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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From April 22, 2007 In order to draw men in, Murrow is calling for a different kind of church: one that offers the excitement of movie clips and spills over with raucous music. Murrow advocates a church short on words and long on action. A church that replaces those "Jesus is my boyfriend-" flavored praise hymns with manly-man stuff, songs that if they weren't laced with God language might be confused with war chants. I couldn't help but think of Mr. Murrow on Monday when I turned to The Book of Acts and read today's scripture. Now here's a scene that would make guys like him sit up and cheer. It's all action, this passage. If Hollywood got hold of this story like Mel Gibson got hold of the Passion, surely Bruce Willis would be given the part of God, Samuel L. Jackson would play Saul, and director Quentin Tarantino would see to the special effects. It's a man's story, all right. Saul is the perfectly passionate zealot, on fire to do away with all those misguided followers of the Way. He's a champion of the faith, a defender of Judaism, Saul is. Two thousand years later, you can still see the glint in Saul's eyes and sense his steely resolve to eliminate enemies of orthodoxy. Even from the safety of our places in the pews, we feel how taut the sinews in Saul's body are, how poised and ready he is. Ready to murder anyone, everyone who puts Jesus ahead of Judaism. If Saul is a man's man living out a man's purpose, then the God who deals with him here is one extremely masculine, pumped up kind of God. The sort of God who would make even Arnold Schwarzenegger proud. This God is all shock and awe. A no-holds barred God. One who decides he's had enough of Saul's commando tactics and so sends down a flash of light so powerful that it knocks Saul clean to the ground. "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" It's the voice of God's son, Jesus. Saul blinks as he stumbles to right himself, stars in his eyes from the blow. But no amount of blinking brings back his sight. It's gone. And so is his manhood, apparently; Saul needs to be taken by the hand and led into Damascus. The Damascus Road Experience. Even folks who
aren't believers are familiar with the story of how God
knocked Saul to the ground and in his place raised up Paul.
It was eery, even downright creepy, capturing well Saul's mood and methods. Notes careened this way and that in wild disharmony and then the anthem ended abruptly with God's blunt-force syncopated question, "Why do you per-se-cute me, Saul?" The dramatic does makes an impact. Not only do I remember Saul's conversion, I also recall, vividly and often, writer Anne Lamott's. Anne wasn't hell-bent on destroying Christians like Saul was; she was determined to kill herself with drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships, and self neglect. God didn't knock Lamott off her horse and onto the ground. God had a different but no less effective strategy. When Jesus came to Anne that first time, when he followed her home and pressed himself into the corner of her bedroom, where he watched her in the dark, Lamott was appalled and repulsed. She rolled over in bed and told herself she would rather die than admit her need of him. God didn't press Lamott to the mat, like God did with Saul. Instead, God sent Jesus to follow along at a safe distance while she went about her self-destructive business. Jesus was like a little cat, Lamott writes in Traveling Mercies. And you know what happens with cats; you give them an inch and they climb into your life and up into your lap. They take over. Jesus wasn't an aggressor but he was persistent. A week of being followed was enough; Lamott finally relented. "All right," she huffed out loud the day she realized Jesus wasn't going to go away. "You can come in." Maybe Saul's story and Lamott's stick with me because I didn't hear stories like that growing up. I can't recall ever hearing someone in my church share a conversion story, not even after church camp or mission trips. Those things happened to other people in other churches. Us? By and large, we had all grown up in the church. We were Christian people who had simply eased into faith in the same way we had gone from baby food to solid food - gradually and without fanfare. We'd always been believers. Our faith was no less real, our discipleship no less authentic than any one else's. It's just that we didn't have a date on the calendar we could turn to and celebrate each year. Our born-again birthdate. When we were together, we were fine with things being that way. But we weren't quite sure what to say or how to act when other Christians asked us if we'd been saved, when they expected us to have a dramatic incident to report. Similarly, we weren't sure how to convince our born-again brothers and sisters that there really are two kinds of conversions: the dramatic and the gradual. Both equally valid. When I was in seminary, I finally met someone in my own denomination who had had a profound conversion experience. He never divulged the details and I never dared ask. But that didn't stop me from putting my imagination to work. As I thought about his life-altering holy moment, I pictured the Holy Spirit shooting down from the heavens faster than a lightning bolt, going to the core of my friend's very being and igniting a fire there, one fueled by Jesus himself. It was there when we first met, fifteen or twenty years after my friend's conversion. A flame shining out just as strong and sure as the moment it first took hold. It was so wonderful, what this friend had been given, this inexhaustible light of Christ, that I found myself succumbing to spiritual envy. I wanted my own equally dramatic moment. My own experience of being blinded by the light of God's love and given a new life, a new way of looking at everything and everyone, including myself. That's been my ardent prayer for a long time. I'm not alone, either. Any number of seekers I've found along the way have confided that they, too, want a Damascus Road experience. A Hollywood-sized faith moment that will leave them forever changed. But that's not what seems to have been given. God has not elected to respond to our prayers in one grand, action-movie sort of sweep. Instead, God has moved more gently, more quietly, more subtly. Why? Only God knows for sure but I think it has to do with God's love for us. Any time prayer is involved, God takes into account the whole picture and responds accordingly. Not many of us are equipped to handle a conversion experience as outwardly disruptive as Saul's or as instantaneously comprehensive as my friend's. When it comes to conversion, Tim Whitaker's yoga classes have given me new eyes, a new way to think about conversion. When an article in the Paducah Sun appeared a few months ago featuring one of Tim's students, a 70-year-old woman who can do head stands, you won't believe how many folks came streaming into the basement. Any number of them thought that after a class or two they too would be doing inversions or nimbly twisting their bodies into pretzel shapes. They wanted to be "insta-yogis." Disappointed, some fell away quickly. But others, including a 69 year-old woman who is my new hero, others come to class week in and week out, accepting the reality of where they are, while also challenging themselves to bend a tiny bit deeper or stretch a fraction of an inch further. What these folks do is show up. They take the practice seriously but not too seriously. Even when they see no discernible difference from class to class or from week to week. Even when there aren't fireworks or crescendos of accomplishment. They simply trust the process, whether or not it includes a headstand or an ankle behind the ear today or tomorrow or next month. They trust the process. Christian writer and scholar Marcus Borg has long stressed that discipleship is like this. It may or may not be launched by a distinct decision, by a dramatic in-breaking of the Spirit. Borg insists that ultimately what saves us is not a moment in time, a date to circle on the calendar. What converts us, what transforms us is committing ourselves to journeying with God and allowing God to change us over time. Jesus talked about this in terms of dying to our old selves and rising to new ones. Which is not so much an event as it is a process. For some, like Saul and Anne Lamott and my friend, that process very much begins with a dramatic, decisive moment. But for many of us, this process begins so quietly we may not realize it has begun until later, as was the case with Cleopas and his friend on another road, a quieter and gentler road, the one to Emmaus. Their eyes were opened, too, Luke's gospel tells us. Afterwards. There was something in the subtle grace and quiet ways of the stranger they met and invited in on the road home from Jerusalem the day Jesus' tomb was found empty. Something about this stranger, the one who blessed and broke bread with them, something about him spoke just as fully as any wild shout from the heavens. Something about how he looked at them had them look again and see this stranger for who he was, the Risen Christ. And see that he had changed them without their quite even realizing it. Big, bold, and brash or quiet, gentle, and subtle. It isn't how Christ Jesus enters our lives that matters so much as what we do with him once we recognize him. Once that happens, and we decide we're willing to go where he leads, there's no telling what else he'll help us see, do, and become. Amen. © 2007 Rev. Karen Winkel Check out Lillian Daniel's article, "Why Men Say No to Church," in the April 3, 2007, edition of The Christian Century. The story of Anne Lamott's conversion is found in Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, pages 49 and 50. |
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