Last week I pondered access, and I appreciate the number of you who connected with me to share your appreciation for my open wrestling and your affirmation that you understood I was not merely whinging publicly.
This Sunday, we will be exploring the Christian spiritual discipline of confession; and as I have been preparing all week, it seems the Spirit has continually reminded me of the value of being honest in the way I did in that reflection. Please hear me well: I am loathe to use myself as a positive example for anything. Paul may have been happy to instruct multiple churches to “be imitators of me/us,” but I will always and forever simply point to Jesus. I’m not telling you to be like me; I’m just recognizing that I happened to stumble into the Kin-dom, as happens to all of us who watch and wait and have ears to hear.
And I am recognizing simply that there is both room and need for followers of Jesus to take risks in being honest. The connection to confession comes because of the way confession forces a radical honesty upon us. Dietrich Bonhoeffer — the Lutheran martyr who lived Christ against fascist Germany, and whose legacy has sadly been maligned of late by a book and movie distorting his life — believed that confession was the foundation of true community because it destroys self-deception and makes God’s love real. It does the first by forcing us to be honest with each other about who we really are: a fellowship of sinners. It does the second by inviting us to receive God’s forgiveness and grace through one another.
While these ideas are developed in his book Life Together around the formal discipline of confession, I don’t think he would object to a general invitation towards being more “real” with one another. I am grateful that Community Baptist is a place where I don’t feel like we have to put on airs to fit in or belong — doing so may actually make you stand out in awkward ways. But I will confess that I did worry (perhaps overmuch) whether I would be heard as complaining when my goal was to use an inconvenience to spark reflection. It felt like a risk to share. And that has me thinking about where those lines might be for the rest of you: What feels like a risk to share? How much of your “inner life” do you feel you can give voice to? What about this community helps or impairs in that regard?
And as always: How might “Christ’s kin-dom come, Christ’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” manifest more fully here at Community Baptist and in our own individual lives?
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Pastor Michael