What If It's Us?--March 1, 2021

What If It's Us?--March 1, 2021

"Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time.  Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone." [Colossians 4:5-6]

So often, the problem is "us," not "them."

I say that, well aware I am a paid professional in an institutional church built around organized religion (although, in fairness, we're not that organized), and that it is often hard for us--we members of organized religion, we church members, we Respectably Religious people, myself included--to admit that we could be the problem, when it is so much easier to assume that the source of hostility, tension, animosity, and anger is "those people out there," you know, who don't belong to "our" group.

"The real problem," we like to tell ourselves," is those outsiders--the folks who don't share our faith, the ones who don't follow Jesus, the "y'know... sinners."  If they wouldn't be so hostile to our faith... if they wouldn't be so belligerent...  if they wouldn't be so sensitive and easily offended... if they would all us fall in line and act as we want them to, then we wouldn't have any problem.  "See?" we tell our respectably religious selves, "it's not us--it's them."

But please, as someone who is both unashamed of following Jesus and who is striving to hear what these ancient words from our verses in Colossians might mean for us, allow me to offer a minority report: maybe, a lot more of the time than we would like to admit, we are the ones making things harder for the folks we label "them."

As someone who wakes up every day and sees the social media postings of lots of fellow respectably religious folks, often deliberately poking a stick at folks they don't agree with, putting those they disagree with in the worst possible light while overlooking the flaws, failures, and wrong-turns of their own vantage points, and sometimes even flagrantly trying to upset other people in the name of some childishly misguided understanding of "freedom," let me pose the possibility that fairly often, we are the ones generating the vitriol with the watching world, and they are simply left wondering how people who claim to follow someone who taught the love of enemies could deliberately be so mean-spirited.

In other words, more often than we want to admit, it's not that wider world is offended that we are authentically following the way of Jesus; it's that they are confused and disappointed that we look and act so differently from the Christ we claim to be our Lord.

These words from Colossians make it clear that being gracious in our speech--not just with fellow church members whom you might have to sit next to in church or at the next potluck dinner (whenever we have those again)--but specifically with those we would call "outsiders," is a vital part of our Christian life.  We are called to be especially wise, measured, graceful, and thoughtful with our words in particular with people who do not share our faith in Christ, or those whom you think will disagree with you on X, Y, and Z issues, especially because the watching world gets to know what Jesus is like by what they see of him in us.  

It's a powerful truth that we become like whatever we worship, and on the flip-side, the watching world will create an impression of the one we worship by what they see in our lives, what they hear on our lips, and what we shout to the world on our social media feeds, bumper stickers, and attitudes.  And for so, so many people in the culture and time in which we are living, they have decided they want nothing to do with this Jesus they hear church folk talking about, because they've seen us brag about how we are eager to upset other people, they've seen us complain about petty inconveniences, and they've watched us remake Jesus as a rude, arrogant jerk who demands you do what he says or else be branded "weak" or a "loser."  No wonder folks say they are interested in Jesus, but are sure they don't want to be a part of a church--we have been discouraging people from following Jesus every time we brag about our rudeness in the name of "showing it to those politically-correct people," and every time we start from the assumption of "right-ness," rather than a posturing of being open to correction, new insights, and different perspectives that can see beyond our blind-spots.  Some days it's hard for me to be a member of an organized religion--and I love Jesus with all my heart (as well as I am able), and I have been nurtured in the flawed but beautiful community called church from before I can remember!

Colossians would remind us that it's hard for other people to believe what we say on Sunday mornings about a God who "so loves the world" that Christ laid down his life for us all at the cross, when on Monday morning we are angrily barking to the world that nobody can make us be considerate of other people's feelings, or belligerently arguing that it's our God-given right not to care about anybody with a different perspective.  My goodness, if strangers and neighbors hear us saying that our faith means we have divine blessing to be jerks in the name of our "religious freedom," how would they ever believe that God would be willing to go to the trouble of dying for the whole world?

In a day and age when it is dangerously easy to be thoughtless and demeaning and to spread that thoughtlessness around the world with the click of a button, maybe we especially need these reminders from Colossians to be mindful of our words, to be deliberately gracious even when it takes extra time and thought, and to consider how our every word paints a picture of who we think Jesus is, whether we realize it or not.

Today, let us dare to let our words sketch a picture of Jesus that he would recognize his own face in.

Lord Jesus, let our words--spoken, written, posted, shared, and shouted--reflect you.  Always.