"We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God..." (2 Corinthians 5:3-7a)
Here's a good general rule for the life of faith: don't set up any hurdles to make it harder for anybody else to encounter the love of God. Just don't.
Our calling as Jesus' witnesses in the world is actually just the opposite: to remove obstacles that might possibly get in the way of God's grace. Ultimately, any of those obstacles, hurdles, or barriers prove ineffective, but even in the mean-time, why would anybody want to impede the love of God, right? Like Westley says in The Princess Bride, even "death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." God's love will eventually reach into every corner of all creation, permeating every last intergalactic expanse, reaching between every set of quarks, and seeping into even the stoniest of hardened hearts. Why would any of us dare to get in the way?
The apostle Paul models the same thought process here in these words that many of us heard back on Ash Wednesday just the other day in worship. As he is writing to the church in Corinth, he makes the point that when he and his fellow ministry partners were there in Corinth, as they were first telling people about Jesus and beginning a Christian community there, they were intentional about not putting up any obstacles that could have potentially become a stumbling block keeping someone else from hearing the gospel's good news of God's love in Christ. Paul and his companions were willing to work long hours, cover their own costs (rather than raise the suspicion that this Christianity thing was a get-rich-quick scheme from fly-by-night schemers), and bear the violence and brutality of both Roman soldiers and local police when they found themselves arrested, jailed, or beaten for "stirring up trouble" and "turning the world upside down." They committed to treating others with love, kindness, patience, and truthfulness, all as ways of removing any possible barriers that could have turned someone away from wanting to know about the Jesus that Paul announced. It's not that Paul saw himself as a salesman who had to close the deal (the gospel is absolutely NOT a "deal") or schmooze potential converts. But rather Paul knew that as he brought the message of Jesus to people, he would be one of the first faces and personalities that others would connect with this Christ Paul talked about, and he certainly did not want anybody saying, "Why would I want to hear about Jesus, when the guy telling me about him is such a jerk?"
So Paul committed not to add any obstacles, roadblocks, or barriers that might turn somebody away from wanting to hear about Jesus or be drawn by the pull of grace. Nineteen centuries before Gandhi's famous line, "I like your Christ. I do not care for your Christians--your Christians are so unlike your Christ," Paul knew that it was a damn shame to be the reason that somebody else decided they didn't want to learn any more about Jesus. So Paul did something about it. He committed to a way of life that didn't add obstacles, but rather was willing to endure ridicule graciously, to bear suffering patiently, and to respond to lies and misinformation from others truthfully. He vowed not to return evil when evil was shown to him, and he taught those who were being trained as leaders alongside him to follow the same example. Paul absolutely didn't want anybody to have reason to say, "I was interested in the gospel at first, but then I met a Christian named Paul, and I decided I didn't want anything to do with people like that! What a hateful person!"
I've known too many people whose stories go like that. I've heard too many times from people who said they walked out on church, not because they didn't care for Jesus, but because too many folks who said they followed Jesus spoke, acted, lived in ways that seemed flagrantly un-Christ-like. A whole generation of young voices has come of age saying things like, "My church growing up told me to be like Jesus, and even got us all 'What Would Jesus Do?' bracelets to make sure we would--and then those same voices sold out to greed, selfishness, rudeness, and cruelty, all in the name of getting themselves a golden age and a new empire. Why would I want to be a part of something like that?" And they're not wrong. They have seen in so many Respectable Religious Folks only obstacles that make them less interested in Jesus, and very little that showed them the way of Jesus was real. Of course they don't want to sit in pews and contribute offerings to a Christ-less Christianity like that.
Quite often, when church folks (and religious "professionals" like me!) hear those kinds of criticisms from others, we get defensive. We want to blame those who have left church, or accuse them of "rejecting the Truth," or cast aspersions on the busyness of schedules with soccer practices and hockey games on Sunday mornings. But maybe the problem isn't merely with "those people" who have walked out of church and not come back. Maybe the question Paul would have us ask is, "What obstacles have we been setting up in other people's way that makes them no longer willing to even try to get to Jesus?" Maybe we need to ask if we have been setting up roadblocks to turn folks away when God's intention has been to reach across those boundaries and barriers in love to draw everybody? And maybe we need to ask on a daily basis, "What are the places in my life where I'm acting or speaking in ways that run counter to Jesus--and what am I willing to do about it?"
At the end of my life, I don't want there to have been people who said, "I would have been more interested in Jesus, but STEVE turned me away from him because he just made Jesus' love seem like a fraud." I don't want to have been the obstacle that stood in the way of anybody being pulled in by grace, even if eventually God's grace found other ways to get through to them.
This Lent, as we consider what it means to love beyond boundaries, it's worth asking ourselves on a regular basis whether we are removing barriers or adding them when it comes to letting people be brought into the presence of the God who loves them.
What will we do with this day?
Lord Jesus, if you have to, work in spite of us. But we would prefer you work through us, removing obstacles and roadblocks we have set up, so that our lives can be conduits for your love rather than barriers to it.
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