19 November 2009
Household of Prodigals
I rejoice to be part of this household of prodigals,
these wanderers and squanderers welcomed home.
And I’m awed by this faith that believes, when the world
and even the church has shut its doors,
that the heart of God is still open.
But the truth is I have been the elder brother,
who stiffened at the sounds of celebration inside.
And the world is a wasteland when your heart is so hard
that you cannot rejoice to see a brother loved.
And to those who curse God’s children, God
is a thick and dreadful darkness.
No wonder we though God was angry - but not at you.
And those were dark days, desert days,
when I spat out words like a bitter taste,
drunk with self-righteousness and lonely as all hell.
But I’m here because of a brother who said,
"Michael, look in my eyes and see
the hurt, the fear, the fury, and know
it’s there because of you."
A brother in pain who trusted me to care.
I’m here because God, when my mind was shuttered,
spoke to my heart and said, "I disown
your words. I disown
your works. I disown
the wounds you’ve inflicted in my name."
But I’m here because I could not survive,
I could not believe God’s love
if not for you,
if not for your stories, where I’ve learned
that the heart of God is simple: love
its only substance, love its goal,
love its means and love its end.
So keep believing.
Keep celebrating.
And help the doubtful ones like me to see.
And know that the God you were told to fear
is on your side, and always near,
to love, to heal, to bless, and to set free.
In college, I was a conservative, charismatic, evangelical Christian who saw liberal Christianity as a denial of the gospel and a threat to our faith. Six years later, I worship at a church that in many ways is the most deeply orthodox and faithful community I have ever experienced, but it is a church that, back then, I would have written off as hopelessly liberal for one reason: we welcome homosexuals. I do not mean that we invite them in and then try to “fix” them. I mean that we welcome and celebrate all people as they are, and declare God’s love to them. And I am fiercely proud of my church and its ministry of love and reconciliation.
Obviously, something has changed in the past six years. And not what you’re probably thinking. For the record: I’m straight, and I love being a man. (True story: sometimes, when I’m kayaking or shoveling dirt or snowshoeing up a mountain in subzero temperatures miles away from the nearest restroom, I find myself almost giddy with how much I love being a man. So there.) But what has changed is this: I’m through with wounding the very people who have already been hurt the worst. There is only one Law, and that Law is to love: to love God and to love our neighbor, to love God in our neighbor, to love our neighbor with the furious love of God within us.
What has also changed is that I have learned the value of community. I struggle far too often with fear, with doubt, with depression, with loneliness. My journey of faith has been more desert than oasis. So I have absolutely no patience for churches where everyone seems to have it all together, where they sing insipid songs about salvation but never grapple with what Peter Rollins calls the “trauma” of the cross. What I’ve found in the Crossing is a group of people who have all struggled with life and with faith. And people who have struggled, I can trust. I am not exaggerating in this poem when I say that being a part of the Crossing feels necessary for my own survival.
If you’re a conservative Christian and you wrote me off two paragraphs back, listen: there is one primordial sin that got us into this whole mess: the desire to judge good and evil, to stand in the place of God above our fellow human beings. There are times (rarely) in the church when we need to do exactly that, in confronting destructive behavior. Those times ought to terrify us, because in those times we come within a hair’s breadth of usurping the place of God. We ought to approach those situations with humility and knocking knees, speaking only because God won’t let us stay silent. So if you’re going to call someone a sinner, you’d better be damn sure you’re right.
If you grew up with a gospel that focused only on sin and punishment and forgiveness, you may not understand that Jesus came not just to do battle with sin but to overcome “every cruel and merciless power that opposes both body and soul”. The work of the devil is “to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). If you speak a rebuke to someone who needs love instead, you are conspiring with the devil. The devil doesn’t bother with tempting people to sin; we already do a splendid job of tempting ourselves. The work of the devil is something far worse: the effacing of the image of God within us, the wounding of the most vulnerable in the places where their pain is already the greatest: a boot stamping on a human face forever. I’m talking about depression and suicide and debilitating shame, about people cutting themselves and starving themselves and hating themselves, about violence and desperation and soul-numbing isolation, about war and rape and abuse, about grinding poverty and inequality and injustice. This is evil far greater than any private sins we commit. This is the evil you participate in when you let yourself be used by the devil to do the devil’s work in the hammering down of a human being. Be very careful with the words you speak.
You may want to play it safe and err on the side of loving people.