A good friend of mine is wounded and bleeding right now. He was wrong. The church was wrong. And now there is nothing left but the wounds inflicted by well-meaning people who were all trying to do the right thing.
There is no mistaking this fact--we as the church--the ecclesia--the "called-out" ones, are a mess. We're trying so hard to be the Kingdom in this already/not yet world; trying to be the Body in an incarnational fashion but trying so hard to avoid the wounds; knowing that we should be open and vulnerable but cut down whenever we are.
"It's hard, so hard; you know it's hard to be like Jesus." (Rich Mullins was nothing if not a prophet)
We are truly on a journey together, bumbling and stumbling together. Sometimes we appear to have it together, but most of the time we are like tennis shoes thrown in the dryer, "full of sound and fury signifying nothing." I want to be more than that. I want the Church to be more than that. The potential is there, for success as well as for failure.
May God have mercy on us in the midst of our failures as he empowers us to be what He knows we can be.
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3 comments:
To lay it out there, so stink'n blunt, is so stink'n real. We are all wandering around on this earth, trying to do all the "right" things as we walk as Christians. I wonder sometimes if being a Christian makes it easier or impossible. Bible says, because we are believers in Christ we will suffer...so when do we feel the difference?...I'm sorry your friend is hurting, I wonder if he's/she's at the point of "what's the use?"...We continually try, try, and try, and continually fail, fail and fail. May the Lord have mercy on every last one of us.
These comments remind me of an old Steve Taylor song, "Jesus is for Losers." You can find the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q023gA5IeV8
The reality is that we are all failures, and until we get that through our heads I'm not sure we can ever follow Jesus, much less be "the Church." I'm leading a Bible study on I Corinthians right now, and everything I read there is that the church was full of people who failed again and again. They were chastised for getting it wrong more than they got it right.
And yet, they were called the Body of Christ.
That's Amazing. Some might even call it grace.
You are a beautiful man.
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