It is not written down anywhere but it’s true. There is an
unwritten dictate in the household of faith these days that prohibits honest
expressions of pain, sorrow, disappointment, etc., as if such expressions would
compromise the gospel. We have stolen a trick or two from our dark world on
marketing strategies which value bottom line over honesty, commodities over
humanness, façade over fidelity.
Ironically, what we fear is the very thing we need:
Simultaneous expressions of both pain and hope, of frustration and faith, of
betrayal and continued trust; a story of the heart that dares sincere complaint
and confident expectation; candid expressions of disappointment aligned with
poised anticipation. No naïveté, but a “though he slay me, yet will I trust
him”, Job kind of faith.
And though smiley “confession police” shush such expression,
honest hearts tire of pretense, the act, ill-informed mantras and the betrayal
of memory – presumptuous non-truths for blind followers of blind guides who have
given up on the actual for the virtual. Pretense is lord and guide. Performance
is sanctity.
Sadly, this strange and fine polished cross leads to no tomb
and to no resurrection; no mourners, no tears, and so no laughter for we have
not seen the risen Christ. We do not confess the fellowship of his suffering,
so we do not know the power of his resurrection. We can’t speak of our
wilderness wanderings and so our children don’t know how to get to the Promise
Land. In all this we preserve our
make-believe Christian fairyland. We’ve made it safe so it does not save. We
have removed the danger and so it cannot deliver. We have domesticated the gospel
until it can no longer rescue or redeem.
We remove the scandal, making it something other than God incarnate, preventing
transformational power.
What we do have are select and context-free memory verses (i.e.,
propaganda), a non-transparent rendering of experience that conveniently avoids
hard questions and hovering doubt – Must maintain a holy house of cards! But sincere
hearts long for honest expression, confessing with the mouth, believing from
the heart. It is a forthrightness that does not resist faith, but keeps
fidelity and gives faith a field to plow. Open wounds receive healing. Hearts
open to expressions of pain have not become anesthetized to living. It
indicates desire to live and to live with authenticity.
We fear that we and our institutions will be implicated by
such expressions of pain, and that may be so. We fear we may not have a ready
answer for all the questions, and really, we don’t. But better than answers to
questions are ears that attentively hear. Better than resolution of
contradiction are fellow souls that acknowledge your being. Better than
concealing expression of pain is the freedom to live an honest life,
acknowledged, validated by, and in communion with others.
And speaking of communion, what about the Lords Supper?
Let’s be honest. If we could, would we not edit blood from the table? Would we
not do some redaction on the bread that speaks of brokenness and the ritual
that remembers death? And it is an enduring remembrance of “death until I
come.” And though some would have us imagine Christ’s bleeding was to end all
bleeding, is it not closer to the truth to say he opened the food gates of bleeding
for those who would follow? His walking the Via Dolorosa (Way of
Grief/Suffering) was not a once-and-for-all thing, but an inauguration of
sacrament – inaugural, not finale; the opening ceremony, not the climax. He was
not going away so much as showing the way.
But please know, this “way” is no masochistic, dreadful life.
Rather, it allows for a dense joy and grace-filled living consecrated by the
sweet aroma of authenticity, resisting the tilt toward artificiality. It pushes
back life’s cumulative sediments, dredges the depths, enlarges the basin of the
soul and its capacity for life, becoming reservoir and conduit of abundant
flow.
Authenticity allows for what liars and truth-fearers never
see or speak of – a sophisticated and nuanced Psalms-like flow of life that
gathers up the past and the future into the cup of this present moment of being.
It becomes a spyglass for perceiving a future now and a depth of meaning that
others only guess about - a felt knowing that transcends the redundant, hypnotic
flatness of half-truth living. Here is where we experience delightful depth,
satisfying distance, the relief of generous horizons, the joy song that teases
out imagination, leaving linear time behind with envy. It is emancipation,
casting off redundant expressions of mind-numbing soothsaying, liberating from
the same-ole-same that corral the weekly mass of would-be believers into
compliant, manageable groups, charmed into conformity, no threat to status quo,
following on the heals of the piper, coerced to say the naked emperor is
wearing a fine suit of clothes.
Do you ever wonder why it is no longer common to have altars
in our churches? While we may risk altar areas (a void where altars once were),
there are no altars. Why? Perhaps it is that altars are an uncomfortable visual
reminder of what it cost to follow a nail-pierced savior. The sight of an altar
might break the trance of spellbind parishioners. Altars imply sacrifice that is contra church growth
principles and marketing strategies that offer false comfort to paying
customers. It is a big black lie that declares, “No sacrifice required.
Following Jesus is free.”
Jesus words on the cross are not admitted into our faith
confessions today, but these where last words, dying words, words that merit
our attention. In showing us how to die he was showing us how to live. Honest
words: “I thirst”; “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And, “It is
finished.” We shush such honest expression
in the church these days. Short-changed on honesty, we miss out on abundant
living.
