Good Friday: Mary’s Story

Posted on April 10, 2020 by salooper57

(I wrote this monologue from Mary’s perspective and include it here in the hope that it might encourage your Good Friday prayers and worship. Blessings – Shayne.)

I thought nothing could ever surprise me again. After what I’ve seen and heard – I’ve talked with an angel; outwitted kings; seen water turned to wine – I thought I was shock-proof.

I was wrong.

Two days ago, I received the shock of my life. I had come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as I’ve done every year of my life – except the years we were in Egypt. I came with family and friends in one of the early caravans from Galilee. Passover has always been the highlight of my year, though it’s been bittersweet since Joseph has been gone.

I was already in Jerusalem when my son and his disciples came on the first day of Passover week. They came with an enormous caravan of Galileans. Jesus paused briefly in Bethphage, borrowed a donkey and her colt, then rode into the city like a king. The Galileans who knew him started singing messianic praises and paving the roads with their own cloaks and with palm branches—just like when Jehu became king of Israel. The Galileans shouted, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” It was so exciting. This … this is what I’d been expecting for years. It was finally happening.

The Jerusalemites were all asking, “Who is this?” And the Galileans answered proudly, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee!” I thought the uprising would begin right then and there, but Jesus had other plans. He soon left the city, but the next morning, he came back to the temple. It was packed with people, there for Passover, and he drove out all the men who were selling sacrificial lambs and doves and exchanging foreign currency.Again, I thought the uprising would start right then: he had only to call people to him, and it would have begun. But instead, he started teaching.

I did not see much of him over the next two days. He was staying in Bethany and, when he came into the city, he was surrounded by people – and controversy. The chief priests, the teachers of the law and the Herodians were all after him. They spoke gently, but as David said, “their tongues were as sharp as a serpent’s, and the poison of vipers was on their lips.” I despised them. I can’t believe I used to look up to those people.

I did not hear anything after that until yesterday morning. The first person to tell me was Mary of Magdala. (She’s a precious girl, but unstable – and a little rough around the edges.) She burst into my cousin’s home, talking so fast I couldn’t make out what she was saying. But I knew something was wrong. Before she could explain, there was a knock at the door. It was young John Mark. Peter had sent him.

Jesus had been arrested. There had been a trial (if that’s what you call it), and the Romans had him. It was bad.

I thought I was shock-proof. I was wrong. A half-an-hour later, I was standing with Zebedee’s boy John, outside the city in the place they call The Skull, and the Romans were already hoisting his cross. When they dropped it into the hole they had dug, it looked like someone had thrust a giant sword into the earth. That was the moment I had dreaded for years, without knowing I was dreading it: at that moment a sword pierced my own soul too.

People were laughing, swearing, making fun of him. They made noises like wild animals. Five days earlier, people were calling him king. Now they were calling him names. It was unreal.

Then he saw me. When I looked in his eyes everything else simply vanished: John bar Zebedee, the animal-like priests, the soldiers, the noise – everything. I didn’t even see the cross. I just saw him, and he saw me. Everything was perfectly still, as if we were alone in the cosmos. The look in his eyes told me something I had never understood before; something a book could not have made any clearer. He was expecting this. I knew in that moment that he had known for years. He knew this was coming, and he hadn’t tried to escape it. He was a sacrifice, like the Passover Lamb. He was the Passover Lamb.

That was two days ago – though it seems like a year. It’s as if time has stopped moving for me, or I have stopped moving in time. I feel nothing. I know nothing. I am alone in an unfathomable abyss. I seem to have come to the end – the end of me; the end of everything.

Of one thing I am now certain: After this, I am shock-proof. Nothing can surprise me ever again.

(Postscript: Of course, Mary was surprised again – and very soon. On Sunday morning her beloved Son (and glorious Lord) rose from the dead. But on that dark Friday and mournful Saturday, Mary was lost in grief, and confused by God’s apparent lack of concern. I have not experienced grief and confusion to anything like the same degree but I, like you, are not unfamiliar with it.)

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Holy Week Meditation: Maundy Thursday

Posted on April 9, 2020 by salooper57

If you and I had been with the apostles on Thursday evening of that first Holy Week, this is the kind of conversation we might have heard.

“Sunday was the day. I could just feel it. People were ready. If he’d have called us to take Jerusalem back, thousands of men would have responded. Just the Galileans outnumbered Roman forces five to one, maybe ten to one. And the Judeans would have joined us. Oh, man, he had them in the palm of his hand. If he had said: “Today is the day we back the holy city from the infidels,” it would have happened right then. Instead, he started crying! Sunday was the day. I just don’t get it.”

“Yeah, Sunday was great, but Monday was the day. I mean, he single-handedly took control of the temple. He was a lion! No one could stand against him. And, look: It’s not enough to fight Rome. We can kill every Roman in Israel, but they’ll be right back unless we get rid of the aristocracy, the priests.

“Yeah, if he’d called people to arms on Monday, there wouldn’t have been a Roman left alive in the city by nightfall. By the time they heard about it in Caesarea, the entire countryside could have been mobilized. The aristocracy would be in prison. But instead of calling people to arms, he started teaching from Leviticus and the Psalms. I just don’t get it. What he is waiting for? The blacksmith doesn’t wait for the fire to die down before he forges the sword.”

The days leading up to the Feast were non-stop, edge-of-your-seat exciting. Each night was spent decompressing in Bethany, but each day was filled with conflict, tension and the prospect of revolution. On Sunday they marched into the city accompanied by cheering throngs. On Monday, Jesus took over the temple for an entire day. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he met one challenge after another, all day long. The priests, the teachers of the Law, the Pharisees, they grilled him, searching for a weakness, for anything they could use against him. It was almost like the High Priest inspecting the Passover lamb for a blemish. No, it wasn’t almost like that – it was just like that.

On Wednesday, Jesus stunned his disciples by telling them that the temple would be torn down, block from block and the city destroyed. Dumbfounded, they asked when this would happen, and what the sign of his coming would be? When we hear that, we think of Jesus’s coming at the end of the age – what we call the Second Coming, or the Return of Christ. And we assume that the disciples were thinking the same thing.

But they didn’t know about a second coming. They weren’t expecting a return of Christ; he was already with them. The word they used, Parousia, was used as a technical term in Greek culture to refer to the official visit of a king or ruler. When the Roman Emperor made an appearance in your city, it was called a Parousia. Jews used the term to refer to the ascendency of the Messiah and his conquest of the nations – especially the Romans. So when the disciples asked what will be the sign of your parousia, they weren’t thinking: how will people living 2,000 years from now know you are about to return? They were thinking: Tomorrow or the next day, when you make your move and declare yourself king, what sign will we have that it is time to act?

As Wednesday – and what a day that was – wound down and they all returned to Bethany, something happened that pushed Judas over the edge; at least that is what he told himself. He was already impatient and upset with the way Jesus was handling things. That evening, when Lazarus’s sister Mary broke a bottle of crazy expensive ointment and poured it on Jesus, he got mad and got everyone stirred up. “This is outrageous. It is offensive. And it is a terrible waste. We talk about helping the poor – well, this could have been sold for three-hundred denarii; that’s more than most people make in a year. Think of the good we could have done with that much money!”

Judas got the other disciples all riled up, and some of them were complaining too. Until Jesus told them: “Leave her alone –what she did was beautiful and will never be forgotten.” That was too much for Judas. He went out – the disciples probably assumed he was going to visit old friends; after all, Judea was his home – but instead he went to see the chief priests. He was furious. He felt mistreated. Nobody ever listened to him. They treated him like he was a second-class disciple.

But his motives were so knotted up that even he could not have told you what was going on in his head. He may well have told himself that Jesus was never going to take a stand until he had to; well, now he would have to. He’d be forced to fight, and the revolution would finally begin. And so, Judas was really doing him a favor. He worked it around, as people always do, to justify himself.

On the Day of preparation, Jesus told Peter (probably the oldest, and certainly the boldest of the disciples) and John, (the youngest and possibly the most introspective) to go into the City to prepare the Passover. But here is the weird thing: he didn’t tell them where they were going. It was like something out of a spy movie. He told them to go through the gate into the city and they would be met by a man carrying a jar of water. That was odd, because in that society, men didn’t carry water – that was woman’s work. They were to follow him right into the house he entered and ask the household manager for the guestroom where they could prepare the master’s Passover.

Why not just give them the address? Why all the secrecy? Because Jesus knew what Judas had done. If he had simply given them the address, the special guard would have had the place surrounded before he even got there. That would ruin everything.

When they arrived early that evening, Judas was jumpy as a cat. Did Jesus already know? Why else would he keep this place secret? When they entered the upper room, everything was ready. The low tables and the reclining couches were in place, and each disciple had been – as was Jewish custom – assigned a seat. To Judas’s surprise, he was seated right next to Jesus – one of the two places of highest honor. What was going through his mind when he saw that? Maybe he should call the whole thing off? But he’d already made a deal with the devil. If he backed out now, they would throw him in prison – or worse. What had he done! Was there any way out? His mind must have been going a hundred miles an hour, but he was trying to act like everything was fine. And here he was, sitting right next to Jesus! He would know something was wrong!

The table placement must have bothered some of the others too. Why was Peter, the leader of the disciples, not sitting next to Jesus? Instead, Judas and young John bar Zebedee had the places of honor. There must have been some trouble about this because, as the evening progressed, the disciples got into an argument about which of them was the most important – which would hold the most authority after the revolution.

Can you imagine how Jesus felt? After three years of teaching and modeling love and servanthood, these guys were arguing about who was most important! It was enough to make you throw up your hands in despair. But that is not what Jesus did. He didn’t throw up his hands; he took off his clothes, stripped down to his waist, wrapped a long towel around himself – looked just like a minor household slave – and began washing each of the disciples’ feet, including Judas’s. The disciples were mortified. Embarrassed. Jesus knew what they had been arguing about, and this was a rebuke.

But it was more than a rebuke. It was an object lesson. “So after He had washed their feet and had put his clothes back on and sat down at that table, he said to them: “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call Me the Teacher, and Lord, and you’re right – I AM. If then I, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.”

Not long after that, Jesus said to them: “One of you is going to betray me.” All of them – except one – were surprised. Each wondered – except one – if he would be the one. At this point, it hadn’t occurred to them that the betrayal would be anything other than a slip-up. The idea that one of them would intentionally betray Jesus hadn’t cross their minds – except, of course, Judas’s. As the meal was wrapping up, Jesus looked right at him and said, “What you do – do it quickly.” The others thought Jesus was talking about giving Passover alms before the day was through. Judas used the opportunity to run off and tell the rulers where Jesus was.

Can you imagine what Judas was thinking when he left? “He must know! But maybe he doesn’t! Maybe he wants me to give alms. But, if so, this is the first he mentioned it. He knows. He knows. He must know … but maybe he doesn’t.”

Jesus knew how long it would take Judas to reach the chief priests. He knew how long it would take for them to put together a strike force. He knew how long it would take for them to return. He was determined to use every moment he had, preparing his disciples for what was about to happen. He told them to love each other – it was the most important thing. He told them God would take care of them in his absence. He told them how the Holy Spirit would come into their lives. He talked to them about prayer. Warned them of trials. Assured them he would come back.

And while this was going on, Judas was walking as fast as he could to the government offices. He was afraid, confused, and angry. He kept telling himself that this wasn’t his fault; that he had no choice.

When he got there, he intended to give the rulers the location, get his money and leave. But they insisted he was coming with them. The first time he talked to the rulers, they treated him like he was someone important; showed him respect. Now they treated him like dirt – like a low-life traitor.

They told Judas to wait, and the waiting seemed to last forever. Every minute felt like an hour. When they finally got – for lack of a better word – a posse together, Judas had to lead them to the upper room. He was so worried that he couldn’t think straight. What would Jesus say? What would the apostles say – he’d spent three years, day and night, with them? There would be a fight. Some of them might be killed. Whatever else happened, Jesus would know Judas had betrayed him. He had burned his bridges.

As they approached the house, the commander sent people around back. When the place was surrounded, he and his men went quietly up the steps, burst through the door … and found no one. Jesus had timed it perfectly. He and the apostles were already gone, on their way out of the city to an olive grove on the side of the Mount of Olives.

The commander stared daggers at Judas. Suddenly, all this became very real and very dangerous. The commander snarled at him: “Where is he?” and Judas tried to think of where Jesus might go: Bethany, to Lazarus’s’ place? The temple? Where? Perhaps Judas suggested two or three locations. One of them was Gethsemane – the Olive Press.

Between the time Judas left them in the upper room and the time he found them in Gethsemane, Jesus was preparing his people. He told them that things were going to get tough and he was going to leave them, but he also told them they would have God’s Spirit and each other. They must stick together; must love each other – that was crucial. He painted them a dark picture of the present, but a bright picture of the future. He warned them that he was going away but promised he would come back. In the meantime, it was vital they remember and keep his teaching. They must obey his orders; they were their directions for living in God’s kingdom. He told them how to request help from God and promised them the Holy Spirit would remind them of all of this. Then he prayed for them to have unity.

It wasn’t long after that prayer, the Judas-led posse arrived, the disciples scattered, and Jesus was arrested. He was led off to a kangaroo court and, only a few hours later, the trial was over. Before the apostles even knew what was happening, Jesus was on his way to a state-mandated execution.

Everything he’d taught them that night and for the three years leading up to it, seemed to fly right out of their heads. They were terrified – for good reason: the chief priests had been trying to learn what they could about them – and horrified and profoundly, painfully, unimaginably confused. This just couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t be real.

But the things Jesus taught had not really flown away. They remembered now, in a way they could not have before, how Jesus took the unleavened bread and while he broke it he said, “This is my body.” They remembered how he held up the cup and said, “This is my blood of the New Covenant, poured out for you,” and had them drink it.

Just as the Passover gave Jews their identity as a people, this bread and cup identified the disciples as the new people of God, the people of Jesus. They did not understand – they would not understand until Sunday – but they had his promise that the meal they ate now in token they would someday eat in its fullness.

We have that same promise – we, the new people of God, the people of Jesus. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we identify with him. We say – and choose yet again – to be the people of Jesus, in good times, in bad times, and for all times.

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Join Us…

Posted on April 5, 2020 by salooper57

Join our (abbreviated) worship service at Youtube or on Facebook. Our sermon text is Philippians 3: Heavenly-minded and Earthly Useful.

God be with you all.

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The Stubbornly Silent Future: Learning to Trust

Posted on April 4, 2020 by salooper57

Our governor’s “Shelter in Place” order has changed the way we live. Rather than meeting people at church or in the coffee shop, I’ve been meeting people on Zoom. Pastoral visitation has not happened in people’s homes but on our phones. I and others have been calling our church family, checking on their health, and seeing if they need groceries or meds. Many of these members are older and, to a person, they are doing remarkably well. They are a resilient bunch.

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

It turns out that many of our older members were spending most of their time at home, even before the governor’s order. The pandemic has not affected them in the same way it affects the soccer mom, who puts 25,000 miles a year on her van, or the retired couple who eat out five nights a week.

While our church family is doing well, the question on their minds, and on their friends’ and neighbors’ minds is: How long will this last? They want to know what’s coming next and when things are going to return to normal.

All of us have a sort of inner gravity that constantly pulls us back toward normal, even when normal is not healthy. When will things be normal again? Our routines, which always have suffered interruptions, have now been turned on their heads. Everything has changed.

The pandemic has highlighted the limits of our ability to control the future. When we are in our usual routines, we assume we know what is coming next. Now, we are painfully aware that we don’t. When normalcy finally returns, that awareness is likely to dissolve like a mist.

However, when the awareness of our limits dissolves, the limits themselves remain. As long as our routines are in full swing and our rhythms uninterrupted, we can overlook those limits. We may even congratulate ourselves that our crystal ball readings have been spot-on. Nevertheless, human beings are not, and never have been, good at controlling the future.

When I was a schoolboy, life suddenly changed in my household. My dad, who had been drinking and hanging out with a rowdy crowd, gave up alcohol. Previously, he was gone most evenings playing softball, bowling, or playing cards and, always, drinking. Now he was playing catch with my brother and me. We were going fishing together. We even went camping.

The future must have seemed brighter to my mother. It certainly seemed more orderly. We got into a routine of sorts. The uncertainty of the past was gradually replaced by confidence in the future.

It was short lived. Even at that time, unperceived by my parents, a white blood cell in my brother Kevin’s body was damaged and began growing and dividing uncontrollably. He had leukemia.

I don’t know how long this went on before my parents noticed something was amiss. For a while, life continued normally. Kevin seemed to have everything going for him. He was a gifted athlete, popular at school, and was loved by kids and adults alike. Then the sky came crashing in.

There was no warning that life was about to change. But that’s the way it is. The future only occasionally issues warnings. Usually, it is stubbornly silent. Our confidence concerning the future is built on shaky ground. Even now, some reader’s (or the writer’s) cells may be dividing uncontrollably, and there is no indication of what is coming.

If Covid-19 helps us come to terms with this fundamental uncertainty, we will have wrestled some good out of a bad situation. If we are able to replace a wispy confidence in the future by a secure confidence in God, we will stand on firmer ground. Oswald Chambers confessed, “Faith doesn’t always know where it is being led,” then added, “…but it does love and know the one that’s leading.”

It is ironic. When our routines are in place and we think we have everything in hand, our confidence in the future is set to betray us. But when our routines have been upended and we’re not sure what’s coming next, our confidence in God can enable us to face the future with courage and peace.

First published by Gatehouse Media.

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Scapegoating, Responsibility, and Neighborly Love in the Plague

Posted on April 1, 2020 by salooper57

Here’s a very relevant article to the age of Covid-19 – a brief history of the church’s response to another pandemic – this one in the 14th century. There are lessons for us here, and I recommend it to you: https://sojo.net/articles/scapegoating-responsibility-and-neighborly-love-plague.

The writer is my son, Joel Looper (PhD, University of Aberdeen), author of the forthcoming book A Protestantism without Reformation: What Dietrich Bonhoeffer Saw in America (Baylor Press).

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Cross Your Mind: The Humble Mind of Philippians 2

Posted on March 29, 2020 by salooper57

Visit Lockwood Community Church in Coldwater Michigan. The worship service is abbreviated (a few songs, prayer, and a sermon) for online worshipers. The message is from Philippians 2 and explores the kind of mindset that can enable us go through the trials of the Covid-19 pandemic while maintaining grace and extending blessing to others.

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Pray for Your Pastor During the Covid-19 Crisis

Posted on March 28, 2020 by salooper57

Your pastor needs prayer right now. He is facing significant stressors, making decisions that may have far-reaching consequences, and handling questions from concerned parishioners for which he may not have answers.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

I spend the first hour-and-a-half of each day in my study, doors closed, a cup of coffee in hand. I reach for the Book of Common Prayer and turn to the Daily Office readings, bookmarked to the current week. After a brief prayer, I read the psalm of the day, the Old Testament reading, and the reading from the Epistles. About this time, I head to the kitchen for another cup of coffee or a cup of Earl Grey. Then I return for the reading of the Gospel.

I pray as I read. I reflect. Sometimes I make notes to myself. If I have time, I read from a helpful book. Over the years, I have used George Macdonald’s remarkable sermons, Dallas Willard’s and Richard Foster’s books, C.S. Lewis’s sermons and essays, and many more. Lately, I’ve been reading Scot McKnight’s Kingdom Conspiracy.

After the reading of the Gospel, I pray. Today it was a disjointed prayer of submission, adoration, and intercession. As I prayed, I found myself wondering why I have been feeling so anxious. I am not, by nature, an anxious person but the last couple of weeks have been stressful. As I thought about this before the Lord, three particular stressors came to mind.

I find making decisions very stressful when I don’t have sufficient information. During the Covid-19 crisis, I (and tens of thousands of other pastors) have had to make one decision after another: First it was, “Do we cancel in-person services?” Then, how long must we cancel in-person services?

The decisions just keep on coming. How do we communicate during this time? Do we live stream Sunday services? How do Family Ministry, Youth Ministry, Kid’s Min communicate? Do they live stream? How do we care for our most vulnerable population? What about our staff? Will they work from home? Will they have enough to do to occupy their time? Can they afford the time off? 

All this is uncharted territory. We do not have the facts, don’t know how long the social distancing measures will be necessary. We have volunteers calling our most vulnerable folks, many of whom are seniors, but we’ve discovered they don’t answer the phone if they don’t recognize the caller. Many have mailboxes that are filled or were never set up. How do we reach them? Each question demands a decision that itself requires a flurry of other decisions.

Another stressor for me is being around disagreements. From day one, the response to the coronavirus has been full of disagreements, even at the highest levels. Congress and the White House were hardly in lockstep when all this began. It’s been reported that the president and his own coronavirus task force are at odds. People’s response to the crisis largely depends on whom they are listening to, and our church people aren’t listening to the same authorities.

To every question, someone has a different answer. Should we cancel services? Before our governor banned gatherings of more than fifty, one would answer, “Of course. It is the only loving thing to do.” Another would say, “No way! We must not give in to fear.” In most churches, people look to the pastor for guidance during disagreements, but how does one guide when one lacks sufficient information?

A third stressor has to do with expectations for (or, more accurately, with efforts to influence) the decisions being made. There are always people who strive to get their way, thinking that their idea is best or their need most urgent. Of course, everyone’s need is most urgent to them.

All of this adds to the burden pastors carry for the church family they love. Pray for your pastors and let them know it. Look for ways to help your church family during this crisis. Reach out to the vulnerable with concern and help, including unchurched neighbors and friends. Churches that do this will not only come out on the other side of this crisis; they will come out stronger.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Good News (in the middle of the mess)

Posted on March 24, 2020 by salooper57

Is there any good news in the middle of this mess? You bet! The same good news that has sustained the people of Jesus through many crises and continues to change the world. Read Philippians 1 and take note of every use of the world “gospel,” which means “good news.” Consider its context and think through how Paul was using the word. Then, listen to the message at one of the links above, and share your thoughts below.

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Join Our Church's Worship Time

Posted on March 22, 2020 by salooper57

Like millions of others, we are streaming today’s (abbreviated) worship service. If you’d care to join us, just go to http://www.lockwoodchurch.org and click the link titled, “Click for Links.” It will give you links to both YouTube and Facebook. The service will begin at 11:00 AM EST.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you. The Lord lift up his countenance to you – smile at you – and give you peace. Amen.

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Dealing with Isolation During the Covid-19 Crisis

Posted on March 21, 2020 by salooper57

In 2016, long before the advent of Covid-19, The New York Times ran a piece by a Dr. Dhruv Khullar titled, “How Social Isolation Is Killing Us.” “Social isolation,” Dr. Khullar wrote, “is a growing epidemic—one that’s increasingly recognized as having dire physical, mental and emotional consequences. Since the 1980s, the percentage of American adults who say they’re lonely has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent.”

Photo by Kristina Tripkovic on Unsplash

What effect will the social distancing measures ordered by state and federal leaders to combat the spread of Coivd-19 have on this older and more pervasive social isolation epidemic? When it’s over, will people make an extra effort to connect with others following weeks of enforced social distancing? Or will these temporary measures have legs—will they continue on after the executive orders have expired?

Digital distractions have already replaced human interactions for many people in daily life. The coronavirus may exacerbate this new reality.

Experts say that about one in three people in the U.S. lives alone. Among those who are over 85, the number is more like one in two. Katie Hafner, reporting in The New York Times, writes that“studies … show the prevalence of loneliness among people older than 60 ranging from 10 to 46 percent.” Khullar states that “A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us,” impacting sleep, altering immune systems, and raising stress hormones levels.

Photo by Charles Postiaux on Unsplash

When isolation becomes the norm, outsiders become a threat—and for many people, isolation is the norm. Perhaps this rise in individual isolation is affecting a rise in national isolationism, as demonstrated in the heated immigration debate, ironically being waged on the internet by people speaking out of isolation. Future historians may identify the growth of isolation and isolationism as a major story of the 21st century.

The church has an alternative story to tell or, rather, the church is an alternative story. Instead of isolation, it is a story of community. Instead of division, it is a story of reconciliation. Instead of alienation, it is a story of inclusion. Instead of top-down charity, it is a story of side by side friendship. It is the story of Jesus, incarnate for, and in, his church.

This alternative story is first of all the story of the community-loving God who, according to Christian understanding, exists forever in the loving, blissful community of the Trinity. This God didn’t create the universe to satisfy some unmet need but to share the unending joy of the Godhead. In carrying out his intent, God became human and did what God always does: shared his love with others.

The ultimate example of this love is the cross of Jesus. As St. John wrote, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…” Then God gave himself again: the other member of the joyful Trinity, known to us as the Spirit, came to live in people. Those people, now sharing one Spirit, were united into one people—the church.

In this divine comedy, that church, the church everyone knows – messy, incomplete, and sometimes just silly – has become part of the alternative story. When the church most fully embodies its divine calling to be the dwelling place of the joyful God, it becomes a prominent and glorious character in God’s story of community, reconciliation, inclusion, and friendship.

Though the church is brought into the story by the Author, it must be intentional about its place in the story. It must reflect the joyful God by being a people of community and by taking actions that demonstrate this to be true. The church, for example, might organize dinners and connection times for all its people. It might choose to be a place where forgiveness and reconciliation take place; where the outsider becomes an insider; where social status is relentlessly deconstructed as a barrier to friendship.

In an age marked by social isolation, the church can and must provide a striking alternative: a people who share an identity as family, who spend time together, forgive each other, and like each other. It can be a growing family, welcoming others in and helping them to find their place with their loving Father and the rest of the family.

Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash

First published in Gatehouse Media

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