ally – finding my way

I just finished my third year of Seminary. Most of the students who started with me just graduated and are moving on to their ministries. Since I have been attending part-time, I still have a few years to go. I haven’t shared much about my experience with my classes here mainly because it has been a real rollercoaster ride and I have just been holding on for dear life! Though it has been challenging, it has also been transformative and life-giving. I am not the same person I was when I started three years ago. I would like to be more intentional about sharing some of my Seminary experiences here so I’ll start with an essay I wrote on the Christian mission. This essay was for my course on Interfaith Studies, Comparative Theology, and Ministry where we learned about many of the world religions and how to best engage with others from different faiths.

The question for the essay was: “What are the features of ‘Christian mission’ in a multireligious society characterized by a widespread poverty and social inequality, animosity and violence between people due to various factors, and ecological deterioration?”

While I am sure there was an appropriate academic answer, I decided to go with a more personal, reflective response. Here is what I wrote:

Our Christian mission is to serve God’s people – not just Christians but all of God’s people – with love and humility rather than with arrogance and power. We are to listen to and lift up others and to trust that God is already working in their lives. We are to be the student when called and to be the teacher when called, and the only way we will know which one is called for at any given time is in relationship with one another.

Jesus tells His disciples in John 13:34-35, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I am not sure that Jesus would recognize us as His disciples, as we have failed to love one another. We have not loved as Jesus commanded and the state of the world is evidence of this. The world does not appear well-loved.

So what does this love look like? For me personally, it looks like education and loving across lines. It looks like advocacy for the marginalized in my life, specifically the LGBTQIA+ community. It looks like holding open doors and inviting people I know and love into spaces where I am allowed but they are not. For me it looks like writing a blog, where I share my faith, my spiritual practices, and my struggles with the state of things. For me it looks like standing at the edges with those who don’t feel like they have a place at the center. For me it looks like donating time and resources to the organizations who are working tirelessly to make room at the table, to feed and educate the poor, to plant trees, to teach God’s word, and to share the benefits of spiritual practices. It looks like working with children and youth so they too can live into a Christian mission of love. It looks like cultivating friendships outside my faith to better understand others and their experience with what I call God’s life-giving Spirit. It looks like laying down my religious language so as to open lines of communication with the rest of God’s people. For me it looks like having hard conversations with people at my church, in my family, and in my friend groups about how Christianity and God’s word have been used as weapons against the least of these. It also looks like learning how to repent and apologize when I have been the one in the wrong using my faith as a way to judge or harm others. It looks like being willing to learn something new every day and being willing to wander into uncharted territory for the sake of love, relationship, and justice.

I certainly do not have all of the answers. I am grateful for educational and religious leaders who are willing to take a stand and teach those under their care how to better love people. I am grateful for brave voices from the margins who have risked everything to call attention to injustices and disparities. I am grateful for a savior who came for all of us and I pray that we can be better so that He will know us by our love, and as a result, all will know the love Jesus came to share.

It is Pride Month and I’ve been wanting to share something to honor that, but I have been timid. Then I had the opportunity to hear a panel of LGBTQ Voices at a local Methodist Church sponsored by The Reformation Project (www.reformationproject.org). When asked “How can someone express their support? How can we be good allies?”, one panel member replied that one way to be a good ally is to be ‘a visible ally’. This stirred my heart. Now I am trying to be a better ally by being a more visible ally.

I wrote this piece in 2016 when I first applied to seminary. It seems appropriate to share it here now. As part of the admissions process, I was asked the following question: “What is the most important biblical, theological or ethical question you bring to your studies? What was the most important current book or article you consulted as you reflected on this question?”

This was my response:

I am feeling a call to ministry within the Church, but I am having a hard time accepting this because I do not see the Church today as being truly representative of Jesus.

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus says to Peter, “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

I have many questions that I do not yet know how to answer. My first one is, “What did Jesus mean by ‘church’?” I think we are missing a big part of what Jesus intended. We study the word to be the ‘mind of Jesus’, and it seems like the latest movement is to encourage our members to serve others as the ‘hands and feet of Jesus’. As I was first thinking about this essay, I was convinced that we needed to learn how to be the ‘heart of Jesus’ so that we can love the way Jesus loved. Yet, I think we do know how to love. But I think we only know how to love those we see. Maybe we need to learn how to be the ‘eyes of Jesus’ — to see others as Jesus saw them. Once we can do that, I believe we will automatically love them as Jesus loved them.

As I consider a life in ministry, one of my biggest struggles is how I will align myself with a church that cannot see as Jesus saw. In pondering this dilemma, I was drawn to the book Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor. In this memoir, Taylor shares about her decision to eventually leave congregational ministry to teach. I think this is the temptation of too many ministers today. I am already tempted to ‘leave church’ and I have not even begun my ministry.

While her reasons for leaving centered around the unrealistic demands of clergy life, this book showed me that I am not alone in my struggles with the church of today. It affirmed that others are struggling with how to love church and love people at the same time. It also reminded me that there is a place for ordained clergy outside traditional church roles. While this reminder was comforting, it seemed to confirm that I am being called to ministry within the church. I feel called to be a bridge between God’s people and the church; to enact reform from within the church rather than from outside.

Rather than join the church or leave the church, maybe we are called to change the church. To become the church God is calling us to be. To be the church of Jesus. Not one with walls and barriers and lines drawn in the sand, but one with the eyes of Jesus (eyes that see) and one with the heart of Jesus (a heart that loves God with all and loves others as thyself).

How do we do that? How do we reconcile the contradictions in scripture? How do we proclaim truth to the ends of the earth when we cannot agree on what that truth is? How do we choose ‘and’ rather than ‘or’? How do we move forward into the future God is calling us to? How do we become the people of God we were created to be? How do we feed God’s sheep? Not just with food for the body, but love and nourishment for the soul? How do we teach them to pray? Not just in worship services, not just corporate recitation, but continually with open hearts and open minds ready to receive all God is ready to give?

My most important theological question is, “How do we become the church Jesus commanded us to be?”

I am headed back to seminary in the fall to see if I can learn more answers to my questions. In the meantime, I will be a visible ally to the unseen. I have always been an ally, but I have not always been visible. That changes now. I am your ally. I see you as Jesus sees you, as God sees you, and I love you as Jesus loves you, as God loves you.

Church, we have work to do!

Amen.

For more information on how to be a loving and impactful ally:

The Reformation Project – https://www.reformationproject.org

Reconciling Ministries Network – https://rmnetwork.org

John 13:34-35 ~ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

finding my way

Category: ally

What is Mission?

Eyes that See