While watching the news this week, one commentator asked: If our leaders lack a moral compass, then who can we look to for moral guidance? Who will lead us to be a force for good in the world? The implication was that we are lost without such a voice. My immediate thought was, “the church.” We are called to be this voice and this witness. Amid many recent and worthy posts that provide clarity about what we must stand against in this day, I also want to reflect on what we are “for” as the church. Here are a few thoughts:
We are for peace-making. Scriptural and spiritual peace is about coming together in harmony, respecting one another, honoring each other’s voice, and working together to create something good between us. We are for that.
We are for love– and a particular kind of love, love that does not insist on its own way, love that seeks what is good for the other, love that makes connections with those who stand on the other side, even those that some might deem as enemies. We are for that.
We are for listening. In our natural state, our minds and hearts become so cluttered with judgement that cloud the way of God’s transforming grace and guidance. As the church, we suspend judgement long enough to listen, long enough to see what is really going on beneath the surface, long enough to build a relationship with those willing to do so. We are for this hard work.
We are for proclamation. Yes, we listen first, but we also speak. We have a word to share — a word of love and life. We have a prophetic word to share – a word of justice and inclusion. In a word full of hate, bigotry, deep seated prejudices that cause harm, and intentional polarization, this proclamation sometimes takes the form of prophetic protest. We are for that, as it is rooted in virtues above.
We are for freedom. We cultivate community where all are free to grow into who God has called them to be, rather than trying to fit each other into a particular box. In this freedom that comes through Christ, there is no room to claim the superiority of one image over others, or working to subjugate others into that image.
We are for boundaries. True freedom is possible only when there is shared commitment to certain boundaries. Only in this commitment can we be free to be open and honest and to be ourselves. What is out of bound for us? Here is a start – lying, slander, assault (and bragging about it), justifying bigotry, causing fear and harm with threats, slurs and claims of superiority, building ourselves, and those “like us,” up by putting others down, deflecting to the faults of others. To allow “isms” to spread like a disease when we have a Word with the power to heal is to be unfaithful to Christ, and a sign that our own body needs healing.
We are for honest history. A sign of inspiration is that our scriptures were not cleaned up in a monolithic account. We see ups and downs, successes and failures. We are invited to ponder different perspectives. This does not mean that we have permission to honor or memorialize those who worked against what the larger community deems to be right and good. In the church, we don’t put up a statue of Judas alongside the saints. We don’t do things that might give people the impression that it is okay to betray the nobler cause. We engage our history to grow into a more faithful and fruitful future. We must be willing to hear the “woes” of Jesus along with the “blessings.”
We are for multi-partisanship. It is worth noting that the words party, partisan, partner, all contain the word “part.” We are “part” of a larger whole. For the whole to be healthy, we need people with different perspectives and ideas, within the boundaries of respect, compassion, and wanting to build something good together. It is so dangerous when a “part” starts to think of themselves as the whole, as the sole owners of truth. We call that totalitarianism and I dare say that’s not what any of us want. We are the body of Christ, with many parts, many gifts.
We are for confession. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer has said, there is no true community where confession of sin is smothered or concealed, where our humanness is not honored, and where we are unwilling to help each other through without judgment and division. The worst kind of loneliness is to be alone with sin. To bask in the illusion of our own self-righteousness and superiority is to miss out on true life – which is always “life together” with others who have different gifts and can help us through.
We are for the calling of Christ. The Apostle Paul begs us to live a life worthy of this calling, with all humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing one another in love, and eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. When John Wesley defined holiness he almost always used these words, as oppose to words that tempt us to “self-righteousness.” I see this calling as highly relevant for our time. In this age of deep hostility and intentional divisiveness, I believe that this needs to be the witness of the church. It is not a message of “cheap discipleship.” In fact, it takes more spiritual courage to cross the aisle, and find new and better answers, then it does to retreat into our camps and comfort zones.
I will stop here for now, and invite you to reflect and perhaps add your own. Who can we look towards to be our moral compass? Yes we need this from our leaders, and yes, we also need to look in the mirror as well.
Connected In Christ 