity that is beautiful and broken all at once. A humanity that invites more relationships and conversations and humility and honesty and a willingness to try. We invite people to try out our worships or Bible studies or sewing or yarning groups or the variety of ways of service benefiting the local community and beyond, but there will be times when we don’t live up to the Divine embodiment, and not just for visitors (or guests, as we’re being encouraged at this conference to call them now), but even for life-long members. And so, being occupied by humanity,
This community will disappoint them. It’s a matter of when, not if. We will let them down or I’ll say something stupid and hurt their feelings. I then invite them on this side of their inevitable disappointment to decide if they’ll stick around after it happens. If they choose to leave when we don’t meet their expectations, they won’t get to see how the grace of God can come in and fill the holes left by our community’s failure, and that’s just too beautiful and too real to miss.
If read with too holy of a view of the church, as if we’re never allowed to make any mistakes, as if we’re not blessed with a beautiful but broken humanity filling the building, then we may take these words rather negatively. But, in a way, they provide humility and honesty, and knowing that as we try this and that, there will be numerous instances when we need grace to pick us up. And even when the church doesn’t always fulfill its role in extending that needed grace, God cane come in and fill in the gap, “and that’s just too beautiful and too real to miss.”
And it is in those instances that the conversations go beyond the bare minimum churchy greetings to transformational levels. It is in those holy moments that life-shaping relationships develop, because we’ve gone into the muck together, and somehow God cherished us enough to pull us back up to try it all again…together. Disappointments will come, even in sanctuaries and fellowship halls, but we will insist on clinging to the God who would not allow the human colossal disappointment of leading the world-cherisher in Jesus Christ up a hill in hopes to never be heard from again. And yet, humanity failed that weekend, and what has happened ever since “is just too beautiful and too real to miss.” Thanks be to God!
In Christ,
Pastor Brad
Source: Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint