God in the City

There are all kinds of references in the Bible to the church as the bride and Jesus as the bridegroom. It describes a beautiful loving relationship where the church follows Jesus and Jesus gives himself up for the church.  I have been fortunate in my life to have beautiful experiences in religious life that have grounded my faith in love.

My friend Shyloe talked in class one day about talking to a child in Sunday school about Jesus.  You ask Jesus to come into your heart and he will live there with you. Everything about this is beautiful.  As children, we see Jesus as a kind, loving, gentle shepherd and having him live in our heart means that we will never be alone and our heart will be filled with love. When we are tempted to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, we can be reminded that Jesus lives in our heart and makes us more kind and loving than that.  In the churches I grew up in, we got in touch with that sense of Jesus in our hearts when we took fruit baskets and toys at Christmas to the poor in our neighborhoods.  We brought our pennies to Sunday school to sponsor a needy child in another country. Giving a dime for each dollar of our allowance every week made us feel like a useful and connected part of a place that was doing good things for others. When children in Sunday school feel the warmth of having Jesus in their heart, there is no intolerance, no hate, and no judgment.

In my faith, I have been allowed to drift in and out of a walk with God, until the time came that I was ready to completely follow.  I had a wise pastor once who gave us permission to “put things on the shelf” that we didn’t understand or had trouble believing.  He knew that many of the people in his congregation were wresting with the virgin birth, the resurrection, and the church’s stance on social issues. I have had the freedom to love the person of Jesus as I understood him as a little girl and then let that faith grow up.

One of my professors at Asbury said that when you are reading something, keep in mind the perspective of what they are reacting to.  What I generally react to in issues of evangelism, is churches that have a less patient call to discipleship than what I experienced growing up in the United Methodist church.

Laying down this conditional salvation – believe this even if you don’t believe this – makes some people bristle at the name of Jesus, instead of feeling the warmth of his love.  Like an arranged marriage, it’s a condition that you love someone before you know who he is. I heard a sermon once where the pastor was talking about the resurrection and said, “If you don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead, there’s no reason for you to come back next week.”  My UMC pastor at the time said, “I think if you don’t believe that, then there is EVERY reason for you to come back the next week.”  Being on a spiritual journey means that we are continually searching for the ways that God is revealing himself to us.  There are things in the Bible that are difficult to understand, but the joy of the journey is in working out the questions, not just accepting answers from someone else’s journey. I can’t imagine my spiritual journey without all of the influences of communities of faith that have shaped me.  But, it’s been my journey, where I have been free to accept and reject other people’s theology, and I have been free to grow and change the way I understand things with by growing in a more faithful interpretation of scripture, continued experience and revelation.

For some, who enter this journey of faith like an arranged marriage, it works.  They take a leap of faith before they understand, but then they grow in their love by truly getting to know Jesus.  For some, they accept the arrangement as a “get out of hell” card, and never bother to know the love and beauty of walking with God. These sometimes seem to be the loudest voices we hear in our society.  The insincerity of their claim of faith fails to ring true, which causes others to believe that this is what a walk with Jesus looks like.  For others, they grow to this love, gradually, over a lifetime, learning more in every experience, and growing deeper in their love for God and their neighbors.

In last week’s Gospel lesson (Mark 1:14 -20 ) I noticed that when Jesus calls his disciples, he doesn’t threaten them with going to hell if they don’t’ follow, he doesn’t promise them wealth if they do follow, and he doesn’t have to talk them into it.  He knows their hearts and knows that they are ready and simply asks them to follow. And they do.