girlscandoanything

It all comes CRASHing down

This week has been maddening. I did way too much in just seven days. I feel like eight weeks has gone by and I should be on a plane tomorrow headed for the frozen tundra that I swore I would never again visit in the winter, but there are still eight weeks to go before I leave the Valley of the Sun and go to the Flatlands of the Pigs.

Part of the reason that I feel like so much happened is that so much happened. Not even in the physical sense of events taking place, but in my head and in my heart and in my spirit. I started working on the leadership team of CRASH, an emergent service branching out of the Baptist church I am interning at, and all of these thoughts and reflections and even emotions just sort of began to rise up and materialize in front of me. And now I need to figure out what to do with them--how to respond to them.

As I took some time to reflect today, I found themes of grace and of unity as well as division and judgment everywhere I looked. The entire week has been the most encouraging and the most saddening experience because I see the amazing thing that the Body of Christ is, and I see the horrible thing that the members of that body threaten to become. On Monday, as I sought to help a Kosher Jew find food products that could be served in his restaurant without violating the regulations placed upon him and his fellow men and women, I proclaimed to my colleagues, "Thank God I am a Christian and I am free from the law!" On Friday I am wishing that we had some standard by which to measure our progress as a church that was less easily misunderstood than the question that has become a credo, "What would Jesus do?"

While I would not trade the freedom for anything, I cannot help but wonder how our freedom moved us to behave in a manner that is so far from free. Consumerism, church politics, hard hearts, unrepentant lives, action without purpose, dogma without action, and a myriad of other issues have invaded my consciousness this week. I want to know how to make freedom free again. I want to know what Paul knew as he wrote his letters to the churches. I want to know what Christ knew as he challenged the powers of the world and the presuppositions of the mind and the standards of society without faltering. I want to know what Luther knew as he nailed the theses to the door of the church. I want to know freedom. That freedom bound those men to the will of God in such a way that even without the law they were not exempt from living just and holy lives. Freedom should bind us. Freedom in Christ binds us to truth and to grace. I long for a place where I am so free that I can be deeply and affectively bound to grace and truth without shame. The church should be that place.

Bonhoeffer in Life Together eludes to the thing that I seek. He calls it the ministry of proclaiming. That is what I desire. He states, "Why should we be afraid of one another, since both of us have only God to fear? Why should we think that our brother would not understand us, when we understood very well what was meant when somebody spoke God's comfort or God's admonition to us, perhaps in words that were halting and unskilled? Or do we really think there is a single person in this world who does not need either encouragement or admonition? Why then has God bestowed Christian brotherhood upon us?"

In the margin I once wrote "speak out, girl" to myself. On another occasion, I wrote in the margin "they understand, yes; but they also react against--it is the reaction I fear." Today I write at the bottom of the page (the margin is now full) "But Bonhoeffer has already solved that problem, CT. Both of us have only God to fear." We are the Body of Christ. As such, we should have only God to fear. We should be so free in Christ that we are unashamed to comfort and to correct our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Be free my brothers and sisters. Ya'll know I'm gonna speak the truth in your life, whether you want it or not. Follow my lead. Don't be ashamed to be the agent of truth and of grace in the world, in your community, in your apartment. Don't be afraid to be the Body of Christ. Don't be afraid of freedom.

I am thankful for CRASH. The challenge and the blessing that it is and that it faces has given me challenge and blessing this week.

posted by CT @ 10:22 PM